I am with you Fiat500! Now if we can get the Fiat 500 Diesel here!

You'll want the new one then, now with 95 HP and even lower emissions! Should do over 80 MPG easy! Or maybe Fiats revolutionary Mutiair engines? Power/economy or better still, Fiats new 0.9 litre 2 cylinder engine available in the 500, less than 100 grams of C02 per kilometre but around 120 MPG and it's turbocharged! The choice is endless...

But the Fiat 500 is going to the US next year or maybe the year after

Ignore the manufacturers claimed figures when looking at diesel mpg. Real world figures are invariably a lot less. Even driving them "like a Vicar" its hard to get close to the claimed combined figures.

The hybrids real world economy seems a lot less than the claimed figures too. As the other poster says, thats before you take into account battery replacement costs. More over, battery costs are likely to harm residual prices of such vehicles, thus increasing the overall cost of ownership.

The figures on this website for both diesels and hybrids make interesting reading.

I don't know where fiat500abarth's "120mpg" figure comes from for the future 900 twin. They are saying mileage will be 15% better than the 1.2l which gets something like 55mpg (US) in combined driving.

That said, the EPA figures for diesels here in the US are pretty accurate.

But I agree, Rob, one of the reasons I use fuelly is for real-world numbers from real people driving production cars. The EPA has started falsely inflating American cars (see Ford Fusion Hybrid or Chevy Equinox EPA ratings), so any shred of accuracy they had before they merged with the American auto industry is suspect. Ever since they started messing with the ratings in 2007 they've been off, and now that they're exercising a major conflict of interest they are even further from the truth. I get my EPA ratings from Fuelly :)

Yes i understand it's hard to get the claimed figures as they are achieved under very controlled environments. My Abarth 500 claimed figures of 51 MPG which i've had once or twice but i really had to try hard to get that! It only averages around 31 MPG in the real World.

Getting back to my original argument, i still think Diesels are better than hybrids, the main reason is the fact that you can often have performance as well as economy in most cases. Did anybody see the test Jeremy Clarkson did with the Prius V's the BMW? He followed a Prius around the track being driven hard, he was in a gas BMW V8, the Prius got 17 MPG whilst the BMW got 19 MPG. I rest my case...

Both hybrids and certain common rail diesels have "ships on the horizon", in terms of future maintenance costs. Currently, the lowest running cost option (in high fuel tax countries) is probably an LPG converted petrol. Lower exhaust emissions too.

A lightweight car with an engine able to loaf around at track speeds vs a weighty car with a tiny engine >.

Diesels won't make it here unless we change the EPA regs. Or new technology comes around that makes it cheap to work around them. VW small diesels have to waste fuel in regen cycles to to burn up particles. All other diesels need the urea fills. I'm not sure how many buyers are going to want an Accord that starts at $25,000 and needs a $300 urea fill every 7500 miles or so.