Beyond Celebrity Buzz: The Real Story On Hybrids

Cameron Diaz drives one. So do Julia Roberts, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Michele Foust.

Michele who?

Foust, a journalist from Marietta, Georgia, loves her Toyota Prius—just like the Hollywood stars who are showing their environmental stripes. “I really appreciate the fuel economy, but also appreciate the fact that it’s a comfortable car for driving and how much I can haul in it,” she says.

The Prius is the best-selling car among a growing number of hybrid vehicles, which have both gasoline and electric motors. Hybrids boast the best mileage in government tests and lower levels of greenhouse-gas emissions—as well as all that celebrity cool. But there’s a price to pay. Hybrid versions of vehicles like the Honda Civic or Ford Escape, for example, cost roughly $2,000 to $3,000 more than the gasoline-only engine versions.

That means it takes a lot of driving to save enough money to make up the difference. If gasoline costs $2.50 a gallon, it would take 11 years of driving 12,000 miles a year to break even between conventional and hybrid Civics.

Additionally, hybrid owners have expressed some dissatisfaction with their gas mileage. It isn’t as great as advertised. Part of the problem is the mileage ratings themselves. Real-world drivers know the mileage figures on the sticker are, to say the least, generous. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency routinely overstates mileage in its tightly controlled and optimum test conditions. “We estimate it’s off by 14 percent,” says Phil Reed, consumer advice editor for Edmunds.com, an automotive information Web site. Because hybrids get such good mileage, being off by 14 percent “appears to be a serious discrepancy,” he says.

The Prius is far and away the most efficient vehicle on the road at 60 mpg city and 51 highway, according to the EPA. Foust says she gets close to 50 mpg on the highway but a little less in the city.

The cost of a hybrid car is likely to come down, as hybrid technology continues to become more widespread. Already, Toyota has added hybrid power plants to its Camry family-size sedan, Lexus GS 450h luxury sedan, and Toyota Highlander and Lexus 400h sport utility vehicles. Honda has a hybrid Accord, another family-size sedan. Besides the Escape, Ford has a hybrid version of its sibling SUV, the Mercury Mariner, and General Motors just introduced a hybrid in its Saturn Vue SUV in addition to limited hybrid systems in its Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra full-size pickup trucks.