The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that the Northwest’s two big truck makers PACCAR (of Bellevue) and Freightliner (of Portland) are developing hybrid-electric drives for their step trucks and other mid-sized vehicles. That’s a bigger deal than you might imagine.

As Clark noted here, improving the fuel economy of low-mpg vehicles actually matters a lot more than improving the fuel economy of high-mpg vehicles. The fuel savings are much larger.

(We touched on the energy security benefits here: Cascadia Scorecard 2005 (pdf, see page 50).)