The hybrid premium: How much more does a hybrid car cost?

Ever since hybrids became popular, with the second generation of the Toyota Prius, the question arose of whether the fuel savings justified a hybrid car's higher price. The extra expense for a hybrid car has been called the hybrid premium.
 The extra cost for a hybrid car comes from the additional equipment in the driveline. Along with the gas engine, hybrid cars have an electric propulsion motor, a high-voltage battery pack, and a power control module, this latter component determining how to feed electric power into the drive system.
 Now, with many automakers offering some type of hybrid car, the competition has opened up. So what is the current status of the hybrid premium? We looked at a selection of 2012 hybrid models, comparing them with their straight gasoline counterparts, if any. In choosing cars for comparison, we stuck to trim levels where navigation was available, to level the playing field. However, even looking at cars at the same trim level, differences such as horsepower and torque assert themselves, so technically we are still talking about an apples to oranges comparison.