Consider the Toyota Prius.

We bought a Toyota Prius about 2 weeks ago. It's an absolutely amazing car that has great handling, and incredible gas mileage. We got it because of my wifes commute. It really gets 51 miles to the gallon. It's very roomy, has good cargo space, and it's a hatch back so you can put your groceries in back. Plus the back seats fold down, and that offers a huge amount of space. You couldn't get a wide screen TV in there but it measures about 48" x 48 x 24" (I'm guessing and didn't actually measure) and that's really a lots of space.

To top it off, the car has a real time display of your gas mileage plus a bar graph what you got in MPG in the last 30 minutes in 5 minute increments.

With gas prices never seeming to lower, and what's happened to them since we got the Prius, I think this car is *magic*. We really are getting 51 - 53 MPG on the freeways. It's supposed to get 61 MPG in city driving but that's not where we drive.

I also commute to work and I was thinking about getting a hybird. However, I am not sure just yet what I will be getting. I really want a mercedes but I don't see that happening anytime soon...LOL...Since I cant have the mercedes I am looking at the Vue or the CRV. Hopefully they will start coming out with the hybird option soon.

I saw an ad for a Vue hybrid, I think.

Well, we bought a car tonight. It's a 30mpg Buick Regal. Not my first choice for cars, but he seems to like it, and that's what really matters.

You don't want to know about our cars. We have a 30 year old F-150 and a Kia Spectra with almost 100K miles.

We will probably get something new (well, new to us, we'll never buy a NEW car) within the next year or so. Likely a Ford Escape or other small SUV.

About the hybrids, awhile back I got curious about the price difference, so I did an analysis of how much you would save on gas, considering the current MSRP and MPG of each model, the current price of gas, and my estimated annual mileage (20K). I found that it would take 17 years to break even.

I've also heard it takes quite a while to make up price difference for a hybrid. I guess if you have the money to throw around, then it would be worth it - environmentally, and I think you can even get a tax break from buying hybrid, right?

I kinda look for the price of hybrids to start coming down as more and more are available, but they'll probably still be pretty pricey for some time.