Setting aside the fact that an indeterminate number people buy hybrids for reasons other than saving money (green props, emissions, etc.), what about Ye Olde Hybrid premium? Where are we on that score these days, what with $4 the new $1.50 down at the pump? NADAguides has done a little number crunching on that score. They reckon "only a handful of hybrid cars make financial sense for a consumer who buys a new car every five years." Warning that miles driven and local gas prices are significant variables, NADA conclude that the following gas – electric cars recoup their "extra" cost within the five-year time frame (presented in order of fastest recoupage to slowest): Toyota Camry Hybrid, Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid, Nissan Altima Hybrid, Toyota Prius, Honda Civic Hybrid, Cadillac Escalade Hybrid (just kidding). NADA's press release gives us a big ass chart of local gas prices and uses EPA stats and manufacturers' MSRP. But they don't make mention of the single largest expense of car ownership: depreciation. And here's a question: to what "gas equivalent" did they compare the Prius?
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What’s the extra cost of a prius compared to? A corolla?
A non hybrid prius should be pretty cheap, since it’d be lacking a drivetrain ;)
Ah but that’s the genius of the Prius. You take two identical cars, but one happens to contain a hybrid drive train, then you’re giving the buyer a stark choice. The hybrid pretty much has to pay for itself — that’s the only difference. But you take two entirely different models — no one demands a Civic “pay for itself” versus a Cobalt; or a Yaris to pay for itself versus an Aveo. Prius is a different breed. And a lot of people like that breed.
A while back I found an interesting paper written from the perspective of a municipal fleet buyer trying to figure out whether a hybrid was worth the money.
http://www.sog.unc.edu/uncmpa/pdfs/capstone/Sherman%20Capstone%20for%20Web.pdf
Page 7 of the above linked paper has a chart of best total operating cost choices at differ per-gallon costs that is very informative.
And here’s a question: to what “gas equivalent” did they compare the Prius?
Oh, probably a Corolla. But I wonder how the Prius would perform if you ditched the electric half of the powertrain.
I’m guessing 40+ MPG highway, with considerably less expense. But you’d lose your green street cred.
But what about the smug emissions?
A Hybrid makes no sense to the person who owns a vehicle outright, and had no plans to buy.
If your only reason to buy new is to save money on gas, it will take you decades to make your money back.
1. You’ve already taken most of the depreciation hit
2. You don’t have a car payment now.
3. Your savings on gas cannot possibly come close to what your payment will be.
Drive your gas hog until it falls apart. Keep it well maintained, drive gently, and you save a boatload of cash in the long run over going out and spending 28K on a new Prius so you can save $75 a month in gas.
But I wonder how the Prius would perform if you ditched the electric half of the powertrain.
There’s no way Toyota would sell the car with only a 1.5 liter, 76hp engine (at least in the US) so it’s a moot question, but the answer is probably “very, very slowly”.
True enough, Alex, but when it DOES come time to buy a replacement car, even if gas is (temporarily) at $3 or $3.50 a gallon instead of $4.17 or $5 a gallon, DON’T FORGET TO BUY A HYBRID IF POSSIBLE OR THE MOSTECONOMICAL VEHICLE THAT WILL DO THE JOB! Whether it’s a gas-turbine hydraulic hybrid, a gas electric hybrid, a diesel electric hybrid, OR simply the most economical conventional vehicle within your budget, everyone needs to think back & remember 2008.
It’s certainly seared into my brain, but so was 1973, 1979, 1990, and 2005 (Katrina). Didn’t take me long to decide to plump for a Prius.
So many people seem to have short-term memory loss, it’s astounding. It’s not like we haven’t had the OPEC people shoot across our bow multiple times, along with natural disasters and – PEAK OIL.
Yet here we are 3 years after Katrina and until a couple of months ago, people were still buying Stupendously Uneconomical Vehicles.
You may have overlooked another advantage unrelated to cost. Here in Northern Virginia, hybrid owners, driving solo, can use HOV lanes.
For many, preserving that most inelastic of resources – time – makes the premium worth it.
Defeats the original purpose of HOV lanes, but there you have it.
Thank you General Assembly.
Slate has a recent article that attempts to answer the question “Is it more energy-efficient to buy a gas-guzzling used car than a brand-new hybrid?”
