Hybrid cars are "over rated" in that their gas mileage is not nearly as high as the EPA ratings indicate. The fact is, they are simply very good at the CAFE rating system (course run on a dyno I believe).
It is difficult to determine just how overall efficient they are, whether their increased mileage makes up for the increased upfront cost and the cost of battery disposal, etc.
The energy equations will need to be balanced all the same whether hydrocarbon fuel is used or electric power. Just because you have moved the cost around a little, doesn't mean that it's not there.
There is no such thing as a free lunch, especially when it comes to the conservation of energy.
This is a concern for electric cars, and much less so for hybrids. Hybrids don't have a lot of battery. All they do is have generators for brakes which takes breaking energy and stores it so the next time you accelerate, this energy is put back into motion.
A guy I know got a hybrid and was bragging to me about his mileage, which was about 37. I looked at the hybrids, and figured out that with the cost differential, I could buy a standard Honda Civic, and would have to drive about 250,000 miles to cover the cost differential in mileage between the standard and hybrid with increased fuel economy at the rated mileage. In actuality, many people get within a mile to a gallon with the standard what they get with the hybrid. This was if I didn't have to replace the massive batteries, and according to most people I talked to, they had a life span of about five years, and they still don't have a working disposal model that makes economic and ecological sense for them. Of course, you CAN be just like Robin Williams, and have one in the garage alongside your fifty other cars and drive it when you want to be ecologically correct.
Or, you can be like Barbra Striesand, who has her driver take a Winnebago shopping, so she can use her private bathroom, instead of having to hang out with the hoi polloi.
Hybrids were built to the EPA test. One of the conditions of the EPA test is that the car starts with a fully charged battery. In a normal car, that means little, because the battery does not provide any of the motive power. However, with a Hybrid, it means the motor only has to run under hard acceleration for the duration of the city driving test, but the test is over before the engine needs to be run to recharge the battery.
Think of it this way, if you took a souped up golf cart to be tested by the EPA, you could plug it into the wall overnight to charge fully. Then you could run the whole city driving test without having to rely on anything other than stored battery power. The result of the test would be that the car gets an infinite number of miles per gallon in the city! Well, I'd buy that for a dollar!
In normal day-to-day operation, the engine has to be run to recharge the battery every time energy is taken out. And, of course, to overcome internal resistance, twice as much energy be put in as is taken out. This is an inherent inefficiency of hybrids that is overcome by the application of state of the art technology and the fact that competing vehicles are nowhere near as efficient as they could be. But nobody gets even close to the advertised milage in the city.
I get 48mpg on my commute (75mph on the GSP).
I think that's pretty good. It's rated at 51, so yeah, getting 48 may make it overrated. But not by much. What do you get?
True, that's a dirty little secret that does not get publicised very much.
I'd like to take a little diesel-powered "economy box" and run it alongside of one of these snooty hybrids for that 150 mile stretch of flat, straight road in the middle of Oregon, against about a 40 mile-per-hour headwind. We would see who got the best mileage and I guaran(bleepin')tee ya that it won't be the hybrid that wins.
That's because hybrids only get better CITY mileaage. Anything other than sitting at a stoplight requires the gas engine to be running. Accessories like the air conditioner are belt-driven be the gasoline engine.
It was the Golf diesel, and it got 55 mpg on the highway, around 40 in the city.
"Hybrid cars are "over rated" in that their gas mileage is not nearly as high as the EPA ratings indicate."
This is not completely untrue, however, getting the mileage shown in specs is possible, but it requires modifying the normal brainless driving habits shown by those in regular cars, including me when I drive my Avalon. You have to build actual DRIVING SKILL.
When I drive my Hybrid, I'm shown constant feedback on how my skills impact on efficiency. Soon it gets to be fun pushing that average mileage meter up. My wife and I challenge each other to return the vehicle with a higher average mileage figure than when we took it.
Don't laugh; I really like it. I've said goodbye to all those d*mn speeding tickets ("municipal donations") I was getting too. Pay less gas tax: DRIVE A HYBRID!
My husbamd's Toyota Tercel get 45mph on the freeway. Why would I want to pay so much for a hybrid?