Buying A Hybrid Car
Are there tax incentives for purchasing a hybrid vehicle?
There are quite a few incentives to purchase a hybrid vehicle and it actually makes good economic sense for a business or an individual to do it. There's tax breaks for buying a natural gas car, buying a hybrid which is still gasoline but is more fuel efficient, or for buying a battery-electric car. Of course the best savings are the ones at the pump. I drive a natural gas car, and it's about a dollar per gallon equivalent less than buying gasoline, so I save every time I refuel. And of course, if you have an electric car and you plug in so you're getting your mileage directly from your own home electricity source, that's fairly cheap as well.
What is a "zero emissions vehicle"?
A zero emission vehicle is a car or a truck that has, as the name implies, no pollution coming out of the tail pipe. A zero emissions vehicle would be something like a battery electric car or a hydrogen powered car.
Where can I buy an electric car?
Unfortunately, it is not very easy to buy a zero-emission vehicle like an electric car or a hydrogen car. Although in California there was a law that actually mandated that they be produced and sold, the car companies sued the State of California, overturned that law, ended up taking back many of the electric cars that they produced. The companies then scraped the cars and now it's left to small independent businesses to produce them, the best advice would be to seek out these smaller companies. The same thing is true of hydrogen. It is still pretty much in its infancy in terms of research and development. It will be a couple of more years before you can buy those vehicles.
What is a "hybrid" car?
A hybrid is a car or a truck that combines a small, fairly fuel efficient gasoline engine with an electric motor and batteries. The batteries are recharged whenever you're using the gasoline engine. For example as you reach full highway speeds of 55 or 65 mph in your hybrid, you're also recharging your batteries. Then when you get into start and stop city driving, you switch over to the electric motor and you run off the batteries, or the batteries and the electric motor assist the gasoline engine. So you get very improved fuel economy with that kind of a combination of a hybrid.
How affordable are hybrid cars?
Hybrids are actually very affordable. Recent studies show that although the initial purchase price of a hybrid car might be a little bit more, 5% or 10% more expensive, you quickly earn that back in as little as three years by savings on fuel efficiency and maintenance with your hybrid car.
