I am the proud owner of a hybrid car and am writing these words some 2 weeks after taking possession.

Why?
Well I guess you could classify me as a techy green - not one of those ecologists who believe we should be living back in caves, but one who believes that our society is moving on and is not going to give up on what it has. To me the hybrid car is a sensible partial solution to the problems raised by individual transportation. Essentially I'm getting a 30% fuel economy without any compromise in comfort and performance.

Costs
Difficult to estimate - I reckon that I paid a 10% premium for a hybrid car compared to a similar non-hybrid, but that's no more than a ball-park estimate. However there are incentives. I get a 50% reduction in road tax (which I can understand - it's a government incentive to encourage "clean" cars), but even more amazingly, my car insurance also went down 25%. I don't understand that one. The car insurance is private and I don't understand how "actuarily" a hybrid car is a lesser risk than a conventional one (except that maybe hybrid drivers are almost certainly less agressive drivers). Obviously with a 30% fuel economy compared to "comparable" non-hybrid cars, I call into filling stations far less frequently. I've only had the car 2 weeks but I seem to be averaging about 4,6 l/100 km (about 51 mpg for the heathens across the pond).

Performance
Well it drives much like any other vehicle, though more like an automatic than anything else. Actually it's still different from an automatic,as it doesn't have a gearbox of any kind. It's most amazing when you're driving slowly in "stealth" mode, so-called because you use only the electric motor and the car moves absolutely silently. It is a bit of a geek's car, because you tend to look at the hybrid display and smile when it's showing 0 l/100 km, which it does whenever you're going slightly downhill, or even when stationary (the petrol engine switches off).
Of course the vehicle has more electricity and electronics in it than a conventional car. Indeed one must consider the petrol engine as being only one element in this vehicle. What makes it work is the hybrid battery, the computer which decides how to mix the power sources and the transmission unit which does the mixing.
What is striking is the high quality of the engineering in the car. It is very different from a classic non-hybrid vehicle.

Ecological balance
Well I have already mentioned the 30% fuel economy, which obviously has a similar effect on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. On the downside you have the manufacture of the hybrid battery, which requires energy to manfacture and needs to be recycled at the end of its life. However, there are also many components present in a classic car, but absent in this one - no gearbox, no clutch, no starter motor (it just spins one of the generators at high speed to start the petrol engine).

So how do you feel - is the hybrd car a solution to reducing emissions from cars?