In the state of California, the ugly yellow sticker you see here was, for a time, one of the most sought-after automotive accessories around. People would buy a car specifically to get one, or pay a couple thousand more on the used market for a car that already had one.

What’s so special? If you were lucky enough to have one affixed to your car, you could drive solo in the carpool lane. The idea was to kickstart hybrid sales, which at the time were languishing because gas was cheap and, I’ll bet, a bit of technophobia on the part of the general public. In chronically congested California, the idea of zipping along in the carpool lane without Bob from accounting nattering in your ear the whole time was too good to resist, and the 85,000 stickers were snapped up quickly, with the last one issued in February, 2007. The stickers even added between $1,000 and $2,000 to the used car value of your hybrid (most often a Prius or Civic Hybrid) if you were lucky enough to get one.

However, the program’s days were numbered from the start. Initially supposed to expire in 2008, the deadline was moved to 2011. Now that deadline is fast approaching, and the subject of extending it until 2016 is under consideration. Opponents say that the work is done, and they make a great point. The Prius hardly needs help selling these days, and hybrids with similar or better mileage than the original Prius are all over these days. Besides, hybrids are most efficient when they’re stuck in traffic anyhow, using all those great electrons stored in the batteries instead of that nasty gasoline they consume at high speeds. Diesels like the Jetta TDI are generally more efficient at steady-state highway speeds than most hybrids anyhow, so why don’t they get a sticker? In addition, the carpool lanes are so crowded these days that kicking all these hybrid people out makes sense.

The effort to extend the program won’t even cover current hybrid owners. One version under consideration would only offer the stickers to pure electric or alternative fuel vehicles (which currently get a white sticker that does the same thing as the yellow one), and another would give the hybrid sticker to vehicles with a combined city/highway mpg rating of 65 or higher, something no car currently available achieves. Either way, it looks like Prius owners will have to commute with the rest of us schlubs in the regular ol’ lanes starting in 2011.

Los Angeles Times