Hybrids are the way of the future and the technology will improve dramatically over the next several years. The auto industry will respond to consumer demand. So far it's been primarily the Japan owned companies that have invested in this tech. and the big 3 US Auto industry has kept making bigger SUV's and Pick-ups. Now with the gas prices getting higher, consumers are starting to look at hybrids and smaller cars, so now the big 3 are getting caught with their pants down and not able to respond quick enough to the demand of the consumers and the environmentalist.

The CAFE standards being imposed by congress will certainly cripple the big 3 even more, but in large that's their own fault for not investing in the proper R&D years ago. While Toyota has been leading the way going to their engineers, US companies have lead by going to their Lobby.

Now that all the companies are finally starting to look to thier engineers for better MPG, I think Eric is right that we will see huge improvements in hybrid technology (or something else). Right now we are in the second/third generation of hybrid tech, within a decade we will see 400hp cars with 50 mpg and 200 hp cars with 100+mpg and will increase greatly from there.

Bottom line is that we don't/won't hav a choice to cut back on our consumption of of oil/gas and more of us (even with x5's need to think a bit greener). It's not about saving the Earth, because the Earth will be here regardless what we do. It's about saving ourselves. If the greenhouse effect is true, it's our great-grandkids that we put at the most risk.