Yeah my friend has the same problem. He has a 96 Passat TDI wagon. The thing has a cruising range of 900 miles, 50mpg and a 18gallon tank. He can’t find anything comparable to replace it with, the hybrids don’t come that close.
This is getting better. The Saturn VUE Green Line is predicted to give a 20% improvement over it’s equilivent ICE model with cost of $2000 over the non-hybrid model.
Again it depends on usage, but I think that cost could be recovered in just a couple years of driving.
http://www.gm.com/company/gmability/adv_tech/100_news/hybridvue2_10906.html
I’m pretty skeptical of the VUE, and these claims of 20% improvement. Calling it a hybrid is generous to the point of inaccuracy. It’s a conventional ICE with an improved alternator (the so-called Belt Alternator Starter). All this does is create a stop-start system such as in the GM “hybrids” like the Silverado and Sierra. They claim the extra torque gives one a boost of a few horses off the start, but that’s a far cry from the full or mild hybrids in vehicles from other vendors. In city driving, the BAS system will certainly save gas when one isn’t moving, but that’s it. There will be no benefit when the VUE is in motion, as the other GM trucks amply demonstrate (their improvement with the BAS is 10% or less…often much less). Highway milage is apparently improved in the VUE by using a more efficient ICE and a better transmission, but that has nothing to do with the “hybrid” alternator. It’s nice to see more efficient gasoline ICEs, don’t get me wrong, but my feeling about the BAS is they’re using the barest hardware possible to claim “hybrid” status, so that folks can get the benefits of the name with hardly any of the cost or practical advantage.