Top 5 Reasons to buy a HYBRID CAR - Incentives, Stimulus, Tax Credits 2009 details (United States)

If you are located in United States and planning to buy a new car, 2009 is perhaps the best time to buy a car, especially a Hybrid Car. In this post I will explain several reasons why buying a Hybrid Car in 2009 makes sense. If indeed there is any possibility that you will buy a car in the coming year, then spare 5 minutes of your time to read this entire post to see how Hybrid Cars can save you thousands of dollars with Government Incentives, apart from being environmentally friendly. Moreover, while buying a new Hybrid Car, you could also trade your old car for $4500.

What is a Hybrid Car?

Hybrid Cars have a conventional gas powered engine as well as a parallel rechargeable electric motor in order to achieve better fuel economy. Think about this - how much energy is wasted when your car is running at top speed and then you apply brakes? How about if this energy, instead of being wasted is used to recharge the Electric battery of your car? This is exactly what Hybrid Cars do. The combination of rechargeable electric battery and conventional fuel engine gives you almost twice the miles per gallon as compared to usual cars (see example below).

Top 3 Reasons to Buy a Hybrid Car - Government Incentives, Stimulus Package & Hybrid Car Tax Credits

The following are the top reasons which make buying a Hybrid Car the best option in 2009.

1. Auto Stimulus Sales tax deduction : The Economic Stimulus Package of Obama allows you to claim Tax deduction for Sales tax paid on your new car purchase, provided the new car costs less than $49,500. Click on the link to learn more about this new car incentive. This is available for all new car purchases, not just for Hybrid Cars.
   
2. Cash For Clunkers - Under this new Government Incentive, you can trade your old car for either $3500 or $4500 depending on the fuel economy rating of your old and new car. To read more about the qualifying criterion and tips, click on the link.
3. Hybrid Car Tax Credit : Hybrid Cars purchased after 2005 may be eligible for a Federal Tax Credit of up to $3400. This tax credit is slowly phased out once the manufacturer sells a given amount of vehicles. The exact amount of Hybrid car tax credit varies depending on the car model. To find out more about how much tax credit you get for various models of hybrid cars, visit the government website Hybrid Car Tax Credit details. Remember that the Hybrid Car tax credit is going to be slowly phased out once the manufacturer sell a fixed number of Hybrid Cars. So this tax credit will not be there forever.

Some Important Remarks

1. Toyota Hybrid Cars: Toyota has manufactured one of the most fuel efficient Hybrid Cars like Toyota Prius. Unfortunately, the Hybrid Car Tax Credit for all Toyota Hybrid Cars has been phased out.
2. Honda Hybrid Cars: Honda also has some of the most popular Hybrids like Honda Insight. Unfortunately the Hybrid Tax Credit for Honda Cars has also been phased out.
   
3. GM Hybrid SUVs : Most of Hybrid Cars of GM are actually Hybrid SUVs and although they are eligible for Hybrid Tax Credit and Sales tax deduction, they may not qualify for Cash for Clunkers program since they have a fuel economy rating of less than 22 miles per gallon.
4. Hybrid Car Tax Credits are still available on Hybrid Cars manufactured by Ford, Chrysler, Mazda and Nissan.
5. A complete list of Hybrid Cars, sorted by manufacturer is available on the Government website on Hybrid Car Tax Credit. The mileage or fuel economy rating of cars can be checked on the Government website fueleconomy.gov.
   

Other two reasons to buy a Hybrid Car are

1. Hybrid Cars have a better fuel economy rating and can save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year in Gasoline (explained below with an example).
2. Hybrid Cars are Green or Environmentally friendly.
   

How much can a Hybrid Car save you in Gasoline?

Let us look at a concrete example of how much can you save with a Hybrid car as compared to a non-hybrid car. Toyota Prius, one of the first popular Hybrid Cars in the market gives a mileage of about 45 miles per gallon. Other cars typically have a mileage of about 20-25 mpg and SUV's have a mileage of even less than 20 miles per gallon. So Toyota Prius Hybrid will give you at least 20 miles extra per gallon of gasoline. If the price of gasoline is even $2 per gallon, and you drive about 30-35 miles per day on an average, that translates into a savings of $600 per year at least ! Remember Gas prices are highly volatile and once the world recovers from the current recession, this savings can easily be thousands of dollars per year depending on how much you drive.

For those you car environmental concern is an additional very important reason to buy a Hybrid Car. Pollution and its effects on global climate are so drastic that changes in the climate have become blatant. In order to stop overusing world resources it is important that we turn our attention to more fuel efficient and less polluting vehicles. This makes Hybrid Cars an obvious choice.

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