Should your next car be a hybrid - Assignment Example

March 4, Should your next car be hybrid? Wants and ability determines people’s possessions. Product differentiation and development of new product features also influences preferences for commodities. Development of hybrid cars is one of the contemporary trends in the market with proposed advantages over regular cars. Utilitarian perspective to ethics however requires analysis of these benefits in terms of their effects on the entire society and not effects on vehicle owner. I use the ethical theory for analysis and decision for purchase of hybrid car as my next car.

A hybrid car offers significant advantages to the car owner as well as other people in the car’s environment. To the car owner, hybrid car offers an opportunity for lower fuel expenses. The savings can then help in other needs or can be used to meet needs of other members of the society through donations. Lower spending on fuel also allows for savings and increase the car owner’s economic potentials. In addition, fuel supply and prices are highly volatile and purchasing a hybrid car cushions the car owner from price elasticity besides reducing pressure on fuel to push demand and supply towards equilibrium.

This benefits other fuel consumers by ensuring reduced elasticity in gas price. Buying a hybrid car also has positive environmental effects. It reduces the amount of environmental pollution from regular car engines and would promise to reduce amount of green house gas emissions towards stable climate. Exhaust gases from regular car engines also affect the respiratory system and buying a hybrid car will reduce this effect. Hybrid cars however have the consequence of high purchase price and high engine maintenance cost but these are not daily expenses while the benefits are common and long term.

I am however able to afford these and the costs are only limited to my financial potential and will consider purchasing a hybrid car (Patricia 41). Regular carA regular car, however, is cost effective in terms of purchase and maintenance than the hybrid car. This will ensure convenience and allow for savings but the higher cost of fuel counters these benefits and operating a regular car may in the end be equally expensive. No cost benefit may therefore be derived from the regular car in the end.

Disadvantages of the regular car are however many and extend from the car owner to other members of the community. With volatility in gas supply and prices, buying a regular car would increase pressure on gas supply and therefore increase price elasticity and both the car owner and other gas users will be victims. In addition, purchasing a regular car will be a threat to efforts towards environmental conservation. This is because of significance of exhaust gases such as carbon monoxide that is an element of greenhouse gases.

Effects such as global warming and acid rain as well as respiratory problems affect both car owner and other members of the society. A regular car therefore has greater and long-term disadvantages, than advantages to members of the society. I would therefore by a hybrid car because it offers greater net benefits to many people (Patricia 41). Utilitarian approach is a morally responsible way of making moral decisions because it considers effects of actions and therefore ensures’ well-being of an entire community.

This is because it promotes beneficial acts to a majority of members of the society. Works citedPatricia, Richard. The definitive guide to hybrid cars. eBook.