Worth the read. The conclusion, the new Pruis is cheaper when measured with the metrics that matter to that reader. If anything, the article illustrates how many different ways there are to measure efficiency. Bottom line, each metric needs to be weighted depending on the buyer’s desires. Therefore, each case is unique and needs to be measured separately. The one-size-fits-all arguments are a waste of time.
The assholes at my Toyota dealership wanted 28k (no tax, base package) for a Prius, or 30k for a used package #2, so a Malibu Hybrid without that ridiculous mark-up WOULD be a better deal.
Having spent a week driving both a Corolla S and a Prius, neither are as solid as a conventional midsize sedan would be, but the Prius is definitely built of better materials than a Corolla is. The Prius still had slightly tinny-sounding doors, but it didn’t have a cardboard headliner or vinyl sunvisors that the ‘Rolla had.
The Prius with a 1.8 liter Corolla engine would probably be able to get 40 mpg highway, but its city mileage would suffer considerably. And it would probably be all but undriveable with only the 1.5 liter Prius engine and no HSD.
Not so redrum. If, or when Toyota decided to sell it’s Aygo in North America (68 HP, 998 cc engine in Germany), they wouldn’t be able to roll them off the boats fast enough.
And if they decided to sell the even smaller iQ here, I’m certain the engine could be even smaller…AND it would be a home run.
The Aygo must be a modern day equivalent of an early 1990’s Suzuki Swift. With 3 cylinders, I believe that the Swift broke the 40 MPG barrier.
ChrisHaak:
The Prius …would probably be all but undriveable with only the 1.5 liter Prius engine and no HSD.
no, no, no…
IF people knew how to be anticipatory drivers instead of point and shoot cell phone drivers, the 1.5l prius engine would perform ‘adequate’ for everything but steep hills…
how fast does a commercial truck accelerate when at payload? i bet it’s a lot slower that a prius without its hsd…
Sure, it might not be ‘fun’, but a prius without hsd and the same small engine would probably get equal gas mileage on the highway and 35+ mpg in town…
old and slow:
with 3 cylinders, the geo metro equivalent broke 60 mpg…
In the early 80s Toyota put out a small gas car with a 1500 cc engine AND awd complete with an extra low gear. The Tercel was a dandy hatchback, I drove all over the country in one and they were popular for years in places like California.
improvement_needed:
how fast does a commercial truck accelerate when at payload? i bet it’s a lot slower that a prius without its hsd…
It depends on how the drive train of the truck is spece’d.
Best case with a big 15L Cat engine & 13sp it is not much worse than a Prius.
Worst case in a city tractor with a 7-8L engine and 6 sp it can be 30-45 seconds on level ground.
Every time someone talks about the ‘hybrid premium’ I wish they’d also tack on the ‘nav system premium’ and the ‘leather seats premium.’ Those things take a looooooooong time to pay for themselves, but people seem happy to stump the extra grand or two. As RF said, there are lots of reasons to choose the hybrid when it’s an option.
To add on to Alex Rodriguez’ post, on the end of having a payment on a vehicle and trading into something smaller:
I decided to go small and cheap this year after spending 3 years in a Grand Prix GTP. Thanks to a ridiculous payment, premium gas, and sticky tires that torched my mpg, my yearly cost to own that thing was around $15,000 or more. Not good for a college student.
So, for me a Cobalt LS w/ no options was the cheapest option. My father’s a former GM employee, and there was a total of $3000 on the hood for me when I got it. My total financed including a small rollover was over $1000 under MSRP. Now, yes I could have gotten a Yaris for cheaper but I would have been outright screwed over by the dealers near me so it would have actually been worse. I trust the dealer I got my Chevy from and I was rewarded with about $1200 more than another dealer in town appraised my car for more than 3 months earlier.
After all my scenarios and data crunching, the worst case is my 4 year cost for each vehicle is the nearly the same. IIRC, the GP may have come out ahead by a couple hundred in one or two of my scenarios.
There are so many variables that you really have to crunch the numbers and take into account who you’re dealing with. I’m very happy I did this and thus far this summer I’ve saved over $500 from car payment decrease and gas decrease and project a first year savings of $3000. Pretty damn significant savings.
By the way, I really like this thing as a daily driver. Is it full of creature comforts? No, doesn’t bother me. Is the plastic cheap? Absolutely and this does annoy me slightly, but the standard auxiliary jack makes up for it in my opinion. It’s basic transportation and the damn thing is quieter than the GP, believe it or not.
