You have no understanding of economies of scale. Do you seriously think that one part of the product is that much of a driver for cost? The example you cited can easily be applied to the flip side (oil/gas speculation) but you don't see car prices jumping 30% in a span of 2 years. Prices will go down due to economies of scale but the demand has to be there to back up such investments into said factories and factory upgrades. Economies of scale will also help with the post-production costs for repairs and maintenance. Right now, the supply chain for hybrids is not established enough to compete with non-hybrid cars. One other factor is that many companies believe that hybrids are just a stepping stone in the lifecycle of "cars" so almost no company invested significantly into the production of hybrids. None of the major corporations out there would EVER make a business decision to get a warm fuzzy feeling. The only green they care about is paper with funny markings and photos of old Presidents on them.
The price of hybrid is electric motor and battery. The extra computer and circuits to charge would be driven down in price with more cars made. The price of copper and other metals would be driven up. The price of platinum shot up when it was needed for catalytic converters. The bottom line is the question. HOW MUCH would the cost go down? Not much. the extra cost is motor an batteries and those are made in very large quantities already unlike the other components specific to hybrids. So you are still looking at a car that is not very economical. Many people would lose money even if the extra cost was subsidized. Hybrids are awesome for specific driving. The concept has no advantage in highway driving.
1) No. Because if you are considering buying a Hybrid you aren't in the market for a gas guzzling performance car. You are doing it for fuel economy so you are considering other high fuel economy vehichles vs. price. You are essentially going to consider how much fuel economy you can squeeze out for the dollar. And right now, Hybrid doesn't win that battle. 2) That's normally the case, but to some degree it's already happened. The Prius sells over 10k cars a month. That's quite a bit for any given nameplate and globally they sell a lot lot more. So it seems to indicate that the price of a Prius doesn't have all that much more room to go down in terms of economies of scale. In other words, Hybrids are inherently more expensive because they utilize more expensive technology and components. Rare earths used in Hybrids aren't cheap - and those batteries may actually become MORE expensive the more vehicles are produced because it will drive up the price for the commodities used. It's basically a luxury item. Think about it, if a car required diamonds to run, the more cars produced would actually drive up the cost.
