[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I'm not terribly confident in the near future of hybrid technology either. GM next year will be releasing a hybrid (wait for it.....) Yukon. I mean seriously, what are they thinking? It costs like another $15,000+ over a regular Yukon, has a gigantic 6L engine still, and only gets another 5mpg. The point is?

There is so much misinformation about electric and hybrid vehicles floating around I almost feel guilty about this. The Yukon is built on GM's full-size truck chassis, which also gets hybrid power in 2009. Working people need trucks, and the market for a pickup with great mileage is probably two to four times larger than that of big SUVs. The Yukon gets the hybrid powerplant because it's the cousin of the pickup, and was a big-bucks luxury-SUV platform to launch the new powertrain.

I spent five minutes Googling on this, and found real-world mileage tests (as opposed to the artificial EPA measures) of around 21 MPG for the hybrid and 14 for the gas engine. That's a 50% improvement -- for a vehicle that can still hold eight people and tow a 6,000 pound trailer. Try that in a Prius.

The price differential between a hybrid Yukon and a similarly-equipped gas Yukon is about $4,000. With gas at $4 a gallon, the Yukon might be one of the rarest of all vehicles -- a hybrid that makes economic sense. With a one-third reduction in fuel costs, a Yukon could pay for the "hybrid penalty" in 40,000 miles.