Would you buy a hybrid car?

I drive a SEAT Arosa 1.4 PD TDI. This VAG engine in this car is in my opinion one of the best engines available in terms of performance, reliability and economy! It is far better than the Prius as its a lot cheaper and better than any TDI with a DPF as non DPF guise can be run on 100% bio diesel with no problems whatso ever! I run B100 and have done for the last 70k miles, I get it at 30p per litre cheaper than pump prices. I do 720 miles of commuting per week and am getting over 65 MPG.

Unfortunately due to the Arosa out selling the VW Lupo, VW have replaced with a sub standard model called the Fox which is made in Brazil for cheap labour and have only offered it with 2 different petrol engines here in the UK and have subsequently dropped the axe on SEAT preventing them from manufacturing the Arosa as a competitor to the Fox in 2005, SEAT currently has no replacement for its class!

If you want a cheap to run economical, green car get an Arosa TDI and run it on Biodiesel. If you can find one!

Hello.
I run a VAUXHALL ZAFIRA 1.9CDTI

As stated by others i return around 56 MPG on average then i went up to 59 MPG as an average and i did this with bits that i found at work.
I made 3 hydrogen fuel cells as they are very simple to make and only pull 2 amps and the hydrogen is taken down the air filter and gives my car a cleaner exhaust and far better economy.
You can make your own fuel cell from stainless steel tubes or a plastic bottle and some stainless steel wire .
MY car is now one year old and i change the water in the fuel cells once a week so its free and easy to do.
This weekend i will be fitting 3 fuel sells to my wifes car and they are very safe but you need to ensure you wire things to a standard that is required......use water/salt and 2 amps thats it....try it...google it

i have 6 hybrid cars

I rent many cars because I travel to many places. The Toyota Hybrid is not a good car. I've rented several of them. They feel like a wheel barrow on the hi-way. A truck goes by and you can feel every fender and bumper air cushion that truck sends your way. My 1996 Saturn gets one mile per gallon better fuel economy than the Toyota Hybrid and I paid $17,000 less than all you Toyota hybrid buyers. My old Saturn will out run the Toyota too. I wish someone would come up with a diesel hybrid. Four cylinder auto diesels get 53 miles per gallon on average already. Couple that up to a generator and electric drives (screw the batteries - thats a hoax) and your looking at a car that will achieve higher than 100 miles per gallon. We have had hybrids since the 1950's and no one knows it. Its called a locamotive, as in trains going down the rail road track.

Our company has reaseached out a hybrid car, and it sells very good in China. But, we do not acknowledged the policy of other countries, it can works 120KM with a charge. Alao, the pirce is only $6000. It sells hot in China.

I can't speak for people in the US but here in Europe if you drove a hybrid you would be laughed of the road. To be honest i've never even seen a prius on the road over here.

What all you diesel addicts fail to realize is that diesels are at
the end of there development curve. Where as the Prius and cars like it are at
the beginning.
Car makers do not want electric cars because they will not be able to sell all those
spare parts that you need for dirty smelly diesel engines.
Roll on the electric car freedom from oil.
Have a look at who killed the electric car and get the truth.
The car makers have killed the electric car twice in the last hundred years
do not let them do it again.

Totally agree with the stopgap comments, these vehicles are a tiny sidestep in almost the right direction but untill we get our national energy strategy sorted out then people will continue to polute. The french generate 80% of there electricity through Nuclear power and earn 3 BILLION euros by exporting it. If we had an all electric infrastructure we could pave the way for all electric vehicles as well as city trams and high speed MAGLEV trains to replace our 150 year old networks. It would be the next golden age for British engineering and a giant leap to a sustainable cleaner future. And for anyone whose thinking that Nuclear is BAD, i suggest you start to research the subject, you will be very surprised !!

IT MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE AT ALL TO PURCHASE A HYBRID CAR. YOU HAVE TO BE COMPLETELY BRAIN DEAD TO FALL FOR THAT SALES PITCH. TWO WORDS... MARKETING TOOL. IF YOU ARE DUMB ENOUGH TO PURCHASE ONE OF THESE CARS THEN YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO BASIC MATH. THE AMOUNT OF MONEY IT COST YOU TO BUY ONE OF THESE TURDS COMPARED TO THE PRICE OF GAS IS A NO BRAINER. DUHH. WAKE UP IDIOTS

Whilst owning hybrid vehicles it certainly can help with the reduction of emissions and burning fuels but what does 'get my goat' is the government and the green parties never seem to take into account the full cost of the production cycle (ie cradle to grave) instead of people purchasing second hand vehicles that still meet emission standards and being taxed heavily for saving the initial development/build costs (like steel and glass production which use ore and alot of fuel to melt the products)

I certainly wouldnot buy a hybrid vehicle for the main reason that they offer poor value for money in economy returned.

