Picard, as you might have guessed from my previous post, I don't own a Prius, but I know them pretty well.

If you are expecting to have a lot of stop and go, they are great. A little disconcerting though- they "turn off" when you stop in town driving. Or sometimes while you are still going, and you still have power. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

If you need torque for hauling or need to go off road, they aren't so good. I know that there was a limited number of hybrid Silverados made, or at least planned, back around '03. They were quite a bit heavier- they were designed to be used as part of a fleet, becuase they had an inverter running off the battery pack. The theory was that contractors would buy one, use it as thier power base and to haul low mass-high bulk gear, while using more conventional trucks for most duty. I don't know if anything came of that.

If you need to do a lot of highway driving, they are nice. A/C doesn't phase the milage. But they don't shine outstandingly in compairison to other high milage vehicles in this role. For the cost, the advantages if a hybrid is run almost exclusively at full highway speeds. If your highway looks like the Southern California sterotype, sure, a hybrid will do better, but if you can get out and move on a straight, flat length of road, the advantages are less.

For the cost, flip a coin and call if you are doing 60%+ on a real highway. If you have stop and go for over 60% of your day, and you don't need to leave the blacktop or fill the trunk up with metal, the hybrid is more fuel efficent.

If you are looking at pure, monitary cost savings, in the long run, it works out even, even in the role that hybrids excell in. However, if you want to cut down on the amount of crap you are throwing into the the air and want to use less of a finite resource, hybrids are the have the edge. It all maters what kind of green you want to save. Me, I consider the planet being in good shape to be part of being equipped. But what do I know?