Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Me and my Prius

[tap tap] Is this thing on? Yeah, I know, it's been forever in Internet Time.

Cross-posted from Facebook:

So, it's been a year-ish. I'm still deleriously happy with my Prius.

I've put ~42,000 km on it, in about 12 months, which is roughly 22,000 above "average" mileage.

I'm getting, on average around 5l/100km, better in summer, worse in winter, average gas prices for Alberta across the last 12 months have been ~$1.10/litre*

At 42,000 km, I've consumed roughly 2100 litres of gas this year, for about $2210 in cost.

When I was looking at vehicles, the EPA rating for the Prius was 4.1, and the best equivalent car (mid-sized, good storage) was about 7.3. Lets assume both EPA ratings were biased by the about the same, even throwing a bit of kindness to the other vehicle, and call it 8l/100km for my theoretical other car.

at 42,000km, I would have consumed roughly 3360 litres of gas, for about $3696 in cost. - a straight up savings of almost $1500 in fuel costs, to say nothing of the 1200 litres I didn't consume.

In addition to this, I've consumed less oil, as well, because the hybrid engine wants oil changes every 8K, instead of 5K as a regular vehicle would. Honestly, I'm not laser-accurate on this, and have done 4, or about every 10K. Assuming the same amount of lazy, a regular vehicle would get an oil change every 7K, or 7 by now. (probably 6, with a mental note to "gotta get that done ASAP!") So, 2 or 3 less oil changes. I suppose that's a couple hundred bucks a year save, as well. No, I don't change my own oil.

So, straight up dollar-wise, am I coming out ahead? Assuming I continue to drive this thing into the ground over 5 years, that's $7500 even if gas prices don't go up. Price checking against a mid-line Camry (Which is not quite as fancy as my top-model Prius, but the high-end Camry is much too fancy (heated leather seats and all that jazz bring up the price a lot.), the Camry costs about $2000 less - so before the end of winter, I'll be coming out ahead. Oh, and I totally forgot the $2000 gubmint rebate. So in fact, I broke even before putting a single K on the tires.

Hunh. I hadn't expected that. I was figuring that my win here was going to be in the lower gas consumption and corresponding emissions reduction and all that. I was expecting to end up with a net $$ loss for that, but it turns out to be a net gain. Crazy. Of course, if I had anything like a normal driving pattern, it would be taking a lot longer to make up that difference, but it would still happen. Sweet.

And even assuming that at the end of those 200,000 km I'll need to replace the battery for ~$4000, I'm still ahead of the game. And that assumption isn't a given, BTW; there's lots of folks on various forums and the like reporting that they're past 200,000 -->miles<-- with no noticable degredation in battery performance.

And, of course, this is all "what if I'd bought a non-hybrid new car?" and not "what if I'd kept driving the van?"...

Let's be charitable, and assume the (1997 Astro) van was getting 15l/100km. So, 6300 litres, or $6930 out of pocket. Yeouch.

I <3 my Prius.

James

*roughly calculated. Might be higher, might be lower, but probably not by more than a few cents.

Labels: geekery, Stuff and Things

1 Comments:

george said...: Facebook transfers don't really count as proper blog updates for those of us now reading it for a second time...but I'm glad that your prius is still so shiny...; 9:23 PM