Hybrid Economics

We wish we could link you directly to a chart in today's Wall Street Journal that illustrates the variable economics of various hybrid models of automobiles, but alas the info is on WSJ's subscriber-only web pages. (Annoyingly, WSJ charges its regular, paper, subscribers extra for its website, while other newspapers give their websites away for free while charging their paper subscribers.)

Anyway, the chart is quite useful, as it compares the cost of eight different hybrid models of cars against their non-hybrid siblings, then shows the annual fuel savings from driving said hybrid and converts it into the number of years you'd need to drive the hybrid before breaking even.

Now, we don't advocate that you switch to a hybrid simply to save money--as the WSJ chart shows, it's likely to take you a number of years to make up the cost differential. Instead, we advocate that you switch to a hybrid for the other benefits it brings, such as reducing your carbon emissions and reducing U.S. imports of oil from politically unstable and threatening regimes.

Still, the chart is revealing, although not necessarily as intended. For example, according to the WSJ, the premium for a Prius compared to a Toyota Corolla is about $7200, which would take 18 years to pay off with the fuel savings. We're not sure the Corolla is as comparable to the Prius as some of the other models compared. What we do see, however, is that the Prius has the highest fuel efficiency of all the hybrids in the chart, at 46 mpg combined city/highway. The Honda Civic hybrid is not far behind, at 43.3 mpg.

Most of the other models have much lower fuel efficiency because they are larger vehicles, which simply illustrates a basic Newtonian point: you can get a lot better gas mileage with a smaller car, regardless of whether it's a hybrid. For most of the vehicles in the chart, the hybrid offers no more than 4-6 mpg better efficiency than the comparable non-hybrid.

For example, the Ford Escape gets 22.6 mpg, while it's hybrid cousin gets 29.7 mpg, which isn't bad for a smaller SUV. But if you switched from a regular Civic, at 32.6 mpg to the hybrid Escape (29.7 mpg) you'd be doing the environment a disservice.

On the other hand, if you traded in your Lexus GS430 sedan, costing $51,619 and getting 20.6 mpg, for nice 4-door Camry hybrid costing $26,080 and getting 33.7 mpg, you'd save a lot of dough on the car AND save $790 a year in gas (or $1121 a year if you went on down to the Prius).

In short, for the best results in terms of causing less environmental damage and avoiding further stupid wars, Americans would be wise to begin figuring out how to do with less car, then move on to hybrids, and we hope, electric and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles of the future.

And what of those flying cars of the old Jetsons cartoons? Not in our lifetimes.