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Hybrid Car-Are They The Best Choice For You

With gas at or over $4 a gallon, and an ever increasing concern over our environment, more and more people are wondering if buying a hybrid car is worth the extra money or not. These cars are supposedly better for the environment and easier on your wallet, but are they really the best choice for you?

As with all things, there are advantages but there are also some disadvantages. Take both the pros and the cons into consideration to decide whether or not buying a hybrid makes the most sense for you and your situation. 

Some of the obvious advantages to a Hybrid Car are these:

1. They use a combination of electricity and gasoline rather than only gasoline as their main source of fuel and since electricity is less expensive they can often be much cheaper to operate. 

2. Electricity doesn't produce smog or smoke so the electric cars can be much less harmful to the environment. 

Of course, as you may imagine, there are also some very strong and obvious drawbacks to buying these types of hybrids which is why not everyone is rushing out to get one:

1. For one thing, they are more expensive than most comparable models of vehicles being sold. Not everyone can afford to buy hybrids and even if they could, in most cases it would take a lot of time to recoup the initial investment with fuel savings. 

2. Many people today prefer to buy a used car, and since hybrids are relatively new on the market, there aren't many used cars available. Some people can't afford a new car. 

3. There aren't many different models available in hybrids at this point. Some people need more room in their vehicles either because they have big families or they need to haul things for their job. For them, hybrids are just too small. 

4. Since hybrids only use electricity when they are being driven at lower, in town speeds, they really don't offer much savings for people who do a lot of their driving at highway speeds. 

Hybrids are pretty much a new technology and they offer a lot of promise to alleviate our reliance on gasoline. That will make it cheaper for people to get around and drive as well as decrease the impact on our environment. 

If most of your driving is at slow speeds, in town, than getting a hybrid may be a great option for you and may be able to save you some money. 

Of course, you won't save anything at highway speeds and you will sacrifice some space in your vehicle, and of course, you do need to consider the increased price tag. But, if those things aren't a problem for you, save yourself some money and get a new electric hybrid too. 

But, until the technology advances to the point where we can use an electric hybrid car at highway speeds, and we can produce larger hybrid vehicles such as semi trucks and SUV's, we won't really be able to do a lot to decrease our dependence on gasoline. But we are headed in the right direction.