It would be wonderful to have one of those cars. But it's not frugal if your present car is paid off, it still runs fine, you're about to be or have been laid off your job, and the economic collapse has taken away the $20,000 you'd stashed in savings to buy the next car. Who can afford to take on a loan now?

You'd have to own a Prius a lot of years for the gas savings to pay the interest you'd fork over for a three- to five-year loan: $2759.13 at my credit union's 4.75% rate (which CAN go as high as 18%....). At the lowest rate, your payments would be $412.65 a month. That doesn't count the 8.5% tax and insurance on a new car. Nor does it count the annual cost of registration.

The cost to register a new car in Arizona makes your eyes cross. When my ten-year-old chariot was new, I had to set aside cash every month to pay the yearly gouge; failing that, I would have had to borrow each year just to pay the registration. Because the fee is based on the value of the car, the older the car gets the less you have to pay. Another reason it's in your interest to hang onto your vehicle until it falls apart.

As the comments in the original article. The original author, Jim Wang,  does not know anything about cars, comparing a smart fortwo with a prius.  Apples to oranges.

It all depends on what assumptions you make and what cars you compare.  Lies, damn lies, and statistics.  And unfortunately, most of the public is ignorant enough about statistics to be able to understand the games that marketing agencies will try to play to win their business.

Do your homework, and look at various points of view on the web before you put too much stock in stuff like this.

Comparing a Prius to a camry is the same as comparing a fortwo and a prius. The only point on the fortwo was directly money cost. A prius should be compared with a civic when comparing apples to apples. I cannot fit three cars seats in the back of a prius but can squeeze them into a camry. I own a Town and Country AWD. So the prius cost less and gets a lot better mileage. So should I get one? I have four children. But the argument here is that the prius will save us. b.t.w. Volkwagon makes a diesel that gets better mileage than the prius. Diesel is now a cleaner choice than it used to be. But in America, we are diesel snobs for some reason.

One thing these Prius cheerleader articles never mention is the size of the car's carbon footprint in MANUFACTURING. Battery manufacture is NOT clean nor green. What? You mean little elves don't wave a magic wand and the car appears in a flash of light?

Clicked "Submit" too fast!

Jim, I don't know why we're diesel snobs. I've owned diesel trucks and never had a problem. Friends own a diesel Merc they love, and it is twelve years old. I saw the VW diesel. Good specs and performance data.

What American carmakers remember are the awful GM attempts at diesel passenger cars back in the early 80s, and there's also the old "cloud" people remember when older models started. You're right. That's in the past. I'd consider one if I hadn't bought two new cars in the past three years (2006, 2008).

Thank you, Bill in Houston, for reminding everyone that the hybrids leave a huge carbon footprint everywhere.  Where does everyone think batteries go when their car goes to hybrid heaven?

Since auto companies want you to buy their car, they'll never remind you of the other downside to owning their car - besides the obvious of not being able to afford one... even when I had a well-paying job!  

Sheri and Bill, before you get too excited about the carbon footprint (and pollution in general) in manufacturing issue, check various sources.  There is a LOT of misleading stuff about this on the web.

The nickel processing plants are a lot cleaner now than they were in the 70's when the green alarmists tend to cite pictures or statistics about them.  Also, about 95% of the Prius batteries/parts are recycled.  This should help a lot.  ALSO, companies are rapidly trying to move away from nickel-hydride to Lithium ion, which should last longer and no longer have the nickel pollution issue at all.

Recently on a peak oil site (where the doomers constantly complain about ANY attempt at a solution to our energy problems), an article was cited trying to claim that a Hummer H1 was greener than a Prius due to the manufacturing costs. (In The Recorder March 7, 2007, by Chris Demorro.)

Well, when I dug into the article, I found all kinds of problems with it.  One of the most blatant was the cost assumptions that it was going to cost 3 bucks a mile to drive a Prius for the lifetime of the car, but only 2 bucks for the Hummer.  It turns out that this article was the product of an American car marketing agency trying to make the Hummer look green.  It was completely ridiculous, and thoroughly discredited in many intelligent discussions on the web.

There's no question that hybrids are a transitional product and are FAR from perfect, and do have real economic and climate costs and concerns.  However, until the electric car (for example) iis mainstream viable economically, and proven reliable, OK for the electric grid -- if you want to actually DO something about oil consumption without driving a tiny deathtrap - hybrids appear to be the only reasonable choice.

Green "manufacturing doom" histrionics made out of context without specific justifying data don't help the issue.

Also, Jim and Almost are right on that the comparisons are ludicrous.  I did my own work comparing a Prius to cars like a Corolla, Civic, etc.  The main problem is that they put so much junk on the low end Prius that it takes a long time for it to pay off (in pure dollar terms assuming $3ish gasoline prices), if you buy a sensibly equipped Corolla, for example.

What's too bad is that you don't see sensible, realistic studies making honest appraisals.  Unfortunately, there are so many economic, political, pollution, etc. agendas behind any funded articles it's hard to get truly honest professional appraisals, IMO.

Following the previous, well-informed comments, this is going to sound like I'm a blithering idiot, but it's my two cents anyway:

Having been broadsided by a tractor trailer while driving a 1995 Nissan Pathfinder at around 50 mph, and being able to walk away from it with a scraped knee (the car survived too), nobody will ever convince me that those dinky little Fortwos are safe. I have given up the SUV for a sedan, but it's a larger one. Unless traffic is going to be segregated by size, the environment is always going to take a backseat to safety.

I love these kinds of stories. Here are the facts: in 2006 we paid $22,600 for a new Jetta diesel. In 2009 we traded in the 2006 Jetta with 40,000 miles on it. We received $19,500 in trade-in value, we paid $23,900 for the new Jetta TDI, and we received a $1300 tax credit at the end of the year. The cost including taxes to go from the 2006 to the 2009 Jetta was about $3500.(we paid cash for both cars). Overall fuel mileage for both cars was about 38 mpg. the 2006 Jetta had a high of 47 mpg on the highway, the 2009 Jetta had a high (so far) of 54 mpg. It was a chunk of cash at first, but if we can keep it up, the average over four cars (all new) will be about $10,000 per car. $40,000 for four brand-new Jettas sounds a lot better than $25,000 for one.  both have been great cars with excellent A/C (critical in Phoenix). Go Volkswagen!