Win A Prius

11 November 2004

The Center for a New American Dream is giving away a brand new 2005 Toyota Prius to whomever comes up with the best slogan for their (inter)national media and grassroots campaign to pressure automakers to speed up the production of hybrid cars. Enter the contest here.

As Jamais Cascio puts it on WorldChanging:

Here’s your chance to do some memetic engineering, change the US for the better, and get a swoopy new hybrid—all in ten words or fewer.

While I think this is a fine idea, I think ultimately it’s more useful as a tool to further rally consumers. Automakers will be more compelled by waiting lists of tens of thousands of customers than by an advertising campaign.

To catalyze a more rapid change in the automakers’ lineups, we have to change the demand behavior of the US market.  There’s no doubt that a shift in consumer priorities produces different types of vehciles—you can look at Europe, Asia and Latin America for proof. Europe with the highly efficient diesels; Japan with its world leadership in hybrids, and not just in cars; Brazil with its flex-fuel ethanol approach. Changes happen and they can happen fast. But consumers need to drive it.