Choosing the Right Hybrid Car

Buying a hybrid car must be the right choice for the environment and your wallet, right?  You imagine the dollar signs adding up as you skip your regular trip to the gas pump; you imagine a world with cleaner air and happy hybrid owners saving millions of gallons of fuel.  But before you plunk down your money on a hybrid, you want to make sure that you are going to get the savings that you want.  Something that many people do not realize is that not all hybrids are ultra-fuel efficient.  In fact, some get poorer gas mileage than a regular gas-powered car.  How do you choose the hybrid that’s right for you?

GMC’s K15 Sierra is a lightweight truck; the hybrid version gets 19 miles per gallon combined city/highway driving.  Trucks do get many fewer miles to the gallon than average cars, so 19 MPG does represent a positive change.  So how much better is the gas mileage between the hybrid K15 Sierra and the non-hybrid K15? A whopping one mile per gallon.

That’s right; the hybrid gives you one more gallon per mile.  Is that the revolutionary change that you wanted?  Just because a car is labeled a “hybrid” doesn’t mean that it will save you money at the pump. There is a whole new crop of “performance” hybrid cars that do save you gas compared to cars in the same class, but often, the price tag far exceeds the monetary benefits people can expect to see.  Given the cost of gas and the difference in cost between hybrids and non-hybrids, it can take up to eight years before any cost benefit is realized.

If you want to realize cost savings but also cut emissions and fuel consumption, opting for a hybrid that features excellent MPG and offers a reasonable price tag is essential.  Cars like the Prius, Fusion, and Civic, for example, may not be in the luxury class like the Lexus RX, but they cost at least $10,000 less than Lexus’s basic starter hybrids.  They can also get up to 60 MPG highway and 51 MPG city driving, which exceeds the Lexus’s 34 MPG combined.  The initial price tag is more affordable, as is the long-term cost in gas and maintenance.

If you want to choose a hybrid as more than a status symbol, choosing a well-made, more economical car is a great solution.  These are by no means “cheap,” but they are within reach of more budgets.  Something else to consider is that your big Dodge Caravan that gets 25 MPG becomes much more fuel-efficient if you’re carpooling to work.  You may be getting fewer miles per gallon than the hybrid drivers, but by ridesharing, you are cutting emissions and fuel use just as efficiently, or even more efficiently.

Hybrid cars are a great innovation, and they continue to evolve and offer tremendous benefits to drivers and the planet.  But if you are not in a position to buy one now, that doesn’t mean you can’t drive more efficiently with a standard car.  Hopefully, all cars will start losing their taste for gasoline.  In the meantime, we can reduce our appetite for gasoline as well.