wrote
That's only 47k miles to break even. Most people these days with
decent maintenence can expect to get 4 or five times that, making it a
very good value.

That's not the break even point, that's the point at which the hybrid has
burned $5000 worth of gas. You've saved less than $2K at that point.

The point where you save the full $5000 worth of $3/gallon gas by burning it
at 28.2MPG instead of 20-22MPG comes somewhere in the 160-210,000 mile
range, according to my mad math skilz.

But as Chuck points out, it's not all about the math.