Totally agree. I bought a Prius the first year they were available, drove it until I totalled it (hit a deer at high speed on the I-95/295 interchange) and then bought another one, this time a plug-in model, which I just finished paying off.
In places like California, where there is a big socio-political divide and plenty of money, some of the most… um… unpleasantly sententious? people are those driving Priuses (see also, rolling coal, for the other extreme of that divide).
And even if a Prius driver is less smugly selfrighteous than the stereotype, more interested in driving considerately than virtue signalling, the temptation to hypermile can be very hard to resist. I do it whenever I can without inconveniencing others, because I am a giant cheapskate (100+ mpg or bust!).
I think people driving EVs and hybrids who are inconsiderate of people in ICE cars aren’t much different, psychologically, from those jerks who blow their horns and gun their engines whenever they pass a horse and buggy.
