Joe, I think you've been misinformed. If it's the "Hummer is better" story, that's been debunked, but keeps getting posted all over the Internet.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/8/27/124134/961
I now have the following vehicles in my driveway:
-2000 Isuzu Trooper (rarely moves)
-2004 Toyota Prius (moves occasionally, wife drives it)
-Extremely rare 2002 RAV4 EV, my daily driver. This car is a pure electric. It uses 1/4 the energy of a gasoline RAV4, and less than half the energy of the Prius. I charge it at home from wind power, so it is carbon free.
Our electric bill is an additional $25-30 per month for 1200 miles, and we spend about $25 to fill the Prius every six weeks. The Trooper of course takes about $65 to fill up. I filled it in August and again in January.
Our net fuel cost is around $50 and our carbon footprint has hit the floor. Diesels are popular, biodiesel is cool, but the emissions are still miserable.
The Insight has indeed been discontinued. Honda's system is parallel only, it doesn't scale like the Toyota and Ford systems. They use serial/parallel hybrid systems for better power an efficiency. The Insight got better mileage than the Prius because it was so small. The smart cars get worse mileage than the Prius, and I could tow one with my RAV4 EV.
There's a reason the Prius is so popular. It's a very good car, it's quite peppy, gets great mileage, and is large enough to actually haul people. I get about 45 MPG overall, even driving it hard. Of course, my electric RAV4 has 65,000 miles and counting, without a drop of gasoline.
Nate
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