The environmental benefits of hybrids may be widely accepted – lower emissions – but for commercial operators to adopt them, the operating costs will also have to be competitive.

Are they?

Hybrid vans and trucks are too thin on the ground for there to be any meaningful data about comparitive operating costs, but hybrid cars – particularly in the US – have been around for a while now.

In a recent article, CNN Money calculated the payback time for some popular hybrids – how long before the extra cost of the hybrid pays for itself in fuel savings?

The results made interesting reading. Based on driving 15,000 mile a year – much less than most commercial operators – the Toyota Prius should put you into profit after 4.2 years – not unreasonable. The worst result came from the Lexus LS600h – it would take a full 3,771 years before you actually moved into profit when compared to the regular LS460 model. But let’s be honest – anyone who buys a car with a 5 litre engine clearly isn’t an environmental fanatic (or poor…).

These figures are based on US fuel prices, however.

For UK drivers, these savings should be much more impressive – given that our fuel costs are about 2.5 times those of US drivers. Assuming we pay roughly the same prices for our hybrid vehicles as US residents, UK hybrid operators should be able to save a lot more money on fuel bills than their American counterparts.

In the real world, we probably pay a little more for our vehicles, but the savings should be significant all the same, don’t you think?