Slashdot Mirror
Hybrid Car Owners Not Likely To Buy Another Hybrid
An anonymous reader writes "A new study has found that people who purchased a hybrid car in the past are not likely to buy a hybrid for their next car purchase. 'Only 35% of hybrid vehicle owners chose to purchase a hybrid again when they returned to the market in 2011, according to auto information company R.L. Polk & Co. If you factor out the super-loyal Toyota Prius buyers, the repurchase rate drops to under 25%.' The study also found Florida drivers to be a bit more loyal to the hybrid segment than elsewhere in the country. 'It's hard to know what's causing the low repurchase rate. One reason is that about 17,000 people purchased electric cars last year, and other data shows that many of those were trading in a hybrid vehicle. Honda has been hounded by high-profile class-action and small claims court lawsuits over fuel economy issues with older models of its Civic hybrid. ... Hybrid vehicles represent just 2.4% of the overall new vehicle market in the U.S., according to Polk, down from a high of 2.9% in 2008.'"
The cost difference between a regular gas sedan and a hybrid of the same size is generally not offset by the savings in fuel costs for driving it. Why do it again if it didn't work the first time?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'd buy a diesel again in a heart beat. I get 40 miles to the gallon city in my Volkswagen Sportswagen. And diesel is 30 cents cheaper a gallon than petrol. Plus, the technology is robust. Diesel is definite the way to go if you want high gas mileage and low costs.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
It could be that people had unreasonable expectations from the hybrid to begin with, if you look at the advertising they promised a green car that doesn't use fuel and has flowers grow in its wake. In reality you ended up getting something that was marginally better fuel mileage than a compact car, but costs a lot more.
I drive a prius, I am disappointed with the fact that they STILL use outdated nimh batteries instead of lithium. Afaik they also don't use any of these new awesome ultracapacitors, so what the hell are they doing? The industry's stagnation annoys me, and I doubt I am alone.
Get ride of all the complexity caused by the hybrids (battery packs, motors, etc).
Clean diesel is here today.
I drive a VW Golf TDI - It's not slow by any means (140hp, a bit below average for a hatchback, but 240ib/ft of torque, over a wide rev range, so it's very driveable, great passing power, etc), has great handling (no skinny fuel miser tires that ruin the driving experience), and gets great mileage. (30/42 EPA, but those are quite conservative. I get typically 33-35 around town, at 60mph constant speed I'm at 51-53mpg depending on how smooth the road is, dropping down to about 45 at 70, and 41 at 78-80).
It also only costs about $25k, with plenty of standard equipment.
TODO: Something witty here...
'It's hard to know what's causing the low repurchase rate.
You could try, oh, maybe, *asking* them why not?
"If you factor out the super-loyal Toyota Prius buyers, the repurchase rate drops to under 25%..." the summary mentions. Would that be kind of like saying, "If you factor out the number of humans alive on Earth right now, the human population of Earth is zero." or another favorite that might ring more bells for people, "Of course it's unlimited data. We only shut it off once you exceed 2GB per month."
People here in CA were nudged to get a hybrid in no small part due to the ability to get a sticker that allowed solo driver access to the HOV lanes. Once that went away, a big part of the incentive went with it. I know some people who sold their hybrids in advance of the change, anticipating that the car would sell for more while they still could use the lanes.
So while hybrid owners might be unlikely to buy another, it could be due in part that without the HOV lane access they wouldn't have bought one in the first place. The story then would be "Car buyers follow temporary gov't incentive, move on when incentive goes away"
Most hybrids didn't offer better economy in the long run, once the added cost was factored in. They relied heavily on other incentives to make them more desirable in the first place. I'm surprised that those incentives didn't show up in the survey, or at least weren't mentioned in the report.
Civic Hybrid owner:
- Great on gas mileage
- Gutless.. I have an easier time passing people in my turbo diesel truck
- Weird issues with batteries.. Leave the car for a week, batteries are dead.
- Did I mention Gutless?
