The False Economy of Hybrid Cars

Ever wonder why these things haven't caught on better? Why everyone isn't jumping off the couch and running to the dealership to buy one of these 60 mpg wonders? So did I, so our investigative team took a look.

Taking the Toyota Prius as a good base model, we found that this car gets about 60 mpg on the highway. According to the sources we found, it averages about 55 mpg between city and highway with reasonable driving. Pretty impressive. After tax title and tags, you are looking to spend about $30,000 dollars on one of these little boogers, financed over 5 years at 3.5%, the vehicle will ultimately cost you $32,745; that is the total cost we will use for our calculations...

So, at what increased fuel economy will this car pay for itself in savings at the pump?

As a base of comparison, let's use our family Ford Excursion. For the sake of this argument, let us factor out the cost of the Excursion. We are testing whether it pays to buy a hybrid purely for fuel efficiency, so we will not weigh it against the price of an existing vehicle. We are purely seeing how long it will take to pay for itself. This is the ideal comparison as you don't get much further on the other end of the fuel economy spectrum. The "Beast", as we call it, factors in at about 13 mpg. Considering the 8,000 lb truck, this is not too bad.

Using $2 for a gallon of gas, we subtract the fuel efficiencies (55 mpg -13 mpg) to get the difference in economy, 42 mpg.

Now, we take that 42 mpg, the cost of the Prius, and the cost of gas and make a pretty little equation...

($32,745 / $2 gallon) x 42mpg= 687645 miles

My logic here is you will have to buy 16,372.5 gallons of gas to equal the cost of the car. Multiply that by the delta in fuel efficiency and you have to drive the Prius 687,645 miles to pay for itself.
Or to put it in context I would have to make my 40 mile round trip commute 5 days a week for 66 years to come out even.

So, next time you want to jump on something that will "save" you money by spending money, let us know and we will crunch the numbers.

Long Over Due I Guess

It has been quite some time since I have posted and even longer since I put anything up with any substance. In doing this I have a quandary. So much has happened since then I have no idea what to post about.

First, I would like to congratulate my wife who ate her first California roll today. This may not seem like a big deal to some, but if you knew my wife you would understand the great spirit of adventure she must have felt to try this. Kudos to her.

Bad luck has plagued me lately. It was bound to happen since I have experienced such good luck in the past years. I attribute this, after long thought, to the fact that up until lately I had enough wiggle room around my life to circumvent disaster and turn it into something somewhat successful. Since August, I have given myself no wiggle room. Like Bilbo, I was butter spread over too much bread and when I had wiggle room I was to wiped to make use of it.
I was building a garage, which from about mid-August to October was an average of 40 hours a week. Granted, during August and early September it was more like 60 hours a week. Me and my faithful crew of friends trudged through that while we were working 40 hours a week and I was taking 14 credit hours of classes at school. Coupled with home, I was running a marathon pulling a rickshaw. All was well until fall break and then the wheels fell off.

With my entire nuclear family in tow, I nearly lost everything on the interstate. We were driving to Nashville to pick up a load of junk that I had won in an on-line auction, driving my dad's excursion and pulling a trailer I had borrowed from short man. Doing 70 miles an hour on the interstate, the driver's side rear tire blew out and caused me to loss control of the truck. I managed to miss guard rails on both sides, and by God's own mercy came to rest safely in the median. Though I put on the bravest face I could I was shaken to the core. From there, it was all down hill.
School was too much so I had to drop a class, Algebra for the 3rd time. The rest of the classes I resigned myself to just try and pass. Nothing more, nothing less. The garage came to a screeching halt, what little effort I had to give went to the grind of school and work, which was more, drudgery than ever.
And then the storm hit... the refrigerator died... my truck broke down... the car broke down... garage cost spiraling out of control... it started to look like I would not even pass 2 of my 3 classes at all... work was a drag, to the point where it was actually painful to go... something had to give.

Then there was Christmas. My 23 days vacation to salvation. The semester ended the day before my vacation started so I decided I wasn't going to care what I made, I was just glad it was over. I needed to recharge my batteries, to get a fresh outlook. So for the next 23 days I did... nothing.
My fat ass sat in the chair for nearly a month, but it was exactly what I needed. That coupled with so times with good friends and family put me right back on track. I am again energized and feel like I did in August. Not as well as I did in July, but I think that will come with the looming completion of the garage and the launch of a new project.
Still, I am having bad luck but it isn't pushing me under the surface like it was. I am just riding the crests and surviving the troughs, but for now that will do until I can start making my own luck again. Sure, the truck going down again sucks... the van losing its mind sucks... having to spend extra money to do things that I was promised would be done for free sucks... but right now I don't care. It is what it is, and I can only control what happens tomorrow.
To all this, bless my wife.

more to envy

as if you weren't jealous enough, i am posting from my phone...