I just bought the Lexus hybrid.  It is advertised as 43/40 mpg.  But I have gotten 46 every time.  (I am happy with that – and it cost less than a prius)

You can’t make it “revenue neutral” in the real world. All it becomes is more deficit, which becomes more debt, which becomes more inflation, which is a tax on absolutely everyone and historically is something that has toppled grander civilizations than ours. It’s safer for the government to stop tinkering and let the people solve their own damn problems.

People, when left to their own devices, aren’t stupid. Politicians need to stop coddling us for votes.

I have a Honda Insight, and the sticker says 40.  I get 50.

I suppose it depends on your sense of personal responsibility being overridden by vanity.

Total cost of ownership today for hybrids is still too high, compared to non-hybrid vehicles. It’s definitely a great idea (in theory), but not cost-effective yet.

A new hybrid costs about 10-15% higher than the same comparable non-hybrid car — which means a Prius has a $3500 premium. So buying one, you’re already in the negative. You have to drive thousands of miles to try to break even. This comes out to around 150,000 miles of total use ($3500 / $4/gallon = 875 gallons; each gallon goes 10-12 miles further, which means you have to drive 10000 miles to “get back” your $3500). For most drivers, this will take from 6-months to 1-year. That many miles of driving is required just to get back the premium you paid.

On top of this, the battery has a fixed life, around 7-10 years (depends on your driving style, temperature where you mostly drive, etc). You must replace it then — again for around $3000-5000.

The previous poster said you can get a “salvaged” battery (from a junked/totaled Prius). But that’s very risky. Any Prius that’s been totaled was involved in a major accident, meaning there’s no way to know if that battery was damaged or not. Such suspect batteries will be a fire risk — who wants to drive in a potential fire-risk car? Not to mention, such a battery won’t come with any warranty, and might even affect your insurance costs (some insurance companies prohibit you from doing this).

So at the end, it costs much more to drive a hybrid, with little gain. Not mentioning you’re always driving in a small car (sub-compact or smaller), which means in an accident there’s less vehicle-mass to protect you and your family.

Overall, hybrids don’t yet live up to their potential. That’s why hybrid-owners are rarely repeat owners — they know these realities.

All taxes create incentives for particular behaviors. No reason why we can’t take advantage of that to get a double benefit.

That’s the single biggest reason my Dad traded his in for a Rav4 and why my sister is planning to do the same.

The irony of what you’re suggesting is that the people that would buy these vehicles are the ones that actually pay the taxes you’d have to increase to pay for those subsidies. That is, those in the middle class* that can afford to pay a little more to save a little gas in the long run, but aren’t wealthy enough to not care.

*which pretty much includes everyone with a forward-thinking brain that is neither on food stamps nor flying around in learjets

The battery is essentially a part of the Prius electric transmission.  When a 10-year-old car’s transmission dies, do you spend $3000 to put in a brand-new transmission?  Heck no.  You buy a rebuilt transmission for cheap. Same with the Prius–  You buy a salvaged battery for $600 that will give your 10+ year-old Prius another half-dozen years of good service.

I’m getting about 50% better gas mileage than I’m used to getting in smaller cars. That’s good enough for me.

BTW, you don’t have to plug in a hybrid. I don’t think you can buy a plug-in hybrid at a dealership yet (unless you count the Volt).

We could fix this with tax incentives (e.g. vehicle registration cost and excise taxes based on fuel efficiency) if we actually cared about the amount of imported fuel, etc.