[pmwhite]

That was my conclusion, too. The personal economics and the carbon footprint correlate surprisingly strongly. The CO2 costs of hybrids look attractive on a 5-6 year timescale, but it gets bad when the environmental costs of a new set of batteries get factored in. People underestimate the various costs of the vehicle itself, and how they look over a longer haul.

I just threw in the towel on my 20 year old vehicle for a new small gasoline engine car. I figure my odds of getting >12 years out of this vehicle are quite high.

Maybe the picture will be very different in 10 years, with improvements to battery technology. But today I stayed away from the hybrids and electric vehicles, for both fiscal and environmental reasons.