I've always viewed hybrid cars with a suspicious eye. As a guy who spends way too much time working on cars, I'm intimately familiar with how many ways they can fail. Hybrids seem like a maintenance nightmare waiting to happen. Especially considering how immaturity of the technology. I've also wondered about their claimed efficiency. All that additional hardware is extra weight to hual around. And that's not even considering how much more energy is required to produce all those extra parts and recycle them when they are spent (similar to solar cells which are currently so energy intensive to produce that they will almost never break-even over their lifespan.) So I was somewhat amused to see the numbers on the Hybrid Buzz blog. He's getting barely 32mpg from a Honda Civic Hybrid. Ha! I recently started tracking my fuel mileage (on my Treo phone) and my 16 year old 3.0l V6 is seeing 24mpg in mostly city driving (almost 30 minutes a day of bumper to bumper traffic.) Sure 24mpg is significantly worse than 32... but I'm not trying. I'm sure an enthusiastic hybrid owner is going to optimize for fuel efficiency. I knew someone with an Insight, and he took it as a challenge to keep the efficiency numbers as high as possible. Meanwhile I drive my Verde like I stole it. I'd feel bad for the guy, if I wasn't a snarky rat-bastard. Read the blog from the begining... there aren't that many postings. If he really pushes it I'm sure he'll get his money back (which he should do.) Mazda smartly gave owners that option when it turned out the new RX-8 didn't really measure up to advertised specs in the hp department.