GRIDLOCK DOESN'T get much better than this in Hong Kong. A distant typhoon has sucked the breeze from Causeway Bay, and we've been idling for five minutes in the hottest rush hour of the year. A couple of motorists seem twitchy for a horn chorus, but here at the wheel of Toyota's second-generation Prius, I'm as smug as a bug in the smog.
You see, I'm bursting with award- winning technology and civic pride. This hybrid's not burning petrol, fugging up our city, like everyone else on this little section of Gloucester Road. It's idling cleanly on the electric motor of the Prius' hybrid synergy drive (HSD) system.
And this Prius tells me that a hybrid car is no longer the realm of mad professors and tree huggers, but very much in its element in a city where traffic crawls at an average of 26km/h in town.
The Prius' HSD isn't rocket science, though. It's just two engines in one: a 50-kilowatt, 68-brake-horsepowered electric motor behind your back seat, and a traditional 16-valve, 78bhp1.5-litre petrol unit in your bonnet. But it's wowed the world, been named last year's international engine of the year and been voted best in fuel economy this year.
The seven-inch electro multi-vision monitor (EMVM) on the dashboard shows how the two engines work as a team. You start, idle and nose-to-tail in traffic on the electric motor, and then the traditional petrol engine cuts in and recharges your battery at speed. If you want to you can switch on the virtually silent electric vehicle mode.
So, Toyota has created a car that's kind to cities. In London, the Prius is exempt from the city's #8 ($110) congestion charge, saving its owners up to #2,000 a year. I used to think $235,665 was too much to pay for this technology, until this traffic jam, when the silent Prius shows the follies of Hong Kong motoring in a different light. The Porsche 996 to my left is sooty piped and running rich. The couple in front have bought a Mercedes-Benz E240 ($493,000), when an A200 ($238,000) or this Prius would get them to their 9.30am appointment just as fast, and save them a fortune. The lonely guy on my right has filled his empty seven-seater Honda Odyssey ($275,880) with swinging doodahs from McDonald's - for extended family trips to the New Territories on Sundays, perhaps. But he's running at less than 20 per cent occupancy today.