My main transport is running on almost 100% Bio Diesel with a few litres of Shell V Power Diesel for good measure and on a long journey from North Wales to Fishguard in West Wales to vist friends it returned a most impressive 87mpg.
I was certainly not driving like a snail but kept to the speedlimits all the way.

The only hybrid that could match those figures is nolonger in production being the Honda Insight.

My transport is a Caldera Black Citroen C1 1.4HDi diesel and is amongst the cleanest diesels on the market.Most people run their vehicles on normal fuel but i feel im doing that little bit extra for the environment in using Bio Diesel.

It only costs 96p a litre so its even cheaper than dirty old petrol.

Now if Toyota had developed their Prius originally with their super efficient diesels combined with all that electrical gadgetry then maybe they would be a far more realistic proposition but they are still a rare sight the simple reason in that they are too expensive and return only average fuel economy.

hybridcars are homersexual

Well my diesel megane convertible gives me 50.9 mpg in town and 62.4 mpg on the motorway. Meaning 600 miles per tank in town and 710 miles on the motorway. As soon as a hybrid can beat this I will consider until then I will stick to a diesel.

I have driven a Prius as a business car since June 05 and have covered 120,000 miles at an average of around 51.5 mpg. I have no choice with the mileage but the car has been faultless. I drive at high average speeds and it has been the best vehicle I have used.
It was not expensive compared to the similar band vehicles - similar in price to a Golf GTD. It has a large cabin (why do you need larger with just 2 children for God's sake) and the boot space is adequate if not the largest in the class.
There is no other vehicle on the market that produces lower emissions - take a serious look at what VW offer with their 'Blue Motion' Polo.
The business car tax banding of course stops at 140g/km which means that most average diesel cars are only just above it - this means that the tax advantage for the business motorist is negilgible - so much for politicians' green credntials .
I previously drove a Volvo LPG conversion and, besides the loss of boot space the consumption was pathetic -22mpg.

I don't give a stuff about the environment, everything dies in the end including our precious earth nothing we can do to stop it.
The name of this site is petrolprices.com I want to see people ranting and raving about the obscene amount of tax our uk government puts on petrol.
That is what I am here for.
I am buying a Prius to save my money on fuel, nothing else.
Bring on the protesters, the blockades etc, we are not happy, and as a result
I'm voting conservative simply for the reason that this labour gov has done nothing to protect us from high fuel prices.

Can someone comment on the Lexus hybrids please?
I would buy the Prius if it is was larger, I have two kids and need a larger car.
It seems all hybrids are expensive but my consience tells me to at least look at this option.
Cheers

For all the people who are going on about diesels and there dirty particulates, well I have some news for you. Petrol engines produce particulates to and they are much smaller and more carsonagenic than diesel particulates. And the bloke claiming 90+mpg out of his LPG Prius how is that possible when LPG is less efficent than gasoline??

Like someone else has stated previously this green issue is another tax stick for the government to beat us with and the majority of people have swallowed it hook line and sinker.

People are feeling quite passionate about this but its all down to personal usage for these cars. I live and drive into London and until last year drove a Touareg V6 TDI which I sold as it didn't make sense and I was getting fed up with people giving you the 'youre personally reasonable for killing the planet driving that car' stare and bought a Mercedes B Class Diesel. They said it would do just under 40mpg against the Touareg V6 TDI's actual 19-21mpg. The reality is the B Class does 27 mpg, its boring to drive, a ridiculous turning circle so you find yourself doing three point turns all the time and noisy.

A friend at the office bought a Toyota Prius (after trying a gas driven Smart car which was useless as his family had to travel independently on a day). I swore I would never buy one as I dislike Japanese cars and the Prius is pretty ugly as well.

He is now getting over 50mpg and is saving about £2,500 a year through no congestion charge, cheaper insurance, reduced road tax and less petrol). I had a test drive of a Prius at the weekend and I now feel like a fool, as the Mercedes has depreciated by £10k in six months and the Prius was as fast, no noisier on the motorway, stealth like around town and comes with some great gadgets. I'm having leather seats fitted as there is to much nasty grey plastic and material in the car, but get beyond that and I've never has so much fun... I would still rather have the Touareg but what car saves you money!

