|
My Subaru gets bad gas mileage. It's 4 wheel drive, which doesn't help. I have sticky tires on it, which doesn't help. I, um, drive it to its fullest potential... which definitely doesn't help. (I have a performance software package that boosts its horsepower, and that, ironically, improves its gas mileage, but that's not the point.)
Well I thought that too, except for the power of spreadsheets. Because the thing is, my Subaru is almost paid off, so within a few months it's going to be costing me zero ... except in gas. So if we compare two scenarios, one where I keep my current car with its bad gas mileage, and another where I get a shiny new Prius (which I somehow find in the corner of a bathroom stall such that it only costs $299/month to own), I would still need gas to cost over $6 per gallon before that would be worth it. Don't get me wrong, I want to use less gas. But when the economics are that far away from working out, it's pretty hard to justify right now. Perhaps if I made a kajillion dollars I would feel differently--- or perhaps I just need to wait 6 months and gas prices will be in that neighborhood. |
So you might imagine that with gas prices being what they are, I should ditch the thing and buy a shiny new Prius because the mileage is so much better. (Let's assume that I were lobotomized so that I could somehow live with a car with less than 300hp.)It's still too soon to justify the purchase of a hybrid car on purely economic grounds. But you did forget to factor in the $3150 tax deduction. Not that it would have affected the math too much. For us, the deciding factors were:
(1) Our cars were standards and none of our relatives can drive stick. Didn't used to be a factor, it's a huge issue now with two kids and regularly visiting relatives.
(2) My 3-year old couldn't climb into his car seat in our Honda CRV. Not a big deal until we had our hands full with a second kid.
(3) I want to drive in the carpool lane. It's hard to put a dollar value on shaving 10-15 minutes off a commute, but it clearly has real economic value.
(4) Let's face it, the Prius has some kick-ass geek features like the nav system, Bluetooth and the real-time gas/electric dashboard.
(5) It just feels better to contribute less to the destruction of the environment and our dependency on Middle East oil. It might not make a dent, but it sure feels better.
Oh right, and I forgot that you just bought one. Maybe that could put me in the running for "Most Insensitive Blog Post Ever". Awesome.
But it sounds like you were in the market for a new car anyway--- I agree that the playing field would be much more level if I were going to buy a car right now. But since I'm perfectly happy with mine, it makes the economics much worse.
Posted by: Rus at August 24, 2006 08:06 AMYeah, we bought our smugmobile because it was a cool teched-out car, not for the gas mileage -- gas was about $1.80 a gallon at the time, and even then I thought it was expensive. But for me, it was probably the grab-the-handle-and-open-the-door (especially on the back liftgate) auto entry system that swayed me. It's just a slick car.
The carpool lane is the most important thing for my wife, and since we put more than 33K miles a year on it, that makes the economics a little better. We needed a new (to us) car at the time anyway -- and if you figure any sort of new car worth commuting 50 miles each way in is going to run you a minimum of $15K, the extra $10K or so for the Prius starts to make more economic sense. Still not compelling purely economically, and ... well, the car has no horsepower nor handling, and a lobotomy for Rus is probably expensive.
It does have the cool "feature" that because the regen system does most of the braking, the actual brakes need very little maintenance. Our 70K+ mileage car still has significantly more than half of its original brake pads remaining.
Posted by: Andy MacKay at August 24, 2006 08:11 AM