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Just One Out of 16 Hybrids Pays Back In Gas Savings
thecarchik writes with this snippet from GreenCarReports:
"One of the criticisms of hybrid cars has historically been that there's no payback, especially given the cheap gasoline prices in the US. The extra money you spend on a hybrid isn't returned in gas savings, say critics. Well, that may be true, especially when regular gasoline is averaging $2.77 a gallon this week. But as we often point out, most people don't buy hybrids for payback — they buy them to make a statement about wanting to drive green. Nevertheless, a Canadian study has now looked at the question of hybrid payback in a country whose gasoline is more expensive than ours (roughly $3.70 per gallon this week), with surprising results. The British Columbia Automobile Association projected the fuel costs of 16 hybrids over five years against their purchase price and financing fees. In a study released in late July, only a single one of the 16 hybrids cost less to buy and run than its gasoline counterpart."
The one car that would save you money, according the study, is the Mercedes S400 Hybrid sedan — and it will only cost you $105,000.
That's how the market is supposed to work.
Ideally, the invisible hand of the market would price the hybrid vehicles higher than their non-hybrid counterparts, to such a degree that the hybrid's price discounts the future value of the gasoline saved over the vehicle's lifetime. If the market didn't do this, an arbitrage opportunity would exist... and arbitrageurs would act upon it, which would have the effect of raising the price of the hybrids anyway.
Obviously this will never work out perfectly outside of academia, but if you had a crystal ball and all future prices were knowable by all parties in the present, this is how the pricing would work out, all other variables held constant.
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
Not if you buy a used hybrid.
So the time frame is only over 5 years? Cars can and do last longer than that. Also the comparisons are against the non-hybrid equivalent (Camry Hybrid v Camry, Fusion Hybrid v Fusion). What did they compare the Prius to since it does not have a conventional equivalent?
The hybrids only cost more if you ignore the externalities. That is, if you conveniently ignore the cost of our climate warming up, and the cost in blood and treasure of maintaining access to oil, then sure, the hybrid costs more. Bicycles are even cheaper, if you ignore the cost of your time and of becoming a smear on the expressway. How about hitchhiking?.
...and destruction....environmentalists always forget that at some point all those batteries need to be disposed of somewhere.
Well, it usually takes over 100,000 miles to break even, so the study, which only considers 5 years, is fairly useless. On a thread last week, someone calculated that a Prius will take 320,000 miles to to break even (and I checked the math, as we all like to do!). And the average Prius will last longer than 5 years - especially since those with a "greener" lifestyle know how bad buying a new car is for the environment.
I'd imagine about half of the cars pay back the owner in fuel costs. And it's obviously variable as gas prices are fairly volatile lately...
Think of today's Hybrids as the equivalent of the first iPod. "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." It's the 3rd and 4th gen of these vehicles that will blow everything else out off the road, in a matter of speaking.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
From what I understand, nickel (used in Prius batteries) mining is much more polluting than burning hydrocarbons. (Which the Prius still does occasionally)
There is more to enviromental impact than what comes out of the tailpipe...
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
The thing is, if you are TRULY concerned about the environment (and must drive a car), then you would buy a used car.
The amount of energy and resources and toxic chemicals involved in the car manufacturing process FAR outweighs any "statement" you make with a hybrid.
And if you REALLY REALLY care about the environment, you would carpool, or take the bus (if it's available), or walk or ride your bike.
What I'm saying is, you aren't being "green" by buying a hybrid. You're just pretending. You're a poseur.
Most people won't have their cay paid off for 7-10 years, MINIMUM.
Why anyone in their right mind would expect a 5 year payoff is beyond me. You don't even get that kind of payback with a ground-source heat pump.
Oh - and also, the study has a massive flaw:
"The analysis assumes a constant gas price of $1.17 per litre and a driving distance of 20,000 kms a year"
Constant gas price? Hilarious. The price of gas in Canada was already around $1.30+ / litre when Katrina hit. Wait until the next disaster strikes and it is > $1.50 / L. Then we will see who is lucky enough to be driving a hybrid.
There's a reason that gas cars are cheaper. The oil companies are not stupid. They know the price point at which alternative fuels become competitive with gas and they keep the price a little below that. The price of oil is not high enough for anything else to compete....and it'll stay that way barring government interference. It's good for oil companies, they're rolling in the dough. It's good for consumers, gas is cheap and plentiful. It's good for politicians, their voters are happy with them. When glitches happen to the fuel supply and price drives high then all sorts of alternative power supply comes out of the woodwork. The price never stays high for long though. No one wants expensive fuel.
