From: FastCompany.com  By: Leslie Taylor

Between Al Gore’s movie, an Inconvenient Truth, and the inconvenient truth that gas costs an average of $2.85 a gallon, average consumers are joining the ranks of a long list of celebrities, including The Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington and TV personalities Bill Maher and Ellen DeGeneres, in switching to a hybrid vehicle, powered by a combination of an electric motor and a gasoline-fueled engine. And Toyota’s plan to sell one million hybrids a year by early next decade suggests hybrids are on their way to mainstream status.

In 2005, Toyota increased production of its Prius hybrid to keep up with the demand for the model, and the automakers’ 2007 Camry Hybrid sold 4,268 units in June. In comparison, the non-hybrid Hyundai Sonata sedan — one of the top 20 best-selling cars in the U.S. — sold 11,739 units. Though the numbers are coming closer to one another and hybrid sales have generally doubled every year since 2000, hybrids represented only 1.2% of total vehicles sold in 2005.

Sure, hybrids are gaining in popularity, but when it comes to all the promises — ubiquity of energy-efficient vehicles, lower costs over time, and environmental-friendliness — are hybrids living up to their hype?

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