Another negative point was the fact that when I asked the salespeople about those cars, I learned more about their ignorance than the cars. All they could do was to hand me the little pamphlet, but they didn't know what to do with me or my questions. I seemed to be more of a bother than anything else.
Since I have never bought a car without first taking it for a test drive, and I was certainly not going to do so in the case of what seemed such a different type of car, I left my phone number to as many dealers as possible. It took 4 months...
When the day came, I went to the Honda dealer to try a Honda Insight. A 2-seater that looked like a small Japanese Citroen. The drive took about half an hour and was reassuring. There was nothing really different about this car! It started, drove and stopped like any other car! The week after that, I tried the first Prius from Toyota. It was a bit weirder. Starting on electricity, it was more quiet and cushy than the other, but was nevertheless quite easy to adapt to.
(more next week)