I just got done with an interview on Houston’s 1560 The Game about how to save money on gas and one thing that came up was if hybrid cars were really worth the extra money they cost.

I said no. You just don’t make up the extra cost when you drive them when compared to the non hybrid version of the car.

Then another guy came on and told me that with his Prius it’s totally worth it.

So let’s crunch some numbers here. Since the Prius is the most popular hybrid, I’d like to use that but there really is no comparable vehicle to compare it to so let’s instead use the the Toyota Camry and the Toyota Camry Hybrid.

The MSRP of the Toyota Camry is $19,380.
The MSRP of the Toyota Camry Hybrid is $27,389

The hybrid costs $8,009 more than the regular Camry. So if gas costs $4/gallon then you’ve got to make up 2,002 gallons of gas over the life of the vehicle to make up for the extra cost of the hybrid.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s just use city mileage since that’s where the hybird really makes a difference. The Camry gets 21mpg in the city and the Camry Hybrid gets 33mpg in the city.

Now let’s say you drive 100,000 miles (all city driving, of course). In the regular Camry you’d have used 4761 gallons of gas to do so.

With the hybrid you’d have used 3030 gallons of gas, a savings of 1731 gallons. So after 100,000 miles you’d still not have made up the difference. And let’s just say you drive 10,000 miles a year - after 10 years that hybrid you bought still hasn’t paid for itself.

Eventually, the hybrid will pay for itself if you only ever drive it in the city, but most of us don’t do that. We drive on the highway too, and on the highway the hybrid gets only a slight mileage advantage - 31mpg for the conventional engine and 34mpg for the hybrid engine.

I think the reason people think the Prius is such a good buy is because there is no conventional Prius to compare it to, but a conventional Prius would certainly cost thousands less and would still get pretty good gas mileage since it’s a small car. That’s what you need to remember. Of course Prius is going to look good when compared to a Hummer, buy so does just about every other vehicle.

That’s why I say it’s just not worth it.

I’d recommend waiting until the PHEVs are released (the plug-in electric hybrids) which will be in the next year or so or wait until the summer to get a 50mpg+ Volkswagon Jetta TDI (clean diesel powered car).

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