Just a few comments today (28/09/07) on some of the things I've read here. I've been driving over 40 years and have owned about eighty cars of all kinds plus some vans, doing much of my own servicing. I've been driving mostly diesels for the past 25 years or so.
Firstly, fuel consumption and how to calculate it. The ONLY way to do it is use the full-tank-to-full tank method, noting at the same time the mileage covered. This method cannot be inaccurate by definition. Divide litres by 4.55 to get gallons. Fuel comsumption computers are often wildly inaccurate, even the very latest aren't partic. good. It is sobering to say the least to find out just what your petrol 4 by 4 consumes in heavy stop-start traffic. Like 9mpg for a Range-Rover.
Secondly, the driver can have more influence on his/her consumption of fuel than most realize; it comes down to saving the kinetic energy of the vehicle by driving in such a way as to not need to use the brakes. Also not having the engine running when stationary is a big saver. Makers are now designing vehicles without the conventional starter motor, but with a combined alternator/starter INSIDE the engine's flywheel which starts the engine in .3 of a second. There is no starter pinion/ring-gear.
Thirdly, the dead-weight of the vehicle is crucial to fuel consumption. Much background work is going on to make the use of carbon-fibre and composites of this material as cheap and as easily formed as soft steel. Halve the weight, you also almost halve the fuel consumption. Todays small car weighs about a ton. This is too much just to carry a 12 stone man around, even if you include his family.
The fuel LPG (all propane in Britain) has much less carbon dioxide emission than petrol because the hydocarbon molecule in propane is structured differently, with less carbon and more hydrogen than petrol, which unlike propane is not a single fuel, but a mix. LPG is very clean-burn, leaving no soot in the engine oil, and it has no atomization issues. It really needs a slightly different engine design (with a 12:1 compression ratio mainly) to get the best out of it. The biggest problem is where to put a decent sized tank!
Peugeot-Ciroen have already designed and built a dieselectric hybrid car which is nudging the 100mpg. mark, in a Partner. Problem now is bringing the price down to a competitive level. It has a 23Kw. lithium-ion battery which is where I suspect the cost problem is rooted. Cheers.

If you are after ultimate economy then its a diesel supermini all the way,i own a C1 diesel in black with stylish Aygo Sport Alloys.

Purchased new from a local maindealer in June for a very realistic £7,495 on the road with a very genourous £1300 cash back I undertook a 186.4 miles journey to see friends in South Wales with a tight new engine.

I had brimmed the small 7.3 gallon tank until the diesel ran out with nowhere else to go (ie a totally full tank) and on arrival at my friends home just outside Cardiff i refilled the tank to overflowing once again.

THIS COST ME (WAIT FOR IT) £9.34 which with calculations from litres to gallons resulted in 91.4mpg.

Now i am not claiming my car did over 90mpg but it certainly exceeded the claimed 83mpg on the combined run by Citroen.

Now £7,495 will not buy you half a Toyota Prius,and granted the Citroens boot is small but if its basic A to B driving with a funky interior and FREE entry into London compliments of Red Ken then any Diesel citycar will suit the bill and imagine what sort of holiday you could have with the £8000 you saved from not buying a rather expensive Toyota Prius.

This was an interesting (but old) thread and I had to respond given that I run a small semi-automatic diesel that has returned 82.5 MPG on a run (but still has climate/auto lights & wipers, satnav and a chilled glovebox). In it's 30k miles it's averaged 57.8 MPG. I leave early and return late wherever possible which means a quicker journey for me and less impact on the environment.

I also have a 4l V8 Jaguar that before conversion to LPG returned 34 MPG on a run and after conversion it manages 350 miles on a tank which costs me £23 to fill up. When converting the cost of gas to petrol it manages 57MPG
and around town 51MPG. Did you know that LPG burns cleaner and has one tenth the particulates of an average diesel car?

No real need for hybrid cars in my opinion if your really interested in your carbon footprint don't go on more than 1 x foreign holiday a year by air, ensure all of your lights are energy saving, insulate your loft, only have your hot water on or an hour a day (2 x 30 mins morning and evening should be fine or else there's something wrong with your boiler/tank) recycle, have a compost bin and a water butt. I do & I'm sure all the stars that drive hybrids too :O)

Mark

Hello ya web is great gud 4 u dude lol lv me n steoh u are great xxxxxxxxxxx

helllllllllo ya web is great lv me lotz xxxxxxxxxxxxx

My new Honda Civic IMA is well built, pleasant to drive in & around town but has drawbacks. Petrol consumption is nowhere near the 60mpg quoted. If the vehicle is typical, then 40 -50 mpg would be more accurate provided the accelerator is treated cautiously. Honda has designed a futuristic car but are still behind the times. Has nobody there heard that radio aerials are an unnecessary appendage? There are other irritations. I can live without optional extras such as sat nav or a sun roof. However, the absence of any means of opening the boot lid other than by having to insert the key into the lock is surprising. There is a release catch inside the car. Not helpful to drivers struggling with shopping & needing direct access into the boot.

