Very much into the equation, other than saying that there will be an unknown new cost after about 8 years with a Prius or similar hybrid. There are some who argue that the battery technology ruins all the environmental benefit, which may or may not be true but indeed may also get solved with time.

Indeed, the best thing for the environment is a used car or electric bike or non-traditional car. The question I want to investigate however is for the new car buyer asking how to do the most with their money (and their desires) to reduce emissions.

Lots of people have answered that question with a Prius or other hybrid. More so than any other answer that has been offered the public. So it’s worth truly working out the numbers as to whether the answer is right, and by what margin, and if it’s not right, when it will be right.

I noted that we may simply want to do the environmentally wrong thing (in terms of pure dollars and emissions) to encourage the manufacturers to make better products that are the right thing. That’s speculative but perhaps worthwhile. I’ve often said myself that if California had decided to spend the 8 billion dollars it wastd on Enron during the electricity crisis on solar research or just plain demand for solar, it probably would have generated a breakthrough that finally made solar workable. Solar has other advantages (less need for a grid) that have non-financial values.

The first question however, is at what price point a hybrid is the right environmental choice? Eventually you need to factor in the cost of recycling of the battery and other special components to get a true answer, but even before that you can answer the question “At what cost, compared to putting the extra money into carbon credits, is it a break even proposition?”

If the hybrid costs the same as a similar car, it seems a good win. If it costs $6,000 more, it seems a clear loss. So where is the break-even point and can we say we have crossed it? And how does that point vary for a 10,000 mile/year urban driver compared to a person who puts 25,000 miles a year on the car?

We all want a sustainable system, though that probably requires much wished-for breakthroughs in power storge technology.