For a long time, you had to purchase a hybrid out of the goodness of your heart. In other words, for the longest time, the likelihood of your owning your hybrid long enough for it to payoff was very, very low. You really needed to go hybrid for non-economical reasons (like your love for the environment).

The good news is that many hybrids are now cost-effective. They pay for themselves in less than 5 years, under normal driving conditions. Of course, you should keep in mind that hybrids are much more effective at saving gas in city driving as opposed to highway driving. If you do mostly highway driving, your hybrid purchase might still need to be an act of conscience, and not an attempt to save the piggybank.

Both Honda and Toyota have announced significant drops in the cost of replacement batteries for their hybrid vehicles. Cuts in costs are up to 45%.

According to ecomodder:

It will now cost just under $2,000 to have new batteries installed in you Honda Insight, and just under $2,500 for your Accord hybrid. These are about $1,000 reductions in the cost. Toyota, on the other hand, has dropped prices from ~$5,500 to $3,000, but that doesn’t include the installation, so the real cost is likely a bit more.

It is great to see the cost of alt-fuels drop as petroleum based fuels skyrocket. Perhaps we are witnessing a major industry shift.

Ok, this officially hits the best of all the world’s on Ridelust. It’s a Hybrid and its a SuperCar.

“What we are revealing today is an innovation in the automotive industry and demonstrates American ingenuity at a time of real need. We’re designing and building cars with performance components and unique styling with the objective of making the new environmentally friendly vehicle stand out with never before seen style and approximately 40 mpg plus efficiency.”

I’d just like to say it looks gorgeous but I’m skeptical. If you can’t build a decent website you probably can’t build a car.

Check out Gas2.0’s coverage for more insight and details.

Honda to push harder than ever to win the hybrid marketplace. It plans to sell 200k cheap hybrids a year,and a total of 500k hybrids globally. This is a huge push and I can’t wait to see hybrids just be the norm out there in the automotive world.

Honda plans to launch a cheaper hybrid car to go on sale from early next year.

The maker says it expects to sell 200,000 of the entry level hybrid cars a year, although we don’t know if they will be available in Australia.

Honda says the cheaper hybrid will allow more people around the world to adopt cleaner motoring technology and reduce global car emissions.

It anticipates total sales of 500,000 hybrids a year. As well as the new affordable hybrid, Honda will build a Jazz hybrid and sporty CR-Z and Civic hybrids. It plans to reduce its production costs with a new electronic control unit and a thinner, more compact battery. A thinner motor has also been developed.

Source: The Age