Point well made. When gas was at $4/gal, I was in the market for a used fuel-efficient car. I crunched the numbers on a Prius v. a Corolla. The Corolla was definitely the better buy. For highway driving, I get 35 mpg with my Corolla (as opposed to 50 for the Prius). Even at $4/gal, it would have taken me over a decade to recover the initial cost differential.
At one time I drove over 30,000 miles every year and a high MPG vehicle might have made sense. Now I live and work in a small town (my house is a mile from my office). I average less than 12,000 miles a year.
Last year I used a total of 600 gallons of gas to move my butt around in a nice, comfortable Suburban. I might be able to cut that down to under 300 gallons of gas if I traded my Suburban for a hybrid beer can on wheels. At current gas prices of under $3 per gallon, it would save me less than $1,000 per year in gasoline cost. If gas shoots up to $5 per gallon, it would save me $1,500 per year.
I can drive a really nice SUV for a lot less than the cost of a hybrid.