Hybrid cars are becoming increasingly popular. There are many benefits to owning a hybrid, such as reducing your carbon footprint, enjoying a government grant (in some cases) and preferential parking with free use of bus lanes in certain areas.
However, some people continue to be deterred by heftier price tags when comparing hybrid offers with petrol and diesel options.
To make things a little clearer, we’ve compiled a selection of hybrid cars and compared them with their petrol or diesel counterparts, to see how long it would take you to recoup the extra money spent going hybrid, and how long it would take for your hybrid to pay for itself.
It’s not always easy to calculate this, as you need to find a comparable petrol or diesel car.
Cars like the Kia Niro or Hyundai Ioniq only come in hybrid or electric variants, so in order to make a fair comparison, you would need to look at these cars alongside an equivalent petrol or diesel option you might be considering.
For the purposes of this article, we’ve taken three hybrid cars that have non-hybrid options in the range.
The below comparisons are meant as a guide only. There will be other factors that affect these figures, such as road tax, maintenance costs and fuel price fluctuations.
There are also certain extra savings that UK hybrid drivers can enjoy, which have not been factored into the below comparisons. A couple of these are:
- Fuel duty
- VAT (5% for plug-in vehicles compared to 20% for road fuels)
