1/10/08Hybrid cars have stirred up fascination, emotion and unfortunately confusion in the worlds of the environment, politics, transportation and of course - the 'ol pocketbook!Many people have interest in hybrid cars for different reasons. Some want their countries to stop being so dependent upon foreign oil out of a concern for national security. Some believe our technology is causing a global warming trend with possible catastrophic expectations. Others believe a hybrid will save them money.It is not this writer’s intention to take positions in this forum in the areas of politics or world weather forecasting. But it is my job to try and open dialogues on ways to make money, save money and live better. With this in mind, I will be focusing this article strictly upon one question… WILL A HYBRID CAR SAVE YOU MONEY?The best way to determine this is to find out the TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP of a hybrid car and compare it with similar gas models over a projected period of five years.TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP for a car consists of the following data:      Depreciation      Fuel Cost      Financing      Insurance      Maintenance      Fees, Taxes      RepairsI spent several hours researching various websites and I must admit that finding good data to compare with was a chore and quite honestly, I didn't find much I could really hang my hat on unfortunately. Many websites had data regarding this car or that car, but the data varied wildly from site-to-site, I felt it best to include mainly data from websites that had a variety of vehicles with their TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) posted.In the interest of presenting the most clear and concise conclusions, I stuck with the 2007 models of 4 cars which I felt covered the bases pretty well. The Toyota Prius (hybrid), The Toyota Yaris (Gas), The Honda Civic (Hybrid) and the Honda Civic (Gas). I tried to include data on the Toyota Camry hybrid and gas models but it proved to be elusive.So, without further adieu, here is the comparison breakdown of the TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP for the aforementioned cars:Toyota Prius (hybrid)Yahoo! $38, 642Intellichoice $33,305Auto Channel $37,409Toyota Yaris (gas)Yahoo! $32,640Intellichoice $22,901Auto Channel $20,696Honda Civic (hybrid)Yahoo! $36,281Intellichoice $31,595Auto Channel $36,281Honda Civic (gas)Yahoo! $32,856Intellichoice $26,677Auto Channel $32,929Now the Toyota comparisons may not be completely fair since the Prius is a hot, trendy car in high demand fetching top-dollar and the Yaris is their rock-bottom, no frills economy car. I compared the two because the Prius seems to be the most popular and has arguably the best mileage rating and I wanted to see how it stacked up financially against a car designed strictly for economy since we are focusing on whether or not you will save money buying a hybrid.In contrast, I believe the data for the Honda Civic models are the most telling. 2 identical car models, one hybrid and one gas-only and all 3 websites gave the nod to the gasoline-only model with an average savings of $3899 over 5 years!And if you compare the numbers for the Toyota Prius hybrid versus the Yaris gas-only vehicle, the Yaris wins handily (despite an unusually high TCO number from Yahoo!) with an average savings of $11, 040 over 5 years!As fuel prices continue to rise, of course the hybrids do become more competitive and conceivably the better choice. In conclusion:It’s pretty obvious that if your goal is to save the planet, hug a tree and do your part for national security, doing so by driving a hybrid car can conceivably help towards this end! But if your goal is strictly to save money, the gas-only models still seem to be the most economical way to go currently if you shop wisely. As hybrid technology and other new technologies continue to proliferate, this will likely change and change very rapidly. While doing my research, I stumbled across a projection that within 5-10 years, almost all new vehicles will be hybrid or energized by some other “alternative power source.” This change can’t come soon enough, but let’s keep our fingers crossed that the cure won’t be worse than the disease (i.e. the MTBE fuel additive which poisoned countless ground water sources)!Please visit my flagship website at http://www.letsgetahead.com for more great articles like this one!