One thing rang loud and clear this week when the major car makers reported U.S. April sales numbers: Consumers want hybrids and smaller cars.

Sales of General Motors’ Hummers fell 50% while demand for Toyota’s Prius increased 53% over this time last year. Sales of the Mini Cooper jumped 35%. The Ford Focus saw its sales rise 45%. Meanwhile, most truck and SUV sales got hammered across the board.

Uh, it costs more to fill up
Filling up costs on average $3.62 a gallon, and could hit $3.75 by the summer driving season. We’re already paying $4 a gallon in San Francisco. Bottom line: The bigger the car, the more it costs to fill up.

Give the consumer a break
At the moment the presidential candidates are going back and forth about what to do about high gas prices, and how to help consumers. Hillary Clinton and John McCain want a gas tax holiday, meaning they want the 18.4 cents per gallon excise tax suspended during the summer driving season. On a 20-gallon tank of gas, that’s a savings of $3.60.

Barack Obama says this is just a political move to garner votes, and one that doesn’t solve the nation’s reliance on oil, and opposes the “holiday.” Critics say it would cost the federal government about $10 billion it’s suspended.

What’s an excise tax anyway?
Apparently there’s an invisible “excise tax” on gasoline, simply wrapped into the cost, at 18.4 cents a gallon. The IRS says excise taxes can be found on various products (think alcohol) and activities (think gambling and highway usage), with one “major component” being motor fuel. It was introduced in 1932 at one cent per gallon and has held steady at its current rate since 1993.

The big picture
One of the most-read items on the New York Times Web site this week was an opinion piece by Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat, called “Dumb as We Wanna Be.” Friedman has his critics, but he raises the point that when Congress passed the energy bill at the end of last year, they did not extend tax credits to wind and solar programs, meant to encourage investment in these areas, which expire this year. His point is that the United States needs to formulate a focused policy on finding viable alternative energy sources.