Overall, I've been happy with the gas mileage but I won't buy another hybrid. The experience outside of the good gas mileage has been disappointing. I'll probably try the diesel car route like a VW Jetta the next time around.
Do you inspect a roller coaster everytime you ride it?
Hybrids CAN pay for themselves on a couple conditions. #1 you must use the vehicle for 100K miles or more. #2 you must be able to do math #3 you probably need to be doing a lot of city driving.
Let's do some math for the 2012 Ford Fusion Over 100K miles at 26mpg you will burn 3846 gallons of gas.
At $3.50 per gallon that's $13461 in gas.
For the hybrid, it's 39mpg (combined as is the 26 figure above). so this works out to $8974 in gas.
For a savings of $4487.
If I recall correctly, the price adder for that car was higher than that, so not a win. However, the savings goes up by 50 percent if you drive it for 150K miles. The savings will also go up with gas prices. It also gets better if you do predominantly city driving (I used the generic "combined" EPA figures). At some point it will be a net savings. This trivial example also neglects some other nice things like not wearing out your brake rotors (a non-trivial cost) or reduced number of oil changes (a trivial cost). It also neglects the cost of battery replacement - something which people worry about but I have not heard being a real world issue.
A Prius OTOH can be had for much closer to $20K and is generally a winner compared to any non-hybrid car so long as you drive 100K miles. I'm not a fan of it and would not buy one.
As volumes go up we can also expect the cost differential to come down.
So there we have the reason - it's not obvious weather you save dollars. Many people actually DO save money with a hybrid - particularly Prius owners.
My 2011 Impreza cost me $20,000, and is a compact car. The only 4wd hybrids are large SUVs, which cost $30,000. Even at $4.00 a gallon, $10,000 buys a lot of gas. At 21 miles a gallon, $10,000 buys over 57,000 miles worth of gas!
Furthermore, Subaru service charges a lot less money then Honda service, and their accessories cost less. Honda charged me $400 for rubber floor mats, and Subaru charged me $100 for rubber floor mats.
Now, had I not wanted 4wd, I probably would have bought the Insight. I really prefer its quietness and smoothness over the Impreza. On the other hand, given that Honda service is expensive, regular mechanics won't work on Honda hybrids, and that the Insight would probably be worthless after 7 years, I'm probably going to spend less money owning the Impreza.
No, I will not work for your startup
Seriously, some people act like everyone drives hundreds of miles a day. Guess what? they don't. It is by far the exception, not the rule. If you drive 75 miles each way to work you are by far in the minority. Most people in that situation would move closer to their workplace.
For the average commute, an electric with even a 73 mile range (the low estimate on the LEAF) would work fine. The average commute is 16 miles, one way. That means you could go to work, get off work, go somewhere else, and go home and still be fine (remember it refuels every night).
I get tired of this bitching like everyone needs a car that can drive tons of miles so that is a reason electrics can't work. No, not at all actually. Some people do. For them, electrics are out. However most other don't, for them it is an option.
I knew a number of people who bought hybrid suv's. There are convential gas hybrids which are only slightly smaller vehiciles that now get better gas milage than their hybrids do and at a lower purchase price. None of them want another hybrid at this point.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
A hybrid is a significantly more complex vehicle that uses more toxic parts than a regular car.
In addition, a few million retired Baby Boomers (this is the only type of person I see driving a Prius) driving hybrids will not impact the environment at all.
Our environmental problem consists of two real problems and many false ones. The real problems: (a) overpopulation and (b) reckless industrial growth. The fake problems: inefficient lightbulbs, unrecycled condoms, non-hybrid cars, non-"green" cleaners, etc.
If we want to stop our slow but ongoing ecocide, we need to change the way we live. You can start by buying a car with a reasonably sized engine, making as few trips as possible, and keeping that car for 20-30 years as once was done.
