Libertarians prove hybrids are worse than SUVs!

Shyah, right. A study by the libertarian Reason Foundation tells us:

Comparing this data, the study concludes that overall hybrids cost more in terms of overall energy consumed than comparable non-hybrid vehicles. But even more surprising, smaller hybrids' energy costs are greater than many large, non-hybrid SUVs.

For instance, the dust-to-dust energy cost of the bunny-sized Honda Civic hybrid is $3.238 per mile. This is quite a bit more than the $1.949 per mile that the elephantine Hummer costs. The energy cots of SUVs such as the Tahoe, Escalade, and Navigator are similarly far less than the Civic hybrid.

According to them, they did a thorough study of all the costs associated with building, maintaining, and disposing of automobiles, as well as the network that produces and delivers fuel. Their numbers aren't transparent by any stretch of the imagination, but even if they were, the obvious flaw is that the cost of gasoline itself isn't factored into the cost of the vehicle, nor are the environmental costs of cleaning up after oil refineries, much less spills.

Basically, this "study" is simply meant to blindside average people with numbers and prove the libertarian point that government intervention to promote hybrids is unwarranted. They took a methodology of only examining costs inherent to a vehicle, which, since naturally the external energy cost of a fuel-efficient vehicle is much lower than an SUV tends to show that hybrid vehicles, the most efficient, cost the most in a highly refined "cost per mile" figure.

Hybrids may not be the best thing since spreadable butter, but really, you have to be living in unicorn-land to claim that a Hummer costs less environmentally than a Prius.