I must admit, I haven't read every post in this thread, but I totally agree that hybrid cars enable the owner to take a typical 'out of sight, out of mind' approach. Much like landfill, who cares where the rubbish ends up, as long as its out of my house, right? If I am not pumping fuel into the car, then it *must* be cleaner?
Besides that, my biggest gripe with Hybrids is that nobody seems to think of the damage caused by creating and disposing of those batteries! Holy hell, can you imagine what is required to make that many deep cell batteries? Yikes!
Hybrids are ridiculous. We're looking at replacing our Forester soon, I think we'll almost definitely join the turbo diesel brigade.
Great post btw.