I think if you do alot of driving, this car is a great purchase. But a better way to save gas is to drive less.

My wife and I share one car and average about 75 miles per week. It has a big V8 and gets about 20 mpg during a good week -usually less. So most people with Hybrids and other super fuel efficient car owners burn more fuel that my big machine.

I think you lose the moral high ground of a Hybrid if you are driving 30,000 miles a year but I think you probably need to drive that many to get a payback on the investment.

I see some smug coming in from the north

The smug is a huge reason not to get one.

I have a gas guzzler (that I adore, except for the mileage) and my circumstances have changed since I bought it. I'm driving more (450 miles per week), we're getting rid of the boat we needed to tow, gas prices have gone up, etc. That doesn't change the fact that I have a car payment to make, and unless I can get a return on the investment I made in my current vehicle, buying some new hybrid is the least sensible choice. In fact, even with the increased gas prices, I'm paying less on my current vehicle than I would for a hybrid.

I'm confused. Are you not paying any more for the new car than th old one including financing? Your car with 100k miles must have been nearly paid off/nearly paid off .

Financial gurus have been all over the news lately pointing out the folly of replacing a paid-off fuel ineffecient car with a new car that gets great gas mileage. In most cases, its makes sense to keep the larger car. It takes a lot of miles driven for lower gas costs to cancel out a a higher car payment as c152 pointed out.

Are you suggesting that dorky looking car isn't a dorky looking car?

I'm a big Toyota fan. Ive owned a few and currently have one in the garage. The Prius is an awesome car, but its not for everyone. btw, most Prius owners think its dorky looking I would buy an old Honda over a Prius, or a later model car that gets 30mpg (TSX comes to mind)

I've been kicking around the possibility of getting the VW Jetta Sportwagen TDI. I know that diesel is more cash, but the mileage is estimated at 50mpg hwy, which means more like 40mpg hwy. Consumer Reports suggests to lower advertised mpg by 20%. After the warranty is up, there is the option of the fryer-diesel adapter. Also, diesels last forever.

Also, I won't be purchasing next car until October 2010...so we'll see what happens until then. If Chevy still exists in 2012, I'm interested in the Volt.

__________________
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/sto...maverick/print

This is exactly my problem with the hybrids. People don't take into account the manufacturing process for the batteries. They aren't free.

I looked into the source for the battery packs in the Prius. (This was a little while back, when the Prius first came out, so the supplier might have changed by now.) Did you know the heavy metals for the batteries are mined in a strip mining operation in Canada? The raw material is then transported to a port on the Pacific ocean where it is shipped all the way to Japan to be turned into batteries. Then, it is shipped back to North America. I hope that they at least use rail to move the ore from where it is mined to the port, rather than individual trucks. But I wouldn't count on it.

People are impressed by the mileage, but that simply isn't the whole story! All the fuel expended moving the battery raw materials from North America to Japan and back would fuel a whole lot of Civics and Corollas for quite a while. Not to mention the environmental disaster that the strip mining operation is causing. In Engineering, this is called the "cradle to grave" cost.

Simply put, I am not convinced that buying a Prius is better for the environment than buying, say, a Corolla. Better mileage, sure, but not better for the environment.

Saving $200 a month is a huge savings- that is just on about 1000 miles of driving for work. If you had a hybrid and drove just 75 miles per week, you could go almost 2 months without having to refuel- especially if it is mostly local driving, because the hybrids do better on MPGs with local driving because you are mainly using the electric motor.

__________________
Peace,

John

My Librarything

MySpace

My eBay World

. . . .

On the old car we had a little less than a year to go on payments and we just reached 100K miles (we bought it at 50K pre-owned). It's not folly because, having owned a few cars that I have paid off and tried to keep running, on most vehicles some crazy and nasty stuff can start happening once you get past 100,000 miles that starts running up repair and service bills- particularly on American-made vehicles as this one was. That made it a no-brainer- plus, if we are saving even say $100/month on gas (which is a very low estimate), over say ten years that is a $12,000 savings on gas alone!

That is nice chunk of change...

__________________
Peace,

John

My Librarything

MySpace

My eBay World

. . . .