CNN is running an article
that surveys Americans for their stories on how they are coping with
rising gas prices. The forward to the article reads, “It’s made the
behemoths of the road — so popular during the past decade — look like
extravagances, and made hybrids into the next cars du jour.” In one of
the stories, Bill, from Georgia, raves about his hybrid’s average
of 45 miles per gallon in the city.

With gas prices teetering on the border of ludicrous, hybrids are
becoming all the rage. Obviously, getting a better gas mileage on your
car sounds great, but will it save you money in the long run? This article, and many industry analysts say the answer is no.

According to Joe White, Detroit Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal,
who looked into trading his Subaru for a Prius said, “…at roughly $3
per gallon for gas, he wouldnt recover his financing costs. Joe figured
that at his annual mileage, he’d save about $746 a year in fuel costs,
but it would take too long to recover the  premium he’d pay for
the hybrid.”

Stuart Waterman, the author of the Autoblog post goes on to write,
that for someone buying a hybrid car (that didn’t already have one),
“it would take nearly 16 years just to break even.”

Of course trading in your huge gas guzzling SUV for a hybrid would
definitely save you some money, but then again trading that in for
anything more economical would save you money, even if it wasn’t a
hybrid.

Maybe the right way to go is to buy one of the newer diesel cars.
According to my friend Robert, these newer diesel cars burn gasonline
in a much more economical fashion than regular cars do and therefore
they achieve a gas mileage rivaling, if not beating those of hybrids.
Now, that’s just what he tells me, so I have no real data to back
that up and frankly, I haven’t really looked. Any hard data on this
would be very interesting…

Either way, if your sole purpose for getting a hybrid is to save
money on gasonline costs, you might want to take a long hard look at
the math and see if it really makes sense.