Why to Consider Hybrid Vehicles when Purhchasing a New Car
The beauty of this move is that I am not limited to just one make and model of automobile with a hybrid purchase. In the last few years, manufacturers have been rolling out more and more options for vehicles that combine standard fuel use with alternatives like electric and hydrogen. Because of this, I have some options from Ford like the Ford Escape, from Toyota, and from other manufacturers as well. Within a few more years, and the horizon may broaden considerably.
Sure, there are tax breaks and incentives to buy a hybrid right now. The federal government offers one type of tax break while individual states like Colorado promote their own. For example, a 2002 Toyota Prius according the Colorado’s tax revenue Web site, can get you back nearly $4,000. That’s good because hybrids are still far more expensive and their rapidly rising popularity can put you at the end of a very long waiting list to obtain one from a dealer. Buy used, and you can literally pay more than new sticker price.
Yet I’m not looking at hybrid vehicles for tax breaks or cash rebates. I’m investigating them because I want to put my dollars where my mouth is in terms of energy conservation. I’ve always leaned toward gas efficient car purchases but now I want something not entirely dependent on OPEC oil supplies or pricing.
Just as I learned to drive in the mid 1970s, gas went from seemingly pennies a gallon to rationing. For those of you who don’t remember this time or were not yet born, we had this silly system where, based on your marker plate letters and numbers, you could only buy fuel on certain days of the week. It led to more bad behavior than it did fuel conservation since many people, desperate to qualify to refuel on their next allotted day, would do the darnedest things to use up the gas already in their cars. Others sought exemptions even when they had no justification to do so. I worked at a newspaper at the time where my boss was constantly trying to get me to fill out the exemption form because I would qualify although I did not particularly need gas on demand. For me, it just didn’t seem right to demand a right denied to others.
In high school at the time, science teachers all told us this fuss would herald huge changes in Americans and their relationship to their precious cars and the fuel they ran upon. But, while there was some popularity for smaller vehicles like the sub-compacts and much discussion about alternative forms of energy, the 1980s showed us right back where we were before. The cars were huge again; only the cranky and the poor – the latter group often undervalued or ignored by both government and corporate survey takers – worried about their mileage per gallon.
Now, here we are halfway through the first decade in the new millennium, and we are right back talking about alternative forms of fuel and our dependency on foreign gas. Somehow, it was hard to hear a president who worked in Texas energy companies tell us we’re addicted to energy when, despite his announced initiatives, his cabinet has actually cut positions in alternative fuel development. Remember, his tax programs offered to pay much larger tax breaks for buyers of huge sports utility vehicles costing up to $75,000, yet offered more meager assistance for those buying hybrid vehicles.
Still, there is one point on which I agree with the American president: Americans truly are addicted to their cars and their fuel. We want to be able to drive wherever we want, whenever we want and, despite the mammoth vehicle we choose to buy, we want the trips to cost next to nothing. This simply is not realistic. Sure, I’d like to pay under a dollar for gas. But what hidden costs are there in making this happen?
I live near the Canadian border. Go on a trip up there and it’s not hard to find gas at $5 per gallon, twice what we pay here recently. In Europe, the same gas can cost as much as $7-8 per gallon. In countries where gas costs more, a surprising thing happens: drivers consolidate their trips, take advantage of mass transit, and treat their fuel like a precious commodity rather than something to use up as quickly as possible so we can go buy more. The more I read about peak oil and world global instability due to oil, the more I begin to believe other countries may offer a better system than we do in this regard.
This is exactly why I am more than willing to consider a hybrid vehicle for my next new gar purchase. No, I’m not idealistic enough to believe hybrids are perfect or offer us a long-term solution – at least, not yet. But they are a step in the overall right direction.
Unless and until we can get enough American consumers driving them, the cost of operating these hybrids will stay much higher than it needs to be. We also need to send a powerful message to the automobile manufacturers that we are tired of 10 mpg SUVs large enough to live in. We need for them to know we demand more choice: decent vehicles that also consume less fuel and produce less harmful emissions. By banding together and buying them, we drive down the high cost of manufacturing now and support each other’s use of hybrid vehicles tomorrow.
