The big lie....

[Patriot]

Taken from another site:



I've been comparing a Honda Civic HX and Toyota Prius.

According to Edmunds.com the invoice prices for those 2 vehicles are:

$19,314 for the Toyota Prius
$12,764 for the Honda Civic HX

$6,550 price difference

According to the website above, these are the average MPG's for those vehicles.

56 mpg for the Toyota Prius
39 mpg for the Honda Civic HX

I average about 15,000 miles per year on my vehicles. Right now the price of gas near my apartment in Seattle is about $2.60 a gallon. With those figures, the website says that in a year I will spend on gas:

$994.70 in the Honda Civic HX
$701.62 in the Toyota Prius

That is a savings of $293.08 per year.

With that savings it appears that it would take approximately 22 years or 335,000 miles before I would recoup the initial costs of purchasing a hybrid over a conventional vehicle!

Even going from my current vehicle which is a Hyundai Elantra which gets 30 mpg to the best hybrid, the Honda Insight, which gets 57 mpg, it would take me just over 10 years to recoup my costs. And that's if I bought each of those brand new right now. My Hyundai is 3 years old and paid for.

So if you're looking to buy a hybrid to save money on gas you might be in for a real shock on how little the savings really are. Try out that website for yourself and see.

By the way, what I’ve stated above doesn’t even factor in other costs such as higher insurance and maintenance. The hybrids do have two engines, which could increase maintenance costs. CV transmissions can’t be cheap to work on. Plus, there is some speculation that the battery packs are only good for 100,000 miles and range in price from $3,000 to $7,500 to replace depending on the vehicle. Could you imagine having to buy a new engine for your car every 100,000 miles? Sure, the auto manufacturers say the battery packs are good for the life of the vehicle. If that were true however, why wouldn’t they guarantee them for that long instead of the standard 8-year warranty? The battery issue could also hurt the resale value of the vehicles.