Adsense is really not a big money maker, unless you have tons and tons of readers. I'm not sure what Drums' stats are like, but mine are in the hundreds per day. A Google ad with two or three clicks on it might get me a dollar or two. Writing posts for pay gets a lot more than that, on average.
I don't know anything about hybrids, but I do have a lot of good things to say about Honda. I had a 1990 Civic that just died last Christmas, with well over 200k on it. If they're using the same engineering on the hybrids, they're likely to have a winner.
Nothing against Prius, I just don't know anything about them.