Not so redrum. If, or when Toyota decided to sell it’s Aygo in North America (68 HP, 998 cc engine in Germany), they wouldn’t be able to roll them off the boats fast enough.
Apples-to-oranges. The Aygo is way smaller than the current generation Prius (about 1000 lbs lighter and 3 feet shorter). Its weight-to-hp ratio is about 27-to-1. To achieve the same ratio in the Prius would require a 107 hp motor (basically, something like the motor in the Yaris, which despite also being lighter than the Prius manages “only” 29/36 with a stick).
Careful now, Walking Eye… Liking the Cobalt in these parts may instigate a tar-and-feathering. ;)
The Prius is significantly larger than a Corolla, which is almost certainly what they compared it too. Therefore, this study is pure BS.
improvement_needed Says:
July 10th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
old and slow:
with 3 cylinders, the geo metro equivalent broke 60 mpg…
And a bicycle gets infinite MPG. A Geo Metro is much, much, much smaller than a Prius. And slower. And has less safety equipment. And fewer high tech toys. And…
“…for a consumer who buys a new car every five years.”
I didn’t buy a Toyota so I could resell it in five years. I bought a Toyota so I could resell it in TWENTY years.
It always amazes me how in all this discussion about hybrids, that it is forgotten to take into account the type of usage the vehicle will be subjected to.
Hybrids only make any sense for city use or stop-start traffic situations, where the electric motor is used on a “demand” basis, with “topping-up” of the battery from the gas engine. Small cars with small engines (European & Asian style) and “stop-start” technology (when stationery engine is turned off), can very effectively compete with hybrids, such as the Prius and others.
Hybrids on the open freeway have no better fuel consumption than equivalently engined conventional vehicles (Prius only has a 1.5liter engine!). In fact hybrids will have worse fuel consumption because of the extra battery & electric motor weight they are having to carry around.
“NADA: Malibu Hybrid A Better Buy Than A Toyota Prius”
I had to laugh at that. Wryly, of course.
To people like me, who drove nothing but GM through my teens and twenties, but who now have sworn off all GM products because of quality (and quality-of-service-department) problems, that statement seems just so puffed up and full of itself.
You see, when a person like me reads that statement, it seems ludicrous. Because for me to agree with it, it would mean that I would have to agree with the premise that General Motors’ manufacturing quality is on a par with, or somewhat close to a par with Toyota’s.
Folks, there’s no effin’ way! Malibu over the Prius in ANY category? How sad…
This statement about highway mileage for hybrids being an impossibility of phyics due to weight of batteries, etc., is unenlightened at best.
Owning both a Prius and Civic Hybrid, I can confidently state that facts are missing in the logic used to make the conclusion about Hwy mpg. To wit:
Non hybrid…constant engine rpm, and for four cylinder engines no cylinder shutdown. Constant fuel feed.
Prius: Total engine shut off at speed during any low load situation such as downhill, level coast, strong tailwind (no kidding), and generally any time the computer figures that battery power is sufficient to take over. Yes at 70mph. Even on flat roads the engine cycles on and off at times. Yet naysayers seem to assume that it goes down the highway like any other car. Nope.
Civic: Engine always turns, but fuel shuts off and the valves float so zero fuel consumption at same times as the Prius. Same result, different approach. Again, the down the road engine use of the hybrid Civic is not like the regular Civic, which never drops the fuel delivery comepletely.
Both vehicles routinely make higher highway mileage than non hybrids for these reasons. The added weight does not seem to be the penalty assumed.
Having said all this, I am pretty sure that a simple stop-start hybrid with regen braking, when driven with gentle accel and conservation of momentum can get very close to full hybrids for most urban driving.
Bottom line though, most drivers accelerate stupidly and brake wastefully by habit I suppose because it feels like they are getting somewhere more quickly and/or it feels good. For them, nothing will give very impressive mgp.
Deceleration Fuel Cutoff, DFCO, is in some conventional cars. Does what it says when throttle is closed, rpm at highway speeds and other parameters met. Auto or manual. At around 1500 rpm injectors are enabled. My 05 Accord V6 has, 05 Sable Duratec 30 does not. If the car decels substantially at idle likely DFCO. Sable acts close to free wheeling. Test by turning key off during decel and noting if significant change. If not then DFCO. Key to run position only. Do not start as engine is turning.