More and more people are turning to hybrid cars in an effort to save their yearly expenditure on gas. Almost everyone is aware of the fact that hybrid cars consume lesser gas and this is the most important reason for the growing popularity of hybrid cars during a decade where gas prices have been going nowhere but up. While the money that you get to save on gas by buying a hybrid is definitely one important reason that should make you go for a hybrid car, there are many other advantages of buying a hybrid car, out of which we will discuss some of the most pertinent ones here:

Hybrid Cars Are Environment Friendly: Hybrid cars use the combination of a gasoline engine and an electric motor for the generation of power. Unlike other sources of electrical energy, the electric battery in a hybrid car gets charged without burning any kind of fossil fuel. The NiMH battery used in hybrid cars gets charged by the energy that is generally lost as heat and noise in a normal car while braking and decelerating. Since at least one source of power used in a hybrid car is absolutely clean, these cars are extremely environment friendly and produce considerably lower emissions than that produced by regular cars.

You Save Tax On Hybrid Cars: When you buy a hybrid car, then you become eligible for a tax saving of $2000-$7000 depending upon the price of your car. Apart from this tax rebate offered by the federal government, you may also become eligible for a state applicable tax break by buying a hybrid car. These tax breaks balance the higher price that you pay for a hybrid car vis-à-vis a regular gasoline run model.

Today’s Hybrids Deliver Better Performance Than Their Gas Only Versions: Gone are the days when we used to think that gasoline cars always gave a better performance than hybrid ones. Hybrid car manufacturers have come up with models that deliver a better performance than their gas only versions. Examples in case are some of the latest Lexus and Honda hybrids whose gas engine power is supplemented by the electric motor in order to deliver better power and performance than their non-hybrid counterparts.

You Become Applicable For Other Local Perks: Since the government is trying to promote hybrid cars because of their low emission rates, people who own hybrid cars are being offered a number of different incentives in different states and towns like free parking at certain places or HOV access for hybrid owners etcetera.

You Can Hyper-Mile With Hybrid Cars: Hybrid cars generally give a much higher gas mileage than their gas only counterparts. As a result, you easily end up saving at least twenty to forty per cent on your regular gas bills. On the other hand, hybrid support groups have come up with techniques that let you get mileages that even surpass a hybrid car’s EPA ratings. You can apply a few simple changes to your driving patterns to exceed your car’s manufacturer mileage and save even more with your hybrid car.

Hybrid cars are gaining in popularity as people become more and more conscious about the adverse effects of driving cars that run on fossil fuels. The continuously rising costs of gasoline have also led to the generation of an ample amount of interest in these fuel saving cars and vehicles. Like almost everything in life, hybrid cars also come with their own advantages ad disadvantages.
Some of the most common advantages of hybrid cars are:
· Hybrid cars are really environment friendly, especially when compared with gas guzzling normal vehicles. Some hybrid car manufacturers claim that their cars produce eighty per cent lesser emissions than gas engine vehicles. Therefore, using hybrid cars is a great way of doing your own bit for the environment.
· Almost all hybrid cars come with eight year warranties as compared to conventional cars which generally have warranties ranging from three to five years only.
· Hybrid cars are much cheaper to run than conventional gas engine cars. Since hybrid cars use both battery power as well as the gas engine for running the vehicle, the gas engine needs to run less and therefore consumes less fuel. As a result, most hybrid cars give you fuel economies that are at least 15%-30% higher than conventional vehicles. Hybrid cars can save you a lot of money especially if you are into stop and go city driving.
· When you buy a hybrid car in the United States, you become eligible for tax deductions on your car purchase. As a result, you may end up saving at least $2000-$7000 as tax deduction for “Clean Fuel Property” when you are buying your new hybrid car.
· In many states, you are also allowed certain other perks like free parking or HOV lane driving as a single occupant when you own a hybrid car.
At the same time, there are certain disadvantages involved with owning hybrid vehicles:
· The most prominent disadvantage that you face when buying a hybrid car is that a hybrid generally costs several thousand more than its regular gas version. On the other hand, due to current high demands you might also be required to pay a certain premium way above the sticker price for buying a hybrid.
· A hybrid gives almost the same mileage as a regular gas vehicle when you drive on highways. This is because the battery cuts in only at low speeds and while stopping and decelerating, something that does not need to happen much during highway driving.
· It generally takes years of regular driving to balance the additional cost of buying a hybrid vehicle by saving on fuel. However, you can actually save a lot of you have a transport or taxi business or if your cars have more than average mileage per year.

Even though hybrid cars are growing in popularity as more and more people turn to them in order to save on their gasoline cost and prevent the environment from pollution, there are still a huge cart load of myths that seem to follow hybrid cars wherever they go. Over here, we plan to disillusion a lot of people who seem to carry around more fiction than fact when it comes to hybrid vehicles.

