The "Cost Saving" Prius

On May 31st, USA Today published an article about hybred cars and the money you save getting them. The results were pretty shocking, I thought! The hybrid they went into the most detail with was the Toyota Prius. The Toyota Prius is about $5,000 more expensive than its conventional counterpart, the Toyota Corolla. So what will it take make back that $5,000?

The article assumed an average of 15,000 miles a year put onto the car. This is low for many people, but about what the average lease allows per year of driving without extra charges.

The only way the Prius would make up the $5,000 extra invested in it with tax credits and gas saved would be if gas cost $10.10 a gallon or you drove 66,500 miles a year.

So if you're thinking of getting a hybrid car, don't do it for the gas savings, they're not there. Your overhead is higher than what you would save driving your car over 5 years.

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We did the same math on the Civic Hybrid. Given how we drive, patterns etc, we figured it would take about 8-10 years to recoup the added cost with gas at $4.00 a gallon. Given what little is known about the longevity of the battery pack etc, it seems like an iffy proposition to us.

Here in the Bay Area, the cars are considered a social statement rather than anything that actually saves you money. However, one of the local dot com's (The name escapes me) as a company policy makes up the difference in the cost so for thier people its a win/win

Very interesting. I recently heard a story on the radion in which people don't mind long commutes and paying for all the gas that it would take because the amount of money they save by buying a house way out in the suburbs would is more than the amount of money they would have to pay to buy a house close in to the city. As unfortunate as it is, unless the alternatives to energy efficiency come down in price, people won't be opting for them.

After I bought my Scion, my wife was looking at the Prius. She did the same math and realized that (we're talking buying here, not leasing) she'd have to put about 50k miles/year on it to amortize its non-recurring price versus the Corolla or the Civic.

However, what attracted her to the Prius in the first place was her belief that she has a moral obligation to pollute less; and the reason she did not buy the Prius was that she simply didn't like the complexity of it.

Interstingly enough, six months later, she has decided to keep her Isuzu Trooper and has ordered a $900 electric bicycle ( www.nesea.org... ) which she will use to commute to work (14 miles round trip) on surface streets.

900 bucks for an Electric Bycicle..ouch. You can buy addons to regular bikes for far less you know...

www.zapworld.com...