[Earlyboomer]

Reply number 2 has some excellent points to consider. I have years of electrical design experience so I have some idea of how much more complicated the electrical components for a hybrid are going to make any automobile. These "complications" are no doubt going to make service work a lot more costly at a dealer or any other garage. It will also make life a lot more interesting for a do it yourself mechanic, if he/she has the patience and perserverence to tackle a hybrid.

Then what about the voltages used in hybrids? I have read where the voltage can be from 200 volts to as much as 600 volts and that can be dangerous in more ways than one. Cell phone batteries and other battery powered devices have been known to start fires, with only a few volts. The cost of replacing batteries in a hybrid or purely electric cars is very expensive also.

There is an engineering discussion of the GM Volt, I ran across on the net, and it stated that you get about 40 miles on a charge and around 20,000 miles out of a set of batteries, which cost thousands of dollars. I think it was around $8,000 to $10,000 for the batteries but I am getting forgetful about things I have no real interest in. I read the discussion because I was curious to see if they could justifly even bringing a car like that to market. This is a big country and the Volt, a pure electric, sounds like a vehicle for a small city where you could actually walk instead until you needed to carry groceries.

People that think they are doing something to help the planet by buying a hybid or electric should ask why factories to build the batteries are mostly located overseas?, and the reason is because the EPA doesn't want the enviromental unfriendly and polluting process to build these batteries located in this country. You never heard that on the news, did you? Remember "Love Canal", it was caused by pollution from metals used in chemical processes, and battery production could do something similiar, so the EPA doesn't want to trust American companys to do anything today. (I believe American companys can do everything better than what was done in the past.)

The engineering to design and build hybids or electrics is very challenging and interesting but I will never own one. Chinese people don't want hybrids, they build the batteries, but they are buying SUVs like they are going out of style. The Chinese however seem to be repeating our polluting past history judging from the news showing the air pollution in some of their cities. You don't need to take my word for any of this, this is an interesting subject to research on the net, if you can wade through the information and disinformation, like a lot of other subjects. If this was a political blog, I would not have bothered to say one word.