Hybrids a hoax

Insurer IAG, keen to go green, crunches the numbers to come up with a not so surprising conclusion:

The hybrids use less fuel than the average car, but they're also more expensive to build and buy. When IAG worked out the numbers, factoring in the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a hybrid vehicle, the extra cost was some 10 times greater than the value of CO2 they were saving.

So IAG New Zealand is buying highly fuel efficient diesels instead of hybrids and using some of the money saved on driver education, which has the ability to cut fuel consumption by about 10 per cent.

The Prius is for those who want to make a statement about being a friend of the environment without actually doing anything friendly for the environment.