I think that more people shud be buying hybrid cars b/c I say so.

I like the sound of the hybrid car apart from the cost. I still dont really understand how they work and want to know - are they man enough to pull a caravan etc.? What makes and models are available? Would the 4X4 hybrid still be R.F.L. free and if so for how long, before the government start charging for that??

I have a 5 year old mondeo,which is in F band of the co2 group,I cant think I am alone.Why is it that there is only the last group left which is the magic number group for the so called 4x4,when I wonder that there is going to be a larger number of my age cars around.I have thought of going to the hybred but looking at prices,I cant see the point for the milafe I do,a diesl would give me a better option,was not that long ago the govt were trying to get people to use diesel,even tho I note comments here that battery life is 8 or ten years,who wants to have to keep going out to buy another car,not alone that by that age your car is going to be scrap as no one would be willing to buy if the battery is near its end of life.I for one will not rush in to buy a toy car.

If safety is important as well as emmissions and cost of fuel there are not many alternatives apart from the Toyota Hybrids. Start with insisting on a 5* NCAP safety rating, space, insist on multiple front rear and side air bags, a quality SAT NAV, a quality stereo and legendary reliability - you're left with only one car. The Toyota Prius.

On the other hand if its just about money, a cheap economical diesal or a super mini will do fine. Go figure.

yes i do have a Lexus hybrid rh400 i think hybrid is a good car for petrol saving and noise reduction and a luxury driving but i think the price still to high for all 4x4 luxury car and i think the government should pay us back like USA for all hybrid owner some special discount but at the moment my next p/e will be any new 4x4 hybrid car i was toll by the dealer we will get some special refund from the government we never recived nothing

I looked at the Toyota Prius Hybrid. The problem is that it almost £10,000 more than the equivilent diesel corolla with very little difference in fuel economy. The only reason to buy a hybrid would be if you needed to drive into London on a daily basis as the hybid would save you £8 p.d congestion charge. I live in the countryside so this is not really an isssue for me. I also feel that if the government was really serious about the environmetal impact of motor vehicles, it would abolish Vat on all hybrid, electric or non polluting vehicles forthwith.

Simple things for the Government to do for hybrid purchases -

No Road Fund licence.
Reduce VAT to 5% on purchase.
Give buyers a discount card for fuel - 10% off every litre of petrol/diesel when refuelling a hybrid.
Introduce free parking in all carparks/streets for hybrids.
Bring in congestion charges in all cities and towns - hybrids will be exempt of course.
Turn current mph speed limits into kph - already being talked about.

Will it happen ?

When it does - I will be buying a hybrid.

I drive Toyota Prius T4 and i love it. Driving is so smooth in 60-65 MPH. My milege is between 50-60 mpg. The equipments are very cool with touch screen/8 CD changer. I have leather interior to get the best in this car as the normal seats can be bit tough while u drive. Even if i change my car in 5 years, certainly this would be a hybrid.

Gareth...you said:

<i>My neighbour's Prius emits fumes across my back garden when no-one is in the car.</i>

Why is this? Is your neighbour a forgetful sort; you know, starting the car and then wandering off to walk the dog?

Meanwhile, back to your economically hard-hitting C3. Great mpg, and better than a hybrid. Thing is, the Prius might be getting less mpg, but it produces less CO2 than your diesel Citroen. No, don’t bother arguing this one - check the stats. And there's the rub - the Prius really is better for the planet. When’s the last time you regularly switched off your C3 every time you plodded to a halt at the traffic lights, hmm? Bet you just sit there wasting fuel and emitting. To be fair to all you confused anti-hybridists who are confused by the Prius and it’s ilk – Toyota got it wrong when they promoted fuel consumption as the USP for their Prius. What they should have been extolling were the urban zero emissions of this superb little car. You know, no nasties pumped out when in a built up area. Sure, that little fact won’t save the plane t directly, but imagine if every car in the urban area pumped out nothing more than a soft electrical whine…people would start to consider how wonderful life could be in a city – no noise, no fumes. Next step, popular pressure extends this philosophy further afield.

So – how many diesel drivers (and, before you slag me – I’m one as well) or non-hybrid petrol or LPG types switch off when they’re stopped? Not many, I suspect.

Or am I missing the point, Child?

And if I am, then God help us all.

i love my iPod