CARS (No not the movie)

[john]

^^^ typically the older (what you call "more efficient") cars are more unreilable and therefor not a great canidate for someone who has to travel a distance. If you don't travel far, why get a hi mpg car then??? I am sure we have made plenty of better efficiency changes since the 80s (carb vs fuel injected).

Last time i looked for batteries on car-part.com, they were $300. My insight (described by slowbubblecar) has definitly been my best purchase ever. My concern initially was like all of yours, the batteries. I am over 180k on a 2000 model and no issues. Not to mention that was the first model year and the first hybrid in the US (toyota beat them to non-US market by 1 year I believe).

I bought an import, I cant say that I would trust the domestic hybrids. Honda and Toyota know what is going on as they have done this for a while.