I am responding to David Kuchta’s letter concerning hybrid vehicles (“Hybrid cars not all they’re cracked up to be,” July 23). As the owner of two hybrid plug-in Toyotas, I would disagree with his conclusion that hybrid vehicles are less environmental friendly than gasoline vehicles. Mr. Kuchta wrongly states that hybrid batteries need to be charged. The charging is done within the vehicle itself, just like the battery that starts your motor. Hybrid plug-in vehicles have an additional battery usually located under the back seat with a range of 30 to 50 miles for our vehicles when you are all electric. It is this battery that needs to be charged.

When we are in electric mode, the car has noticeably more power than gas mode, and when the plug-in battery is exhausted the car automatically changes to hybrid mode. The hybrid motor is continually assisting the gas motor so it doesn’t have to work as hard and uses less gas. Mr. Kuchta is correct that hybrids do better in city driving than highway driving when considering gas efficiency, but any hybrid will use less gas than a gas power vehicle of comparable model, even in highway driving.

We do driving primarily within 30 miles of home and are obtaining gas efficiency that I never realized were possible; 150 to 200 mpg for the Prius. We have only put gas in the RAV 4 twice and have had it almost a year. Perhaps his comparison of hybrid vs. EV vs. gas omits the option of plug-in hybrid, which I would highly recommend to anyone who wants to purchase an environmental friendly vehicle but is not ready to go all EV until more charging stations are available.

Paul Mitnik

Vassalboro

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