The Future of Hybrid Cars

The Future of Hybrid Cars

Hybrid cars are one of the more recent, and most practical, innovations in the fight against greenhouse gases and global warming. Electric cars would of course be the ultimate battle against harmful emissions, aside from those produced in the generation of the electricity used to power them. But all attempts to produce a viable electric car have produced nothing that would be useable and practical to the average driver.

Electric cars will work for the drivers who do not wish to travel faster than 40-50 mph or go more than 100 miles before recharging their batteries. But for most people this isn't a realistic option. Most drivers would still like to make a contribution to the good of the environment without it adversely affecting their daily lives, and hybrid cars are a great way to start towards this goal.

One direct and immediate benefit of driving a hybrid car is the reduction in the fuel bill. This has become more and more important recently with the escalating cost of gas at the pumps. A typical car driving around town will return fuel economy figures of less than 25 mpg. This can be much lower with the larger cars that many people own and especially with SUV's which often have alarmingly low fuel economy around town. Many SUV's achieve fuel economy of 15-25 mpg and many achieve less than 10 mpg!

This startlingly low, and increasingly expensive, figure can be improved dramatically by changing to any of the hybrid cars that are currently on the market. Drivers should find it relatively easy to achieve mileage figures in excess of 55 mpg, with even large SUV's getting a figure of 30-40 mpg. This obviously depends on the driver's style of driving.

Changing to hybrid cars instead of using conventional gasoline or diesel fuel could save drivers a great deal of money. Drivers could realistically cut their fuel bill by anywhere between 25 to 50 per cent. Drivers who currently own an SUV and change to a similar hybrid model could see an average $3,000 fuel bill reduced to $1,500 or less by purchasing one of the new hybrid cars.

One of the arguments against hybrid cars, and also one of the reasons why many customers were reluctant to make the change, was purchase price. Hybrid cars are inevitably more expensive to produce than conventional cars due to the fact that they have an electric motor as well as a gasoline engine.

This, however may be due to change with the new tax breaks for hybrid cars. In any case, the difference is much less than it used to be, with some hybrid cars costing as little as $1,000 more than their conventional counterparts. This likely could be saved in fuel costs in the first year alone.

Now that tax breaks for hybrid cars have emerged, the cost of the vehicles should be more on a par with the standard models and these savings should be money in the bank. The tax savings should encourage a previously skeptical public to view the benefits of hybrid cars as being financial as well as environmental. This would encourage a much wider ownership, which in turn may drive prices lower again as cost per unit decreases with the economy of scale that mass production can bring.

Hybrid cars may soon be not only good for the environment but also good for your budget as well. Hopefully in the near future, hybrid cars may be, with the falling price and ever increasing fuel efficiency, a substantially cheaper and cleaner alternative for the financially and environmentally conscious driver.