Maybe the conspiracy theorists were right after all.

That was the first thought to pop into my head as I read about an engineer named Steve Fambro – and his 400 mpg hybrid Aptera two-seater. Yes, you read that right. 400 MPG.

Really.

The mileage of the snarky little gullwing coupe is about five times better than the mileage posted by the best hybrid a major automaker has ever delivered – the 70 mpg Honda Insight (mark I, the small two-seater built back in the early 2000s, not the current model) and makes a new Toyota Prius look like a ’69 Chrysler Newport with two dead cylinders, a slipping transmission and a trunk full of bricks.

Fill-ups could be a once-a-month deal. Your gas bill by cut by two-thirds. For all practical purposes, we’d back to the days when fuel cost less than a buck per gallon since we’d need to buy it so infrequently. OPEC’s meaty fingers would no longer be crushing our windpipes. What goes on in Iraq, Libya and Iran would matter a lot less than it does right now.

Is there a catch?