Hybrids - Fuel Efficient Cars that may or may not Save you Money

Fuel Efficient Cars = Price To Pay

How far would you go accepting compromises, paying more, for your latest fuel-efficient cars? Let's start with the whole hybrid car equation. Certainly, when you buy a hybrid or electric cars, you can expect to do better by the environment. But you also know making a choice in a hybrid cars that you're paying much more for it than you ever would for a similar regular car. The $5000 or so that you pay extra for a hybrid, you expect you will make back with some help in fuel savings. You tell yourself, that for being responsible and for putting up the cash upfront to help the environment, at least you should be able to see some savings in what you spend on the car. Does it really work out that way?

Will Hybrid Cars Save You Money? Um Maybe....

It's a funny thing, but in the formula that some car companies use to show you that you will make your extra outlay back in five years in savings on gas, it seems that that they assume that you are buying gas at $10 a gallon. Fuel-efficient cars like hybrids save you so little gas in real life that if you hope to make back what you pay extra for the car, you'll have to either keep the car and drive it for 15 years, or you will have to imagine gas is so expensive, that you will make your money back in one third the time. Why do many car manufacturers, Honda, Lexus and others, try to tell you that you could make the premium you pay for a hybrid, back in a reasonable period of time? With hybrids from Lexus or Honda, they do this because their cars just don't save you much money. They have to do this make them look good.

Choose Better Fuel Efficient Cars For The Money You Spend

On the other hand, fuel-efficient cars like the Prius or the Camry Hybrid or the Ford Escape Hybrid really do save you a lot of money; for instance, the Prius, that costs about $22,000, does 44mpg, and actually makes you your money back in about two years when you compare it to the 32mpg that you get with a regular $18,000 Corolla. The moral of the lesson is that you can't just assume that you're doing right by your pocketbook buying just any hybrid. You will need to do your math.

And then, there are efforts at some major carmakers like General Motors and BMW that will now try to make more fuel-efficient cars by putting in technology that happens to be noisier. On the GMC Terrain crossover for instance, GM is using a new kind of six-speed gearbox with something called an eco-mode. They've mounted the gearbox to the direct injection system. Doing this brings the shift points far closer, and it makes the engine more fuel-efficient. You get 1 mile extra to every gallon. Doing that however makes the gearbox quite noisy. To try to help you with that, they're going to give you noise canceling headphones like what you get from Bose, to wear on an airplane. There's something about this that just tells you that this isn't really going to be a good idea.

For More info on Fuel Efficient Cars and may want to check out latest technology on upcoming a electric cars as well.