Futurist Traditionalism
"Excluding Prius owners"... well there's your problem. Of the hybrids people would likely be trading in (2000-2008ish), only the Toyota Prius is worth a damn. All the others in that year range had tiny electric motors which barely gave any hybrid boost at all. If the "hybrid" you're trading in is basically an ordinary car with a cordless drill motor strapped to the fan belt, of course you're not going to be loyal to it.
2.4% of all car purchasers buy a hybrid.
0.84% of all car purchasers would buy another hybrid.
Yeah, there are other ways to put that
Or "It's almost 3x harder to sell a hybrid to someone who's owned one before than to someone who hasn't".
It seems good to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy (or other articles on the topic). If the article is correct that 2.4% of new cars sold are hybrids (which sounds reasonable) then the base rate expectation for a "random person" buying a hybrid is low. If the probability of a previous owner of a hybrid buying one next time is 35%, that's still around 14 times the base rate expectation.
Now clearly, car buying habits are hardly monte carlo style distributions. There is a considerably greater "loyalty" to specific cars than just the random assignment of an available vehicle to a driver. Most of that is probably pretty closely tied with income and socio-economic status. Also, obviously occupational effects matter; and also regional ones do. But consistency in brand or style in repeated car purchases is most certainly far lower than 100%.
It is not at all clear from the evidence given whether hybrid-loyalty is greater or less than other types. For example, I *just* bought a Honda Insight (which seems a lot less common than Toyota Prius, despite what seem to be even more favorable reviews; name recognition does seem big here). Like literally days ago, so I'm probably not good evidence in any direction about next vehicle purchase. But prior to that (and still), my partner and I own an Audi A4--a brand that probably sells no more than 2.4% of cars in the US (i.e. the brand as a whole, not the specific model which must be lower still). Even if a hybrid were out of consideration and I could only consider a conventional gasoline engine, I think there's much less than 35% chance I'd choose an Audi for my next car. Not because I have any particular criticism of Audi, but just because there are lots of other choices, even given similar driving patterns and socio-economic status. I could buy a Saab, or Volvo, or Acura, or maybe on a bit pricier side a BMW, Mercedes, Lexis, or slightly downscale a Buick or Lincoln, or a VW which comes from the same factory even. All of these are pretty comparable, and brand loyalty might lean my decision slightly, but there's a long way to go between the base rate--even of only "semi-luxury sedans"--to get to 35% brand retention.
Buy Text Processing in Python
I miss the old days of pushing my '78 AMC Pacer around town on errands. Man, that thing got GREAT mileage because it would barely ever start or stay running long enough to burn gas.
Good times... good times...
That trafic signal is there only because a car is a danger for everything around it. There is no need to control the bike (and the ciclist will even control hinself if he wishes to live - what's not granted).
"What's not granted" with this sort of intersection is a cyclist's ability to stop the cross traffic in order to get a green light to cross the road safely. As the operator of a vehicle (albeit a non-motorized one), I'm under the impression that I have the right to an eventual green light. I'd just prefer not to have to wait ten minutes in order to be "chaperoned" through an intersection by whatever car occasionally happens to show up. There's no pedestrian call button or marked crosswalk at this intersection either, or I'd have been using that. Nor does the city seem to want to fix the sensors so that they can see my bike.
Seriously, it is INSANE to buy a car with parallel hybrid. You inherit the worst of both ICE and Electrical. That is just crazy. For cars, you should either buy electric (like tesla model S), OR an ICE using gas/diesel. You would buy ICE if you are going to be traveling more than once a month more than the distance of the electric car.
Why are so many taxis I see in Vancouver Priuses? Are all of those business people INSANE? And they keep replacing them when they wear out with new hybrids?
I suppose they are not technically "parallel hybrid" as the nifty planetary gearing system can be used in a manner similar to parallel or series, but I think your "INSANE" statement is a bit strong even with that.
A hybrid has at least the potential to gain the best of both ICE and Electrical, in that the ICE can provide extended range, while the efficiencies in energy recovery and low speed torque from the electrical system can also be achieved.