Here's a hard truth about hybrid vehicles that everyone who's considering one needs to know -- getting a hybrid will not save you any money, it will almost certainly cost you more.

A hybrid will use some smaller amount of fuel (though how much is open to question and depends greatly upon how and where you drive), and that helps the environment a little, but not too much. If you're willing to pay more money for that, good for you.

But the only way hybrids would save you money is if the car companies weren't charging extra for them, but they are charging thousands of dollars for them, so any reduction in fuel costs is far outweighed by the extra upfront cost.

There are only two ways that owning a hybrid can actually save you money:

-if you drive maybe three or four times as much a year as the average driver (60,000-80,000 km instead of the normal 20,000 km), and

-if gas prices triple or quadruple and the car companies don't raise the premiums even higher.

Outside of those two scenarios, hybrids will cost you more than a traditional vehicle to own and operate.

Independent studies in British Columbia and California have made the financial truth of hybrids clear, and you can work your own case out quite simply when you get quotes from your dealer.

Take the Transport Canada figures and calculate how many litres of fuel a hybrid and non-hybrid will use to go 20,000 km. The difference between the two figures represents the amount of fuel you won't have to buy if you actually achieve that kind of mileage. Multiply the number of litres you might save by the price of a litre of gas. Compare that with the extra cost for buying a premium. You will be amazed at the huge difference.

Even the car companies are careful not to claim that buying a hybrid will save you money over a traditional vehicle. In a recent rah-rah press release from Toyota Canada kicking off a hybrid promotion called Ready To Go, for example, the Japanese company talks about the "many benefits of hybrid technology" but does not mention the customer saving money.

This is worth bearing in mind as Toyota as well as Ford launch separate marketing campaigns to entice people into buying a hybrid, which is a vehicle with a regular internal-combustion gasoline engine and an electric motor. The power sources work together or separately to propel the vehicle, and for the most part they do the best job of improving fuel economy in constant city driving.

Most people considering hybrids will be surprised to hear this about costs, since the case of mass hysteria created by uninformed or incompetent media reports leads everyone to think they will save consumers money.

For me, the chief benefit of a hybrid would be that you won't need to stop to fill it up as much, since greater fuel economy always means greater range.

But in terms of actually saving you money, that won't happen until hybrid prices collapse, and that's not likely to happen anytime soon for a pair of reasons.

First off, too many people are willing to pay extra for the dubious pleasure of looking trendy.

Secondly, car companies are pretty much charging what it costs to build their hybrids, since costs for this technology are way above what it costs to build a traditional car.