Are hybrids really worth the extra cash?

Are hybrids really worth the extra cash?

I mean there isnt any real benefit of a hybrid unless you do a lot of stop and go type city driving. For a person like me who drives on the highway for 90% of his daily commute, you're running off your gas powered engine. So is it really that beneficial to spend the extra cash on a hybrid??

I read somewhere that for some Hybrids (the ones that have a regular gas version), the money you'd save on gas over a comparably equipped one, you'd have to drive 165 000 miles... but... in some cases, the Hybrid offers better performance, such as the Lexus R400h...

i can see the savings but the benefit of hybrid and from having worked on development of them at Ford is to help with lower fuel consumption in traffic driving. Like say rush hour comute but for a driver like me for whom 30 miles of his 35 mile commute is a straight highway run i dont really see a benefit cuz your running off the gas motor the entire time. Also what about the cost to replace batteries when it comes down to it. I doubt tahts anywhere even near the cost of a regular battery change.

i read that its several thousand to replace the batteries in a prius. i would get one, but it's a little pricey now, i do almost all city driving, so it would work out for me if you could make one around $17k. but,. i still have my corolla and my tC, the corolla gets 28+ mpg city and the tC gets 26mpg all city, not bad

haha i wish there was one for 17k. when i helped the development team at ford, the electric motors alone were $4000 and were being imported from sweeden. thats whats ended up in the Ford Escape Hybrid.

its from Volvo isn't it? i did hear the volvo was designing the motors for them since they were"better" made. the hybrids are worth driving around if you do mostly city driving. which is something i currently do. the accord averages 35mpg on the interstate and 20 city or even 13 at times if i floor the crap out of it when i am racing. the Rolla would average 41 mpg when stock but later dropped to 35 mpg and then went significantly lower after it got screwed up. my mom's friend has a prius and it uses very little gas, the last time i saw it it said she was averaging 52 mpg since she drives very slow but get to a 40mph crusing speed.

yeah volvo was makin the motors. its sad cuz we'd go through a motor a week trying to get the electrical right. think of the development budgets these companies have.

electrical problems = Volvo, Jaguar.............period they have the most problems on thier electrical systems and Land Rover is starting to go down that route as well.

Depends on what kind of driving conditions I would drive a hybrid. Plus with gas not going down anytime soon that would be kind of a motivation to have a hybrid.

Volvo, jaguar, and even some vw's now are starting to have electrical problems.

yeah the ones we were running into were in regards to switching from gas to electric and all that kinda stuff. not really the motor being bad or anything

but the jag and volvo nameplates have had problems way even before Ford bought them out. BMW had a bunch of problems and since they bought out Rolls Royce they have gotte better. Audi/VW ag having since aquring Lamborghini AG they (lambos) have had many problems with thier electrical heating up and catching on fire.

How does the mechanism work for switching from gas to electric? There's probably a computer system i'm guessing.

yes a computer controls when the switch is made based moreso on the RPM of the motor. when it peaks, the motor acts as a crank and kicks the engine on which is then engaged. its a pretty complex system but fun to read up on wiht detail if you are the technical type.

So it'll switch over from electric to gas when it hits a certain RPM? So what about highway driving is that controlled the same way or is the RPM limit changed after you reach a certain sustainable speed?

highway it stays on gas. also on rush hour driving it'll stay motor till the battery gets to a certain level. the motor that i am familiar with on my old project with the trans could run upto 35 mph before the engine would be needed.

its a variant of how the system "reads" the need of power consumption and then automates the system to go and do what it has to do.

you will never replace any battery in a hybrid car. the warranty on those are amazing and usually cover everything for at least 50k. the prius is the top selling hybrid for years now and are currently on back order in my area.. i would invest in a hybrid i was looking at the ford escape hybrid the other day great hybrid suv

lol stay away. take it from a man who worked on that team, stay away

Just curious...explain.

seriously the thing just came out and already they have had numerous recalls. the prius it like super reliable compared to the excape and if ur going to get an suv go get a highlander or a RX 400h they are much better and less problematic overall. and please agree with moonshadow i know i would.

lol its a lot of inside shit but the development team consisted of 6 engineers headed by this guy Dr. Jaura (has a huge ego) and he'd make them overlook so many aspects by saying we'll deal with it once we have a working prototype. judging from whats been happening with it, i'm guessing a lot of those were not revisited.

haha...huge ego. I was just curious...I'm into that kind of technical stuff. More trivial fyi.

oh yeah, he's got some pretty big ego issues haha. i know hiim personally too which is why i know.

That would suck to have to work for someone who has an inflated ego.

The town i live in is a suburb 20 minutes from Tulsa City Hall....my town's city hall bought a Toyota Prius back in March mainly to go back n forth from our city hall to tulsa's....our local paper said it would save quite a bit of money for our city but i dont remember the figures...

My friend and I did a estimate/calculation of how many miles it would take for a 04 Civic Hybrid to break even with his normal 04 Civic EX 4dr if gas prices stayed a steady 2.40/gallon. Without going into details, we figured about ~106K miles. Well my friends civic (purchased Sept. 03) has around 13K miles right now so for a driver like him I say no, it's not worth the extra cashola.

Speaking of which my corolla (purchased Oct 95) has about 945XX miles so I wouldn't get one for myself either. damn, just realize my car is about 10yrs old.

the accord and civic hybrids are nice, even the old little insight, the first one, was real cool, but didnt do well.....the prius is real nice though

If I was going hybrid, I would be getting the hybrid Silverado....thats the type of vehicle it could make a big difference on. And I love silverado's

me to, but i'd take the GMC styling though.

i didnt recall any recalls on the escape hybrid if so enlighten me

did you mean casshole?