• “Everyone will be driving electric cars,” wrote Alma Reed, Mutual 4. Not everyone drives electric cars, but their popularity has skyrocketed since 2000. The Toyota Prius, a hybrid electric vehicle, was released globally in 2000, the first of its kind to be sold on a large scale. In 2000, only 9,350 hybrid electric vehicles were sold in the U.S.; and no fully electric vehicles were sold, according