Hybrids - little bang for green buck?

Are you sick of all this green talk? Enough is enough for some people. We’ve heard a lot about it for sure. Changing light bulbs to fluorescent, buying high-efficiency appliances, buying an electric hybrid…we have options now more than ever.

Many times, being green means buying a replacement item for something you already own. But buying some new green thing is not always the best option, financially or environmentally. Let’s start with financial. Consider the turnover costs for getting a new vehicle and selling the old one. There is time involved, taxes, registration and more that add up in a hurry. Then there is the environmental side – you potentially are just adding another hunk of metal, plastic etc to our world that is going to take thousands of years to biodegrade.

You can be greener and put some green in your pocket by improving some things that you already own. The automatic, scheduled thermostat is a good example. For relatively little money you can reduce your energy use with your existing heating and cooling system.

And back to cars…I’ve known for years that most vehicles have a power mode that burns some serious gas and emits higher levels of pollution. Of course, auto companies could have given you a setting that allows you to turn this feature off – but they didn’t. And for years, it wasn’t possible to detect this power mode in a cost effective way.

Now, we have low cost diagnostic devices that can get information from our car’s computers that tell us about this power mode. Combine this with the new, high-powered smartphones (and software like MotoCarma - www.motolingo.com/motocarma.htm) and you can actually know in real-time when you are uber-fueling. By knowing when you are in this power mode, you can train yourself to avoid it. The end result: lower fuel costs, greener driving – all without buying a new car, hybrid or not.

Once you’ve decided to keep get more green with your current car, you can take it as far as you like. Check out what it takes to be a hypermiler in these videos…
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/08/hypermiling-tips-videos.php.