Those New Subaru Ads

Anybody catch the new Subaru ad? You know, the one with the rugged environmentalist standing in front of a Subaru plant and talking about how green it is? You can find Subaru's summary of its green manufacturing process here. Now look, I'm a wildlife guy — in fact, I've spent my entire career at NRDC protecting wild places and wildlife — so I'm all in favor of Subaru designating part of their plant wildlife habitat and doing all the other things they do to manufacture cars in the most sustainable ways possible. But the thing is, Subaru cars actually get pretty mediocre gas mileage. My 2001 Subaru Forester, for instance, gets 19 mpg in the city and 24 mpg on the highway (2007 models are only slightly better). That's not awful, but compare it to the Toyota Highlander hybrid — a much bigger car — which gets 27 mpg in the city. So guys, huzzah for the green manufacturing, but can we have a Subaru hybrid please?