One of the selling points of a hybrid car is that it will pay for itself with gas savings. The logic is that gas is so expensive these days that the better gas mileage of a hybrid car like the Toyota Prius will save you so much money that you’ll quickly make up the extra cost of the car. When gasoline hit $4 a gallon a few years ago, this was a popular sentiment. Now that gasoline prices have stabilized at less than $3 a gallon, it takes a little bit longer for a hybrid car to pay for itself.

Investopedia, via Autoblog, compared several popular hybrid cars and figured out how long it will take a new buyer to recoup the extra cost of buying a hybrid over a gas-powered model. The results are based on on the official gas mileage ratings found on fueleconomy.gov, average driving habits and the advertised MSRP on each manufacturer’s site. Your personal results will obviously vary depending on current rebates and incentives and your personal driving habits.

The winner, by a long shot, was the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid. The Fusion Hybrid doesn’t have the best gas mileage on the list, but at only $3,200 more than the gasoline-powered Fusion, the Ford won the economy battle by a landslide, only taking 5.6 years to pay for the hybrid technology.

Far off in second place is the Fusion’s sister car,  Mercury Milan Hybrid, at 13 years to break even. Then came the Toyota Camry Hybrid at 15 years, the Honda Insight at 16.5 years, the Honda Civic Hybrid at 17 years, the Toyota Prius at 20 years and finally the Nissan Altima Hybrid at 21 years to break even.