A week or so ago I got an offer in my email inbox from the credit union where we have our car loan. I glanced at it briefly — I wasn’t terribly interested in it since we’re only a few months away from paying off our current car loan, and we don’t have any plans to take out a new loan anytime soon.
However, before I clicked “delete” I noticed something interesting: Hybrid Vehicle loans enjoy a 0.25% lower interest rate than regular new or used cars.
It got me to thinking about why this could possibly be. Are hybrid car owners actually a statistically lower credit risk? Is the bank just trying to promote a “green friendly” image so that it can attract that demographic?
I don’t know what the answer is, and I’m sure that I’m not going to find out for sure any time soon, but I’m sure that this isn’t the last time that I will see Green based products get special incentives of some kind just for being green, even if it doesn’t actually make sense — like hybrid cars being allowed in the High Occupancy Vehicle lane with less than the minimum number of passengers.