I was wondering just how much money and oil has been saved by the drivers of hybrid vehicles, and the good folks at Edmunds.com provided some rough numbers.
Edmunds estimates that the 176,000 hybrid vehicles purchased in 2005 saved their owners approximately $112 million in fuel, based on an average fuel price of $2.32 per gallon. That's money that can be spent on other goods instead of oil (more than 50 percent of which comes from outside the U.S.).
Extrapolating the data for 2006 (this is my back-of-the-envelope calculation, so don't complain to Edmunds) , if we assume that hybrids save approximately 274 gallons per year compared to non-hybrids, then the 256,000 hybrids sold in the last two years will save more than 70 million gallons of gasoline this year.
That translates to 1.7 million barrels of oil. Since another 350,000 or more hybrids will likely be sold this year, for 2007 the savings could reach 4 million barrels. Okay, so it's far from the "potential" ANWR reserves of 5.7 billion, but it helps.
