Hybrid Car Buying Considerations

Kevin McCormally: I am Kevin McCormally of Kiplinger's and with me is Mark Solheim, the automotive editor of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine. Mark, gas prices are killing people, lot of attention on hybrid vehicles. Tell me about? Mark Solheim: A hybrid is a vehicle with a slightly different pilot designed to save fuel. It has both the gas engine and an electric motor. Kevin McCormally: How will it work together? Mark Solheim: sometimes it work together, but what saves the gas is that the electric motor works by itself without the gas engine when the car is idling, or going at low speeds. Kevin McCormally: So sometimes gas engine is actually shut off? Mark Solheim: When you're idling for example, you hear a little pump n the gas engine is shut off. Kevin McCormally: Okay. So you don't have a gas engine, are these called as peppy at all? Mark Solheim: It depends on which car you're talking about. Some of the smaller sedans like the previous, don't have the best 0-60 peppiness Kevin McCormally: Okay, I know that that's not the real key here is peppiness, it's really gas model, what kind of gas model do you get? Mark Solheim: The less peppy, the better the gas model. So the previous example, under ideal driving conditions can get up to 16 miles per gallon. Kevin McCormally: 60 miles a gallon, that's great, but is there anyway you're ever going to save enough in fuel cost to pay the premium that these vehicles cost? Mark Solheim: Probably not. First of all you mentioned the premium, it's probably $3,000-$6,000 more than a comparable gas engine only vehicle, and you don't like really to save enough gas to pay yourself back. Kevin McCormally: But you don't only have to save gas, because uncle Sam will help too. Mark Solheim: Uncle Sam helps. There's -- as of January 2006, buyers can get a credit which means a dollar for dollar reduction of the tax bill, and that credit varies from $650 for the Honda Accord Hybrid, up to over $3,000 for the Prius.