The Toyota Prius remains one of the most fuel-efficient, enjoyable-to-drive, gas-electric hatchback cars, with decent utility, sold anywhere, Warren Brown writes. (Toyota)

Here’s hoping U.S. automakers don’t fall for the climate change “hoax” mantra of the current presidential administration and many of its supporters. If they do, they would undermine decades of work in creating clean, fuel-efficient vehicles. If they make that tragic mistake, they will undermine their very existence.

Sounds crazy, hyped? Not as crazy as Ford and General Motors cozying up to President Trump to slow down on government fuel economy and emissions regulations, not as nuts as pushing for more high-performance automobiles in a market that can’t afford them financially or physically, and certainly not as wacko as pretending that bigger cars with faster engines won’t really hurt anything or anyone.

It is hard for me to believe what I am seeing and hearing: Fiat Chrysler Automobiles bragging about a muscle-car “heaven” in its new TV commercials; Audi pitching super performance in its cars, on roads free of competing traffic, of course; and Toyota begging, yes, begging consumers to buy its super-efficient Prius gas-electric hybrid cars.

Look, I understand how the global automobile industry works. I’ve been studying and writing about it daily since 1982. I watched it fight every safety and environmental regulation offered worldwide since that time. Then, I saw automakers change, becoming more accepting of those proposals as their own scientists and engineers showed them that it could and should be done — and profitably.

There actually was an era when automotive marketing focused less on flash and more on safety and environmental sanity. Cars such as the Toyota Prius came along then, in August 1997. Toyota globally sold 6.1 million gas-electric hybrids, led by the Prius, between the car’s introduction and December 2013. Millions more gas-electric hybrids have been sold in the United States and foreign countries. A worldwide race, often pushed by Chinese and South Korean companies, was on to improve gas-electrics.

Now, in the age of politically inspired climate-change revisionism and wildly fluctuating gasoline prices, the shortsighted among us, in U.S. automotive executive and governmental suites, seem to be of the opinion that we have done enough, that we can go back to our old, gas-burning, zoom-zoom ways.

That’s total nonsense.

For U.S. carmakers, it makes no sense because Japanese, Chinese, South Korean and European producers constantly are improving fuel efficiency and reducing tailpipe emissions. If the Americans relax in those endeavors, they will be clobbered in future markets. Lost manufacturing jobs will follow lost sales.

For life — breathing and fuel economy, for example — it makes no sense. Globally, between 1997 and 2013, Toyota alone reduced carbon-dioxide pollution by 41 million tons. The now discernibly cleaner air in cities such as Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, the District, Beijing and London — all aided by cleaner, more fuel-efficient automobiles — speaks for itself.

We need more Toyota Prius cars, not less of them. And here’s to Toyota for continuing to improve the Prius despite stagnating sales of that model. The one I drove for this column, the 2017 Toyota Prius Three, gets a combined 52 miles per gallon on regular gasoline. And it does so quietly, with enough acceleration to enter a high-speed highway and yield few emissions.