Joe Allison of Bridgewater does not consider himself an environmentalist, yet in 2005 he was among the first in his area to buy a Prius, an electric hybrid sedan made by Toyota, and he still swears by it today.

"I didn't do it for the environment; I did it to save money," Allison said, adding that he's kept track of how many miles he's driven and how much fuel he's bought since he got the car.

Allison said he gets 50 miles per gallon with the hybrid, while a traditional car would get around 25 miles per gallon.

"I've estimated that I've saved $3,400 in fuel in a little over three years," he said. "This is more than enough to eliminate the cost difference in the purchase price."

Glenn Buehl, a salesman at the Irwin Zone, a vehicle dealership in Laconia, said they offer a few different makes and models of hybrid vehicles, including Toyota's Prius and Highlander and Ford's Escape.

Buehl said that, with hybrids, a driver gets more fuel efficiency at lower speeds (30 mph or under), because that's when the car runs fully on electric power.

At lower speeds, Buehl said, a person can get double the gas mileage of a gas-only vehicle.

At highway speeds, 45 mph and above, the car switches to fossil fuels.

Buehl said that, while hybrids generally run about $2,000 more than traditional vehicles, the cost can be made up after a few years through fuel savings.

While Allison said he's just in it for the money, colleges and universities around the state, including Plymouth State University, the University of New Hampshire and Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, are using fully electric and hybrid vehicles, both to save dollars and to reduce their carbon "footprints".

Bruce Lyndes, spokesman for PSU, said the university has three hybrid vehicles on campus, used by faculty and staff members when they make work-related trips in-state. PSUis in the bidding process for a fourth vehicle, he said.

Bob Giroux, PSUsupervisor of transportation services, said hybrids have saved money.

"We bought two of the three vehicles before the price of gas spiked, and that's looking like a great decision now," he said. "It's really incredible. You fill up with seven or eight gallons of gas and you're ready for another 400-500 miles; we're getting about 50 miles to the gallon."

Lyndes estimated a savings of $2,300 per year in fuel costs with the three hybrids.

"While the cost is relatively small in a multimillion-dollar budget, every little bit helps, and we're doing the right thing for the environment," he said, "We've made a commitment to be more environmentally responsible and we hope advancing technology will allow us to be even more responsible and save more money in the future."

PSU has not yet bought any neighborhood electric vehicles — small, fully electric vehicles, also called NEVs, for getting around campus, but they have considered the technology and may do so in the future.

"We're looking at every option that's out there, all different types of alternative fuels. This is a real opportunity to make a difference financially and environmentally," Giroux said.

Bob Giroux, supervisor of transportation services at Plymouth State University, points out features of one of the three hybrid vehicles the University owns. Courtesy Photo

Stephen Pesci, UNHspecial projects director of campus planning, said the institution uses several NEVs to get around that campus. The University also has a fully electric utility truck.

UNH has an aggressive clean-vehicle policy called Eco-Cat, Pesci said. As vehicles age and need to be replaced, he said, the university looks at what type of vehicle will be the cleanest, most efficient alternative, and often that turns out to be an electric vehicle or hybrid.

The neighborhood vehicles are small and their maximum speed is 25 miles per hour. While that might not be practical for an individual to use as a primary mode of transportation to get back and forth to work, on a college campus, where virtually all roads are posted at 25 mph, the small, energy-efficient vehicles are ideal for getting from one end of campus to the other, Pesci said.

The electric vehicles also are saving the campus money in maintenance costs, as they do not require oil changes.

In addition to fully electric vehicles at UNH, the university has a growing number of hybrid passenger vehicles, Pesci said.

But electric isn't always the answer when considering alternatively run vehicles. Because fully electric vehicles have speed and charging issues, they are not ideal for public transportation vehicles such as buses, at least until technology improves.

Instead, Pesci said, the university has turned to compressed natural gas to run its two public transportation systems.

Compressed natural gas is cleaner and cheaper than gasoline, with a current cost of about $1.25 per gallon, Pesci said. It is made even cheaper with a rebate from the federal government for using the cleaner fuel. With the rebate, it is costing the university 50 cents per gallon.

The university has a compressed natural gas fueling station on campus that is expanding.

Brett Pasinella, program coordinator at UNH's Office of Sustainability, said the main advantage of electric vehicles from an environmental standpoint is that there are no carbon emissions from the tailpipe, or reduced emissions if it is a hybrid.

Ray Mongeau/Citizen photo Joe Allison of Bridgewater returns home with his 2005 Toyota Prius hybrid. He has traveled 300 miles and averaged 50.4 miles per gallon since last filling the vehicle with gas.

Pasinella said that every gallon of gas used produces 20 pounds of CO2 and the average vehicle travels 12,500 miles per year.

Currently in New England, Pasinella said, 40 percent of greenhouse gases are produced by motor vehicles — more than any other source.

While electric vehicles are not truly emissions-free because emissions are emitted from the electricity power plant used to power the batteries, they are still a lot cleaner than fossil-fuel cars, Pasinella said.

It is cleaner to produce electricity at a single power source than have emissions coming from all those vehicles, he said, adding that power plants have high emissions standards and many are producing at least some of their electricity with alternative fuel sources.

While there are many pros with fully electric cars, there is one big con, Pesci said, which is the problem of power storage.

Fully electric cars run on lithium ion batteries which store only enough power to go 40 miles before having to be recharged.

"In the real world, that's crazy," Pesci said. "But again, on a college campus, where vehicles go a distance of 20 miles per day, they work."