Turds Day Rap Up

[howeird]

Busybusy at work today. Bad busy. Three customers are installing various things which connect to our servers, which I've never dealt with before, and neither have any of the other support guys. So I've had two engineers playing tag team at my desk showing me how it works, and discovering that it doesn't always, because there has been no QA outside of the engineers who wrote the code.

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After work, went to Toyota of Sunnyvale's presentation on hybrid cars. Interesting stuff once the two marketing dweebs sat down and let the techie do his presentation. Tech guy really knew his stuff, was articulate, a very good presenter. Only gripe is they had the screen too low, so those of us in the back had to stand to see his slides.

There were sandwiches and water/pop and cookies. It was a full house, maybe 100 people. After the talk we got to look up close at the various hybrid models - Camry, Highlander and Prius. No mileage stickers and no price tags. I went out in the lot afterwards and saw why - $30k for a Prius, more for the other models. Compared to $17k for a Corolla. Let's do the math. The Prius on a good day gets 45mpg, my Corolla 30 mpg. At $3.50/gal, 20,000 miles per year, that's $2,300 a year on the Corolla, $1,555 on the Prius. A whopping savings of $745/year. My Corolla is paid off, which makes this a no brainer financially.

But for the sake of argument, say I was driving a $17k Corolla vs the basic $30k Prius. $13,000 diff would take me 17.4 years to make up in fuel costs.

I don't think so.

Comments

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

30K? That's not a basic Prius, that's the Fully Loaded and then some Prius. I paid $24K for mine, much less loading, just all the safety stuff. It's also a hatchback and I needed at least that (I drove a Escort Wagon before that). A sedan is too small.

I'm getting a real 45mpg on a day in, day out basis and I'm a piker. Many people do better than I do. There is a 600 miles per tank group on the Prius list. The tank holds about 11 gallons. That's rare, but 500 miles per tank is reached by a lot of people. I get nervous at 400 miles into the tank. But I'm the very cautious type (see the bit about getting all the safety features).

And it is a gorgeous geek car. Yep, Geek Car. The monitor makes it fun to see what you can do to improve your gas mileage in true computer geek fashion.

And it's just fun to drive. If you decide to go "Gas Mileage Be Damned", the car has plenty of power and pep. My lead footed husband likes it. He easily goes 85 on I-5 with passing power to spare.

And it is PZEV, so one is being real kind to the environment.

We've already taken down to LA twice, and with Lead Foot, got 40 mpg. We will take it down to Westercon in San Diego, Worldcon in Anaheim, and Oklahoma for a Mythcon. It's tighter than the Escort for luggage, but all the con gear will fit. And it's roomier in the passenger area than the Escort, so we all feel less cramped after a day in the car.

Oh, I did a mention that my Kelly Blue Book is $23K? Yep, basically what I paid for it and it has 15000 miles on it and that is the good condition price. Trying doing that with a Corolla.

This is the first time I've actually loved a car. And feel perfectly safe in it as well. There is a reason Prius owners are so passionate about our cars.

[howeird]

I walked the entire Toyota lot, and saw nothing under $28k.

But even if I accepted your $23k price, that's still $6,000 more than the Corolla, and it would take 8 years to break even.

Remember, though, my Corolla is paid up and will last me another 7 years.

Kelly on my car is $3500, so if I traded it in now, it would only take me 26 years to break even at the resulting $19,500 sticker price.

It's a nice car, it drives well and doesn't spew much junk into the air. But it's a fiscal nightmare.