Since I’m a geek, I’ll do the geeky thing here.
My previous car was a 2000 Toyota Camry, had I driven it to Woodbury, Minnesota from Boston (1405 miles) at 23 mile per gallon, I would have used 61.09 gallons of gas costing around $175.32 (I use premium at around $2.87 / gallon).
My current car is a 2004 Honda Civic Hybrid. It used only 34.77 gallons of gas costing me around $99.80.
Calculate that over the 24,000 miles I’ve driven since I bought this car and it’s burned only 592 gallons of gas costing around $1700 vs. the Camry’s 1,043 gallons of gas costing around $2,994.
There have been only two downsides to the hybrid. One, the maintenance is slightly more expensive.. an oil change is about $115 due to using synthetic oil – then again, they’re only every 5000 miles vs 3000 miles or so previously. Second, the trunk is six inches less deep due to the batteries being between the rear seats and the trunk wall…
Otherwise, I love the car!