Apparently Bank of America, beginning today, will provide extra incentives for their employees to buy hybrid vehicles.  Although this is only good in the Boston region, they are going to give their employees $3,000 for buying a hybrid.  In addition to tax credits (up to $3400), this reduces the cost of a hybrid by up to $6400.  In effect, this makes buying some hybrids cheaper than buying their gas counterparts.  Other companies such as Google and Timberland are also providing some pretty nice incentives, including cash and reserved parking spaces.

This is all in addition to the fact that hybrids also get to use the HOV lane in the DC Metro Area, and this will probably spread to other areas soon as well.  Oh, and don’t forget the fact that hybrids will save you money on gasoline.

I wrote an article recently on why I might not buy a hybrid.  But maybe, now that the costs are within an affordable range, it might change my mind.  I’m still worried about the fact that the battery packs aren’t exactly the safest thing for the environment.  I still think it’s lame that a gigantic SUV hybrid that gets 24 instead of 22 miles per gallon is getting cash and tax incentives.  But, I think this gigantic increase in hybrid incentives is pretty cool.

Hopefully I won’t have to buy a car anytime soon.  I’m still driving my 1990 Toyota Camry and it works perfectly (I just retrofitted a new air conditioning system into it and it now has AC for the first time in 3 years!).  So we’ll have to see what the car market is like in a few years I guess.

Anyways, these incentives are great to some extent.  Hybrids are already flying off car lots, and now that their prices are closer to or lower than their gasoline counterparts, I think we’re going to see a dramatic substitution towards hybrid buying.

The only problem, like I said before is that these incentives still apply towards things like giant SUV hybrids and the Accord Hybrid, which is basically only a hybrid in that the electric motor gives it a performance boost.  Hybrids that are not hybrids for reasons of increase in fuel economy should not receive these incentives.  The goal is to encourage people to use less gas, right?  And I still think incentives should be based on miles per gallon rather than whether a car is simply hybrid or not.  Am I helping the environment more by buying an Accord Hybrid over a gasoline powered Civic that gets much better fuel economy?  Or buying a gigantic SUV hybrid that gets 25 miles per gallon versus a smaller SUV non-hybrid that gets 30+ miles per gallon?  These incentives should be based on miles per gallon, not simply hybrid status.

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