A few years ago, celebrities arriving at the Academy Awards in Priuses contributed to the buzz about hybrid cars. This year, the focus includes PHEVs.

The sponsoring organization, Global Green (the U.S. affiliate of Green Cross International founded by former Soviet President Michael Gorbachev) makes this a two-part event: the arrivals, and, equally important in terms of public participation, a media day and evening Pre-Oscar Party on Weds. March 1. Here's a link to the Party http://www.globalgreen.org/­events/­signup.cfm, which is sold out.

The Wednesday events will feature three PHEVs, all converted by EnergyCS: our white car, PG&E's white car with a whole-car "wrap" to be unveiled, and a blue car from EnergyCS. We couldn't be there if it weren't for the dedication of PHEV supporters and Plug-In America members like Paul Scott, who will show the car on Wednesday, and William Korthof and Marc Geller, who are driving through the night on Wednesday so we can have this popular car back in San Francisco for the Commonweatlh Club event http://www.calcars.org/­calcars-news/­689.html.

Meanwhile, we've taken this occasion to completely re-vamp the display inside the car. Since April, we've crudely taped what we saw as key photos on top of the red box covering the batteries under the rear carpet. It's been very effective to point to displays showing cumulative MPG, etc. Now we've taken that one step further, glueing down more than 30 photographs and graphics,. We label components, explain aspects of the car and benefits of PHEVs, show leaders and celebrities with the car, and acknowledge the technical teams for this and for three CalCars-converted cars. It's designed to be a mini-tutorial using images to answer many peoples' most frequent questions. You can glimpse a small image of it, and download a larger one, at http://www.calcars.org/­photos-tech.html. It's still a work in progress -- we hope to improve it further.