What a ripoff to we taxpayers who pay extra taxes so tax giveaways are given to rich people who buy expensive hybrids that actually guzzle more gasoline than regular cars you and I are destined to purchase! Write your Congressperson today and tell her/him just how you feel about getting the shaft without the benefit of K-Y Jelly. If a hybrid doesn't get at least
15% better gas economy, than it does with its battery removed, tax it double for extra damage it does to the economy and Nation by using a lot of contaminating elements in it's battery pak.
New hybrid cars guzzle gas in quest for performance
>Unlike earlier models, they don't save fuel
>
>Matthew L. Wald
>New York Times
>Jul. 17, 2005 12:00 AM
>
>WASHINGTON - Mark Buford is happy with the Honda Accord hybrid that he
>bought six months ago, and he has already driven it 13,000 miles. He was
>determined to buy a hybrid electric car, he said, and this one is clean,
>"green" and accelerates faster than the non-hybrid version. He just cannot
>count on it to save much gasoline.
>
>Many people concerned with oil consumption, including President Bush and
>members of Congress, are pointing to hybrids - vehicles with electric
>motors as well as internal combustion engines - as a way to reduce fuel
>use and dependence on imported oil. The first ones to reach the market did
>that; the two-seat Honda Insight, introduced in December 1999, was rated
>at 70 miles per gallon, and it was followed by the five-seat Toyota Prius,
>also built for reduced fuel consumption. Those cars have no non-hybrid
>equivalents. Then came the Civic hybrid, designed to perform almost as
>well as the original, only using a lot less gasoline.
>
>But the pendulum has swung. The 2005 Honda Accord hybrid gets about the
>same miles per gallon as the basic four-cylinder model, according to a
>review by Consumer Reports, a car-buyer's guide, and it saves only about 2
>mpg compared with the V-6 model on which it is based. Thanks to the hybrid
>technology, though, it accelerates better.
>
>Hybrid technology, it seems, is being used in much the same way as earlier
>under-the-hood innovations that increased gasoline efficiency: to satisfy
>the American appetite for acceleration and bulk.
>
>Despite the use of hybrids to achieve better performance with about the
>same fuel economy, consumers who buy the cars continue to get a tax credit
>that the Internal Revenue Service allows under a "clean fuels" program
>that does not take fuel savings into account.
>
>And the image of hybrids as fuel-stingy workhorses persists. In a June 15
>speech at an energy forum, Bush proposed a tax credit of up to $4,000 to
>"encourage people to make right choices in the marketplace that will make
>us less dependent on foreign sources of oil and to help improve our >environment."
>
>But some hybrids save hardly any fuel, energy efficiency advocates say.
>"The new ones are all being used for power," said Kateri Callahan, the
>president of the Alliance to Save Energy, a non-profit advocacy group >based here.
>
>Hybrids should be encouraged, Callahan said, because their electric
>components some day could be useful in an all-electric car, perhaps
>running on a fuel cell. But she added that the government should be
>careful about which hybrids it subsidizes through tax benefits. Now, she
>said, the car companies are "building to the high-end market. They think
>people want performance."
>
>The companies may have sized up their customers pretty well. Buford, for
>example, bought his Accord hybrid in January, a month after the model came
>out, replacing a 2001 Accord coupe.
>
>Buford, a telecommunications analyst at Kraft Foods who works in the
>Chicago area, said he decided on a hybrid because he wanted to "go green,"
>although he added, "I wasn't willing to make any of the trade-offs
>normally associated with a hybrid." He said he liked the way that the
>electric motor on his new car kicked in early during acceleration, at a
>speed range in which the V-6 gasoline engine is relatively weak. And its
>emissions of smog-forming pollutants are low, he said. (The Environmental
>Protection Agency puts the hybrid and non-hybrid Accords in the same
>emissions category.)
>
>If sold at list price, the hybrid costs about $3,300 more than the V-6
>with no hybrid. Buford said he was not sure if the gas savings would ever
>pay for the difference. But in that price range - about $30,000 - many
>buyers are not looking for a car that is the cheapest to buy or to operate. >
>Honda spokesman Andrew Boyd said the company already had hybrids that
>minimize fuel use, notably the Insight, for customers whose top priority
>was to save gasoline, and the Civic for customers who wanted a car that
>performs the same but uses less fuel. Performance in the Civic hybrid is
>slightly lower than the original model, Boyd said, and as a result it gets
>36 mpg instead of 29. Boyd said the Accord split the benefit between fuel
>economy and performance.
>
>