Quote:
Originally Posted by jiminoc Either way green = cash in your pocket. |
Unfortunately, that's not true yet. Going green, at least for cars, costs more money right now.
Taking an example of a Honda Civic, since it has both gasoline-only and hybrid versions, so we can do an apples to apples comparison. If you bought the hybrid, you'd have to drive more than 300,000 miles before the hybrid saved you money. That's a very long ROI if you ask me.... too long to justify paying the extra cost for the hybrid.
Going off published specs, the hybrid costs about $6,200 more than the regular, and gets 51 MPG instead of 40 MPG. If gas costs $3.50 a gallon, then per mile, you use about 2 cents less worth of gas per mile in the hybrid. Of course there are other factors involved, like tax incentives and maintenance costs, but I'm guessing the added maintenance costs of a hybrid would counter-act the tax incentives.... maybe I'm wrong though.