Figuring Out How Much a Hybrid, Diesel, or Small Car Will Save Per Year

 There's a calculator at www.fast-math.org in which you can enter the
distance you drive per year, the miles per gallon or kilometers per
liter your present vehicle gets, and what a proposed new car will get,
and it will tell you how much money you'll save per year.
Take care,
- Jeff

 

   But the answer you get will be fradulent unless you also figure in the
finance charges and opportunity cost of the extra cost of the hybrid plus an
allowance for the expected additional maintenance.  (That was the business grad
in me talking, I would still love to own a Prius.)

Vaughn

 On Fri, 19 Oct 2007 21:51:35 GMT, "Vaughn Simon"


May not be any expected aditional maintenance.  The battery may wear
out eventually, but on the Prius, anyway, the transmission is so much
less complex than a regular automatic that the whole thing is likely a
wash.

 

   Sorry, but that is just wishful thinking.  Conventional or hybrid,
transmissions these days should be assumed to normally last the lifetime of the
vehicle,  so the elegant design of the Prius transmission is a wash.

  There is a good warranty on the Prius battery, but non-warranty replacements
are certainly in the future is the car lasts long enough to pay for itself.
Additionally, any hybrid has expensive parts (motors, controlllers etc.) that
just are not required in a conventional vehicle.  So far, few of those parts are
generic enough to be second-sourced, so replacement will be very expensive.

    Remember, I am not knocking hybrids, but lets keep the discussion real.

Vaughn

 On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:42:15 GMT, "Vaughn Simon"


are

Looks like you might be knocking hybrids.  You are assuming that an
automatic transmission will last the life of a vehicle and then
assuming that motors and controllers that have been shown to do so
won't.  It looks like the batteries will end up lasting the life of
the vehicle as well, most of the time.