I know a few people who drive hybrids, and who’ve been quite happy with them. It’s less of a big deal today than it was a year or so ago when gas cost twice what it does now, but I’ve estimated that I spend $10 a day in gas on my commute, so I’m still pretty sensitive to gas mileage. (Doubling my mileage, from 20 to 40 mpg, would save me $5 a day, or $100/month.)

True or not, there’s a perception that hybrids are a new, untested technology, and thus a fear that they might not last long. I’ve noticed a few taxis in Boston that are hybrids, which is probably the ideal use case, since they’re on the road all the time. And now there’s this article about a California taxi fleet that’s starting to have hybrids hit 300,000 miles. (That number alone is impressive?) They mention that they’ve had to replace two hybrid batteries: one was “operator error” (which raises more questions than it answers), and the other was under warranty… This is out of a fleet of almost 200. They also mention that, because of the way the braking works, the brakes tend to last about three times longer than on non-hybrids. (Which means that I’d have surprise thousand-dollar brake jobs one-third as often!)

The durability is really reassuring, and the savings are impressive: assuming gas was an average of $1.75/gallon over the 300,000 life of some of these hybrids, and that a hybrid doubles the mileage of a non-hybrid, I’m calculating that they’ve saved $262,500 in gasoline costs per hybrid. That probably offsets the $5-10,000 extra upfront cost. Though for me, about $27,000 for a Camry Hybrid is still a bit too much….