14 DAY TRIAL // The Luscious Garage in Bay Area is the only garage of the few specialized in hybrid cars that is run by a woman. However, it differentiates from the other garages by more than just that. Everything inside is green, one way or another, starting with the plants and trees thriving all over the place, to the cleanness of the floor, rooms and equipment, the intense recycling process that the garage's owner is always promoting and encouraging, and ending with the fact that hybrid cars are switched to fully electric engine systems.
And that is not all. In the waiting room, there's an impressive amount of books, from belletristic to car repairing guides, or physics tomes. Carolyn Coquillette, the owner of the Luscious, is 30 years old and a compulsive dreamer in that she hopes to lend a helpful hand, as small as it may be, to dealing with environmental problems, by almost everything that she does. Of course, while recycling may also help (she likes to dissemble all unneeded items into plastic, rubber and metal parts before placing them in specialized containers), the main focus is on adapting cars.
The hybrid cars, like Toyota Prius, which rely both on electricity (in city traffic) and on gasoline (for interstate use) as fuel are transformed into fully electric vehicles upon the owners' consent, for about $6,000. The car thus obtained can travel for 12-15 miles (20-24 km) on a single charge, quite enough for most commutes. Coquillette divides those who opt for this conversion into 3 categories. “People do it because they are ideologically committed,” she says. “Some people are very tech-savvy, so they like it. Some people are extreme environmentalists, so they like it. Some just want to burn less gas.”
Her last customer (the 21st), Donald Chu, who is 65, is from the 3rd category, and has estimated that he would save about $100 per month by having his Prius converted, and would recoup the total cost in about 6 years. Still, as he explains, “You can spend the extra money being green and more efficient, or you can spend the extra money on gasoline.” Toyota officials adopted a neutral position, with spokesman John Hanson claiming that, “We don’t encourage nor discourage these modifications,” and stressing that, if it doesn't alter the car's integrity, the conversion will not void the warranty.