As part of my other life as a car reviewer, I get the occasional perk, one of which is access to rare vehicles like this one: the Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle, or PHV, which showed up unexpectedly in my driveway when the original tester had to cancel. So for three days I was one of fewer than 100 people nationwide privileged to be cruising around in a PHV. It has a short electric-only range, but I made the best of it, plugging the car into an outlet in my garage and scooting around in almost total silence for the nearly 14 miles I was allowed until the regular hybrid electric-gasoline combo took over again.

Oh yes: I was getting between 65 and 100 m.p.g. Oh brave new world, that has such vehicles in't! Available at a dealership near you sometime in 2012.