General thoughts on Hybrids

I spent a fair amount of time looking for a small SUV for my wife. She has a 2009 Honda CRV now so looked at the CRV, Forester, Rogue, Tucson, Sportage, Mazda 5 and Rav4. On the surface all seemed nice. Rogue, Sportage and Tucson did not get as good as MPG as the others and wife did not like the sound when driving. Rav4 was also noisy. Mazda 5 drove nice and handled well but wife did not liked the reduced storage. So we narrow it down to the CRV and Forester. CRV was the best all around but the oil dilution problem that Honda had since 2017 with the turbo engine still troubled me. I saw the Rav 4 hybrid and the $800 increase over the gas model so decided to test drive it, and it was much more quiet the the gas version. The $800 advertised increase is not a fair comparison due to the option configuration. The XLE model in gas comes with more options than the hybrid model so the convenience package was required at an $1800 increase. With that said, I ended up buying it for $33k out the door with all the options she wanted, heated power seats etc. Right now we are averaging 39 MPGs combined. EPA ratings are 41 city and 38 highway. Gas EPA ratings were 26/33 mpgs. So I figured at 20k miles per year it will take about 2.5 years to pay for the extra $1800 option package. Never owned a hybrid before but it was a lot quicker than the gas models we tested and much quieter. The Prius hybrid has been around for a long time and the same batteries(nickel hydride) is used in the RAV4, actually Toyota uses both nickel hydride and Li-ion in their other hybrids, each has it advantages and disadvantages. I tried to interest her in a plugin but could not find one in the SUV size she wanted. The Niro is much smaller and can go about 30 miles on a charge before switching to hybrid mode.