The problem with Hybrid cars isn't the lack of demand, it's the damn price tag on the supply. Sure, you can save $160/mo cutting your fuel consumption in half. But what good is it when you have to tack an extra $100/mo onto your car payments and extend from a 36 month to a 60 month lease? Let's not forget about the increased insurance on more expensive cars. So then it comes down to a matter of "going green." The wealthier who can afford these cars will typically go with the simpler gas-power car, unless they're in the public eye and want to save face or redevelop their reputation. If a Hybrid engine could be built into a standard car with a significantly diminished price increase, plenty more people would buy them.
Also, ground-breaking technological research is typically federally funded in some way or another. It's just that the people working on them are generally more competent than the more commonly known workings of our government such as... oh for example... Congress. That's the beautiful thing about science (outside of bastard-sciences like sociology), it's quantitative. There's no ethics or conflict of interest in a measurement or an outcome. Makes it easier for them to be effective in their works since all that matters is quantifying the results, no worries about The New York Times questioning their morals and whether they should be allowed in a laboratory. But then it's left to the federal government to decide how to use these new advents. The more a politician is in the public eye, typically the weaker their stance on a weighty ethical issue, so as to not lose too much face with too large a crowd. And that's when we get into the decades of clusterfucking. If the scientists, the ones who were most aware of its potential, determined such things, our world would be moving right along the path of technological evolution.
Still, if we just fucking drill in Alaska, we'll have enough domestic oil to carry us through those decades of clusterfucking. Let's face it, that will happen sooner than a team of chemists, with the aid of an ethics committee none of whom are elected officials, being allowed to determine how their newly developed technology is distributed and used in the market. You know, even though it's sort of a contradiction to capitalism, depending on how you view it. They develop it, but the federal government decides how it's used and makes the most money off of it. Lovely, ain't it.
