An interesting math challenge is to try to figure out if buying a hybrid vehicle will actually save you money.

It requires finding the vehicle prices, making assumptions about fuel prices, looking up fuel economy estimates, estimating how far you drive annually and to be accurate, you should figure out what percentage of your driving is in the city.

Sounds confusing?? It is confusing, but the U.S, Government, specifically the U.S. Department of Energy, has made the process considerably easier by going to their hybrid vehicle website.

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/hybridCompare.jsp

Simply select the vehicles you want to compare.? You still have to do some estimates, but they are easy with the fill in the blank form.? Push enter and suddenly you have ?make those same estimates and fill in a couple of blanks and poof, you have estimates for your fuel savings weekly, monthly and yearly along with how many years it will take to payback the extra initial cost of a hybrid.

The Fueleconomy.gov website also includes a place to compare the available hybrids, side-by-side, and an explanation of how hybrids work along with a listing of Federal tax credits. There?s also a section on our favorites, diesels.?