About a week ago I found a great deal on a used 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid with low miles. The icing on the cake was that it had one of those Yellow CARB Stickers. This was the ultimate kicker for me since I drive the 405 everyday and believe me it is absolute torture! On the days that I carpool with my wife, the saved drive time is at least an hour each day. Well the jig is up and the original carpool program is going to expire on January 1st, 2011. Good thing I did not buy that Civic!
A Law was passed in 2004 in order to encourage people to buy hybrid cars. The goal was to give out the CARB stickers to any hybrid that got a fuel economy rating of 45 MPG combined or more. Well that pretty much limited the cars to the Toyota Prius and the first generation Honda Insight. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) gave out 85,000 of these stickers for Hybrid, Natural Gas, and electric powered cars. Cars that have this sticker can fetch a higher resale price. I would gladly spend up to $2000 more since the savings in time spent on the freeway would be huge.
Fast forward to the year 2008 and the program had been extended a few more years. But still the only cars with these stickers were mostly Toyota Prius’ with a few Honda Hybrids like the: Insight and Civic. Honda has the only Natural Gas vehicle on the road so these cars also got a white form of the carpool lane sticker. This created some public outcry as other automobile owners with super fuel efficient cars were shut out of the program. The Volkswagen Jetta TDi is a turbo diesel car that not only nets great MPG, but it has been named Green Car of the Year. Ford has a great fuel efficient car with the new Ford Fusion Hybrid. Likewise Saturn and other manufacturers have hybrid cars in their stable. But since no more stickers were handed out after 2007; none of these new cars and hybrids are eligible.
New legislation is making its rounds that will give carpool lane exemption to new electric vehicles like the Fisker Karma or the Chevrolet Volt, natural gas automobiles, or those powered by other means of alternative fuel like hydrogen. Hybrids may once again make this list if they are the plug-in type or if they net a more stringent highway fuel economy of 65 MPG or more.
source:http://articles.latimes.com/2009/sep/28/business/fi-hybrid-stickers28