With gas prices soaring and the summer driving season upon us, you'd think fuel-sipping hybrids would be all the rage on the road. And you'd be wrong. Just ask Wilmington, Del., Honda dealer Frank Ursomarso. His customers are so turned off by the pricey Honda Accord hybrid, he doesn't even keep the model in stock. "When customers come in looking for the Accord hybrid," he explains, "they either get deflected to another model or they leave." The story is similar at Kent Ritchey's Memphis Toyota dealership, where Highlander hybrids languish on the lot, while the regular version of the SUV sells briskly—for three grand less. "Not a lot of people are jumping up to pay $3,000 extra for a hybrid," says Ritchey. "For $3,000, you can buy a lot of gas."


As 31 million of us hit the road this holiday weekend prepared to suffer at the pump, we've begun to rethink the conventional wisdom that hybrids are the solution to our oil addiction. It turns out that last year's "it" car is losing some of its megawatt buzz. Despite those runaway gas prices, some hybrids are crashing at the intersection of fashionable and rational reasons for purchasing the costly gas-electric models. The price premium you pay for a hybrid—$3,000 to $8,000 above a regular model—takes years to pay off at the pump, even with $3 a gallon gas. That hasn't stopped celebs like Leonardo DiCaprio or Susan Sarandon from buying them. But for the rest of us, the cost of being hybrid hip is just too steep, and paying that premium just doesn't add up. "To reach the next group of hybrid buyers," says George Pipas, market analyst for Ford, which just resorted to zero percent financing to jack up sales of its Escape hybrid, "you've got to have a price premium that pencils [adds up]."

There are still plenty of folks who are driven to buy hybrids for purely green reasons. They're out to save the planet and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. And these are laudable motivations. But many of those green-leaning initial hybrid buyers have been wealthy and well educated—in other words, the consumers who are least affected by high gas prices. If your motivation is to pinch pennies at the pump, though, there are actually regular cars that deliver better gas mileage than some hybrids. The new $16,000 Honda Civic—the regular one, not the hybrid one—is rated at 30mpg city and 38mpg highway. And even though those EPA ratings on the window sticker overestimate real-world mileage, the regular Civic still gets better fuel economy than the hybrid Accord and all the hybrid SUVs on the market. And there's nothing that closes up that hole in the ozone faster than burning less gas.

Now before all you hybrid enthusiasts start sharpening your poison pens, let's look at the numbers. (I'm hoping to avoid more of the kind of angry mail I received after reporting recently that Accord hybrid sales plunged 69 percent in April, while the new Cadillac Escalade shot up 127 percent). Sure, the Toyota Prius is still a sellout, and, yes, hybrid sales doubled last year (thanks mostly to that white-hot Prius). But hybrids still account for only 1.2 percent of the U.S. car market, and they're outsold by SUVs 23 to 1. Plus, if you look on dealer lots lately, you'll notice hybrids are starting to stack up. On average, the Accord hybrid sits on the lot for more than three months before it is sold, compared to just over a month for a regular Accord, according Power Information Network's dealer-sales data. It's taking 44 days to move a Highlander hybrid, while the regular version is out the door 10 days faster. And despite that zero percent deal, the Escape hybrid also is moving slower than its conventionally powered sibling—67 days versus 61 days. That all adds up to hybrids becoming a harder sell even with gas prices that are 75 cents a gallon higher than last summer.