In article t,
"BillyBob" wrote:

Or you could pay a few thousand more for an unproven hybrid and hope it will
get the purported 40 mi/gal

My wife's Prius (a 2001 model, IIRC), really does get in the low to mid
40's. Here's a guy (http://randyrathbun.org/prius/prius_mileage/) who kept
track of his gas for 3 years, and averaged 47 MPG (that's probably the
newer model, which gets better mileage than the older one my wife has).

Or you could pay a few thousand more for an unproven hybrid and hope it will
get the purported 40 mi/gal and save $750/year. That's at $3.00/gal.

I'm not sure what "a few thousand" means, but let's assume you mean $5k.
That pays for itself in about 6-1/2 years. That's not a bad ROI.