As with all economics related to energy, we're not factoring any of the environmental costs in. So a hybrid might cost more, or it might be saving thousands of dollars. Without factoring in things like pollution, and destructive weather caused by climate change it's really hard to know.
Or, he's thinking of the long term rather than short term. If his buying a hybrid kicks in to the car companies that they should make hybrids and they do, then in the long term it will create much more efficient cars everywhere rather than just his one bike trip back and forth to work and the store.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
If you have any common sense, hybrids are only worth the up-front cost if you're stuck in traffic often. The fuel economy ratings for non-hybrids pretty much go into the trash when idling bumper to bumper. Also hybrids may make sense for certain fleet vehicles like taxis, where they often wait around idling.
Apparently 15 out of the 16 people who buy hybrids aren't in traffic situations bad enough to make up the up-front cost comparable to fuel wastage in a non-hybrid. Nor are they using them as taxis or service vehicles which are constantly kept running. So they must be buying for image rather than actual need.
Now I think part of this is that most of the people who could best use a hybrid either can't afford one (hybrids still aren't represented well in the low-end used car market), or they actually prefer to use other options like mass transit.
Now one of the other long term costs people seem to bring up is battery disposal. But if you're doing it right, those batteries get recycled. For those in the industry it's known that the older lead-acid batteries are one of the most heavily recycled goods on the planet, and those also contain "nasty" chemicals. Considering the cost to manufacture the newer lithium based batteries, hopefully the manufacturers are smart enough to make them just as recyclable as their less energy dense predecessors.
The used car that he didn't buy was bought by someone else. There isn't an infinite amount of used cars. And when he will sell his used car, that will make one more hybrid car on the used car market. So stop saying that buying used is green. It is green only if would have been disposed otherwise. When speaking about cars, you don't want to buy one that would have been disposed if you didn't buy it :-)
Then, just because it is even greener to use a bicycle or take the bus, you must agree that is it greener to use a Civic Hybrid than, let say, a Accord. And it is greener to use an Accord than a Hummer. It's not always black and white, but if you must use a car and can't carpool, a Civic Hybrid is one of your best bet for the environment. What if you can carpool? Then carpool your Civic Hybrid, it's even better.
I used Edmunds Cost of ownership list.
At my office everyone was trying to out-hybrid each other, and talking about all the money they would save. At 5 dollars a gallon it really seemed worth it to them to buy brand new hybrids.
I showed that at 10 dollars a gallon the civic hybrid finally paid for itself in the typical 5 year ownership term over the non-hybrid, nothing else even came close until you modeled gas at 11 dollars a gallon.
For kicks I modeled a 1976 Chevy Monte Carlo - a Giant Gas-wasting monster of a 2-seater. And showed that assuming you needed 150/month for ongoing maintenance, You could buy another one each year, fill it with 5 dollar gas all year, then set it on fire, using 10 gallons of gasoline before buying a new one... and it would still be significantly cheaper to own than a prius.
I get it, it's about conspicuous conservation. But Faux Green is pretty played out.
I'd rather just burn petrol with the proven exhaust filters
BS alert! Please provide proof that there exist 'filters' that can stop CO2 from being produced from an ICE that can scale to billions of vehicles.
Changing the cars is the first step. Once cars are electric, changing the power supply is easy in comparison to trying to 'clean' up billions of mobile emission points.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
The cost to operate is probably a bit more complicated than that.
For example, many states allow you to drive in their HOV lanes (aka 'carpool lane') if you are by yourself in a hybrid. Depending on your commute route, that can save a ton of gas, not to mention time.
because I want Ford to know it's important to ME.
And I'm sure YOU are very important to you too.
If you could buy one for 100 dollars right now, and the spaceship seated 2 people instead of the 4 you wanted, that would be a fair comparison. Since you can buy a Tesla Roadster right now that basically fulfills the requirements, it's just a little too costly, and a little too small.
"Buy used" is a nice sentiment and all, but if everyone follows that sentiment who the heck are you going to buy it from?
Somebody needs to be first purchaser, and if the only people who are willing to be first purchasers don't buy the cars you want to buy used you are SOL.
Forget diamonds, copyright is forever.
Nickel isn't polluting, it just sits there. Presumably you mean the production of a few hundred pounds of NiMH batteries, containing (if I recall correctly) about 20 pounds of nickel. Note that the chrome and steel in a regular car already contains nickel, and that the real toxic villain is the lead-ACID battery in a conventional car
So what makes you think the pollution from manufacturing a few hundred pounds of recyclable batteries is remotely comparable to the TONS of gasoline and CO2 saved over 100,000 miles by driving a more fuel-efficient car? Repeating crap you've heard doesn't make it true.
=S