jdawson1960

I am getting ready to buy another car now. When gas prices were $4 plus, I was really thinking about buying a hybrid. Now with gas prices back down to $2 or less, should I.

I understand the environment situation, however with the cost of a hybrid being $5k plus more, I will never make the money back over the life of the 4-5 years I am going to keep the car.

So any feedback of your experience owning a hybrid, or why I should or shoulnt would be appreciated.

Joel

I'd focus on MPG hybrid or not.

brum

ejtbatchelor

I used to own a honda accord hybrid, when my work commute totaled 60 miles a day. With the current hybrid technology its hard to have any kind of decent return on investment, normally 10 plus years for your break even point, and that's not taking into account other maintenance costs(talking about fuel only). I was lucky when I sold mine that gas prices were high and I made slightly more then what the car was worth. Now my commute is 30 miles round trip and I own a toyota rav4. I would recommend doing in depth research. I plan to become about 95% fossil fuel independent within the next ten years.

Aces

I've had my Prius for a 16 months now. If you welly want a lot of info about pros/cons of getting a Prius hybrid, I can recommend you spend some time at www.priuschat.com. I can't comment much about other brands of Hybrids. But as for things to consider when getting (or not getting) a Prius:
1) It will be hard to justify getting one based only on economics. For my driving a 40 mile/day commute, When I was deciding to get one, it looked like it would take 9-10 years of driving to save back the about $5,000 extra a hybrid car costs over an equivalent non-hybrid. When gas was $4/gallon, that dropped to about 5 years. Now it's getting a little longer as gas prices have dropped. But this assumes that I was going to buy a new car anyway. I was driving a 1993 Honda Accord at the time. I was getting about 26 mpg with it. And I'd never owned a new car in my life. So for me, economics were never going to indicate getting one.
2) I am a strong believer that oil/gas are too finite to only consider the economics. Not only will using less gas help to lower the price for all. But it also means there will be more to go around. I'm saving about 250 gallons of gas a year, over driving the accord.
3) Hybrids make more sense if your commute is longer. If you only drive 5 miles to work, you'll likely see only 35 mpg. But with my 20 mile each way commute, I'm averaging 51 mpg. And I've gotten several 60+ mpg tanks in the Summer months. The issue here is that the Prius needs to run it's gas engine until it's warm, every time you drive it. So when starting out, my mileage drops. Then it picks up as the commute goes on. So what do you do if you have a short commute? I'd look seriously at an electric vehicle. 10-20 mile ranges are not that hard to find. Just plug them in at night.
4) Market considerations. For the 2010 model year Prius, Toyota is making a Plug-in-Hybrid-Electric Vehicle (PHEV). If you were to wait and get this car, the short-trip mileage should improve substantially. But demand will be high when they are available sometime next year. If you don't need that feature, imagine all the regular Prius Hybrids that will become available as used cars.

I'm very happy I bought mine. But every-one's situation is different. You would do well to understand as much as possible about a persons lifestyle, personality and driving situation, before using their opinions to make a decision of this magnitude. So that's why I'd lurk around forums like PriusChat.

Best of Luck!
-Kevin

philpalm

Opps double post....

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philpalm

There are Prius hackers who have added more batteries and have made their Prius more electrically driven. It works out better for the environment if you charge them up during off hours.

Also Lithium based batteries are coming in the future. Already some Lithium battery suppliers are starting to worry about supplies of lithium available. Go-ped and other electric scooters are now starting to have Lithium batteries which have more power but are more unpredictable when they run out of power.

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