What's not to like about hybrids?

They sure beat forcing the sheeple onto trains! :)

"You can't argue with the market reaction."
"The Right will. It ignores markets if they disagree with ideology."

Is this intended as a compliment or insult?

Some used 2004 Priuses are selling for thousands of dollars more than the cost of a new one.

Since the rational reason for buying a hybrid is to save money on gas, the folks ignoring the market for reasons of ideology (or aesthetics, you sort out the difference) here are the ones lining up to pay extra. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

that is the market.

No, that's a market segment.

As a wise man once said, The Right ignores markets if they disagree with ideology.

Remember all those folks who locked in their long term natural gas heating contracts just as the price of heating oil experienced it's last collapse. I wouldn't be surprised to see the same for gasoline as hybrid buyers are bidding up prices for their new cars. That's how markets work and it doesn't matter what the buyer's motives are or how well thought out. Things will work out ok as long as the oj's of the world are kept far enough away from developing tax policy for the rest of us.

The extent to which it's a fashion statement can still be measured by the lack of a waiting list for the Honda Civic hybrid, which works just the same as the Prius but looks like the normal gas version.

And OJ is nothing if not a man of the right.

David-

I thought he was a 'third wayer'(whatever that is).

Tom: I'm trying to be nice.

The pee in the pudding being, hybrids don't get the mileage they are rated for. It turns out the way the fuel ratings are computed don't correspond to real world driving and the true mileage figure is barely higher than the gas-equipped model of the same car. Diesels on the other hand get excellent mileage, but suffer from bad PR. My 7000 lb pickup truck, powered by a Cummins turbo diesel, gets 19 mpg. And can hold six people. And tow a 5 ton trailer.

I love the smell of diesel in the morning. It smells like...victory.

Hybrids, riiiiiiiight. I've seen this movie before, and I know how it ends. In the late 70's, diesel cars were all the rage among the cutting-edge folks. Diesel fuel was cheaper than gas, and they were gonna save a whole lotta money. Thsy just had to put up with the smell and the roughness and the higher purchase price. I has a co-worker who bought two.

A few years later, you couldn't give them away. And I had a good laugh at my neighbor down the street, when his fuel turned into jello in his tank, with the car sitting overnight in the driveway in a -10 degree F Chicago winter. Seems fuel pumps aren't designed to pump jello.

Germany taxed diesel fuel favorably to gasoline and in the ensuing 5 years diesel car sales increased 30 %. The market works and prices are prices Tom, taxes or not.

P.S. In Germany diesels were previously derided as "Farmer's" cars. So much for boutique considerations. I drove diesels until NH raised the price of fuel by charging road tax for the first time; Put 300,000 miles on one. They also keep down the bugs. Have a diesel tractor and a diesel engine in my sailboat and wouldn't even consider gasoline alternatives, unless they raised the price of fuel by charging road taxes for their fuel, although Safety is an additional consideration. So put that in your tail pipe and smoke it ... one of the old drawbacks.

Prius Shmius, the dumb rich girls on my street would double their mpg if they traded their Suburbans for BMW 745s.

Of course prices are prices, if they are determined by suply and demand within a franework of the free flow of goods and services. Prices can also be determined by commitees or individuals through add on taxes to pay for the maintaintence of ifrastructure which enhances thr free flow of goods and services. Once they start being used for social engineerinf purposes or in the name of directing behavior in order to satisfy preferences based on weak science or some other ideological purpose the economic effect creates unforseen results since the prefernces sometime have no basis other than the vision of those commitees or individuals. Governments are the most inefficient user of resources, given. Its powers should be limited to what only it can do. Remaking society along the lines of some academic or elitist vision by overriding the demands of the marketplace is not one of them. Is the free flow of goods and services a social good or not? Should the power of the state be used to enhance or restrict such mobility? If an alternative to the internal combustion engine were economically feasible would it be more widely used?

" Once they start..." You're several thousand years late to stop it.

People should know better by now.

Hybrids aren't like diesel because it does not require any change in driver behavior. They don't need to worry that the fuel smells bad or gets them dirty. More important, they don't have to worry which gas station carries it, because they still use only gas.

The issue with the govt calculating mileage wrong needs to be fixed, but does not change the advantages many drivers can get with a hybrid. It won't be good for everyone, but certainly a lot. The people I know who have them continue to report 48-60 MPG as opposed to the 25-35 they normally would get.

The technology will improve, the mileage will increase, and economies of scale will drive down their cost. I would not be surprised if hybrids make up a significant percentage of the market in 5 years.

So, the heavy handed, top-down, planning and direction of the populace might not be needed after all? Natural prices work if allowed to.

http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,63413,00.html?tw=wn_story_related

"Data from independent product-testing organization Consumer Reports indicates that hybrid cars get less than 60 percent of EPA estimates while navigating city streets. In Consumer Reports' real-world driving test, the Civic Hybrid averaged 26 mpg in the city, while the Toyota Prius averaged 35 mpg, much less than their respective EPA estimates of 47 and 60 mpg. Hybrid cars performed much closer to EPA estimates in Consumer Reports' highway tests.

Consumer Reports' senior auto test engineer Gabriel Shenhar says that while the EPA test is a lab simulation, Consumer Reports puts the cars on the streets and measures the fuel consumed to more accurately reflect gas mileage."

Tom:

There's no such thing.

As what? Real prices conveying real information regarding relative scarcity? Nonsense.

Natural