I have been driving a hybrid for 7 years now, and I have never considered myself a “progressive”. I bought it because A. It was in my price range and B. it got up to 70mpg. Quite frankly, if it got 70mpg while leaving behind the legal maximum of pollution, I would still have bought it. I remember running across an article when I was researching cars that said that 2/3 of hybrid owners were conservative (it gets 70mpg, neat!) or libertarian (it’s the most technologically-advanced car that I can afford, neat!), NOT liberal. Of course, this WAS 7 years ago; it is possible that by now “progressives” have actually started buying the cars that they had been saying they wanted the rest of us to be forced to buy, but I suspect it’s the high mpg thing still at work, not the low-pollution thing.
