New drive for hybrids

Hybrid petrol-electric vehicles are rapidly becoming mainstream choices for American consumers, say researchers at the

(UMTRI) and

.

"The first buyers were motivated by the novelty of the technology, but today's shoppers are more interested in tangible benefits, such as saving fuel, reducing emissions or reducing dependence on oil," said Walter McManus, director of UMTRI's Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation (OSAT).

McManus and colleague Brad Berman, editor of Web site HybridCars.com, surveyed more than 1,500 visitors to HybridCars.com from December 2004 to March 2005 to learn about consumer attitudes and views of hybrid vehicles. More than a third of the respondents said they own a hybrid and most of the rest said they were in the market for one.

The survey found that while owners of hybrids were less likely than other recent buyers of new vehicles to have owned a sport-utility vehicle or pickup truck in the past five years, nearly 40 percent of the survey's "hybrid shoppers" have owned an SUV and about 25 percent have owned a truck.