Fiction: You have to plug in your hybrid car in order to charge the battery.
Fact: Hybrid cars never need to be plugged into an external source of power to be charged. This is because hybrid car batteries get charged by the power that is generally lost as heat when a vehicle brakes or decelerates through a process known as regenerative braking. So unlike an electric car, you will never need to charge your hybrid car by plugging it in.

Fiction: Hybrid car batteries are very costly to replace and last a max of two years.
Fact: In the first place, hybrid car batteries nowadays are guaranteed to last for at least eight years and generally do so without any problems. In case you face battery problems during the warranty period, then your manufacturer will repair or replace it free of cost. On the other hand, even if your battery misbehaves after the warranty period is over, then you can easily replace only the malfunctioning modules (and pay somewhere around $60 per module) instead of replacing the whole battery pack.

Fiction: You can drive your car on the electric motor whenever you run out of gas.
Fact: Well…not exactly! If your battery gets discharged or your electric motor stops working, then you can easily go on driving your hybrid vehicle as a normal vehicle using only the gas engine. However, the same thing does not apply to a situation where your gas engine gives up. This is because the electric motor is designed to work in conjunction with the gas engine, where it keeps getting charged continuously during the process of driving and braking. The electric motor works on its own only for very short periods of time, so it is almost impossible to keep driving around with only your NiMH battery for power. Even if you do manage to drive on electric power for some time, you will be harming your battery for life.

Fiction: Hybrid cars give you a fuel economy of more than sixty miles per gallon.
Fact: Not our hybrid cars. No. the maximum increase in fuel economies that most hybrid car manufacturers promise you is 30%-40%. As such, most of the hybrids being sold today give you fuel economies of thirty to fifty miles per gallon, provided you drive them as per instructions, which you might not be able to do in most cases. Generally, a hybrid will save you a max of 15%-20% fuel in real life with real driving conditions. Your fuel economy with a hybrid will be greatly influenced by driving conditions and you will get higher mileage while city driving than what you would get while driving on the highway.

As fuel prices continue following a non-stop upward trend, a large number of people are looking at buying hybrid cars in order to save on gasoline money. Hybrid cars are also getting popular with environment friendly groups because of the extremely low amounts of emission that they produce. If you are also in the market for buying a hybrid car or are planning to buy one soon, then it is important that you first understand how hybrids work and how much you will save on gas when you use one.

When it comes to defining hybrid vehicles, then we can easily say that any car or vehicle that uses more than one source of power is a hybrid. Almost all the hybrids available in the market work with a combination of gas and electricity, both of which are used to provide power for running the vehicle. In spite of the fact that almost all hybrid manufacturers are offering gas-electric hybrids, you can expect diesel-electric hybrids in the market very soon. Some people are also using do-it-yourself kits to convert their cars into gas-water hybrids, where hydro-energy is used as an alternate source of power. However, since most of us only manage to come across or plan to buy gasoline-electric hybrids, these are what we will discuss here.

Hybrids work on the principle of the seamless integration of 2 power sources- the gasoline run engine and an NiMH battery. Unlike electric cars, a hybrid does not run only on an electric battery and neither does the battery need to be plugged in to be charged. Batteries in hybrid cars are charged through a process called regenerative braking. What this means is that the car’s battery gets charged whenever the vehicle decelerates or brakes by using energy that is otherwise lost as heat in other vehicles.

In almost all the hybrids available in the market today, the electric battery can be charged even while it provides power to the vehicle. However, the electric battery does not provide propulsion at all times. Instead, power from the battery is used only while starting and stopping the vehicle, when speeds are low and the gas engine is shut off. The gas engine in hybrid cars automatically shuts off whenever you stop the car and starts automatically once certain speeds, generally higher than fifteen mph are reached. In many cases, power from the battery powered motor is combined with the power from the gas engine to provide propulsion at very high speeds. On the other hand, the electric motor might work independently when the vehicle is running at low speeds while the gas engine shuts off. 

Most hybrids manage to provide fuel economies that are at least fifteen to twenty per cent less than that of only gas powered vehicles. Apart from saving on fuel costs, they also greatly reduce emissions, so you actually get double benefits by buying one. It is important to consider the kind of driving that you are planning to do with a hybrid before buying one, since this would greatly influence the kind of fuel economy you get from your vehicle.  Some of the most popular hybrids in the market are Honda Insight Hybrid, Honda Accord Hybrid, Toyota Prius, Toyota Highlander, 2007 Toyota Camry hybrid, Honda Civic Hybrid and the Ford Escape Hybrid and most of them provide fuel economies ranging from 30 to 50 MPG.