Originally Posted By: SF0059
I'm now commuting 120 miles a day and I did the math on a hybrid. It would certainly take too long to cover the costs, especially since they get poorer highway mileage than in the city.
That "poor" highway mpg is still likely 20+% better than most other vehicles.
Quote:
My wife's cousin had a 2nd generation Prius he had owned since new. He used it to commute in congested Philadelphia. I think the battery bit the dust at 150k. It wasn't worth fixing and it traded it in for pocket change on a new Subaru. He did the math and he never made that hybrid premium up through the life of the vehicle, especially when you consider how much value he lost when the batteries died.
He could have replaced the battery (3 or 4 grand, tops, or what an automatic transmission goes for--which might have been done for around these miles in a conventional car) and kept motoring on. Or gotten a better trade-in. If the rest of the car was shot then I have to wonder if any other vehicle likewise would not be shot, and thus subject to the same depreciation.
I'm now commuting 120 miles a day and I did the math on a hybrid. It would certainly take too long to cover the costs, especially since they get poorer highway mileage than in the city.
That "poor" highway mpg is still likely 20+% better than most other vehicles.
Quote:
My wife's cousin had a 2nd generation Prius he had owned since new. He used it to commute in congested Philadelphia. I think the battery bit the dust at 150k. It wasn't worth fixing and it traded it in for pocket change on a new Subaru. He did the math and he never made that hybrid premium up through the life of the vehicle, especially when you consider how much value he lost when the batteries died.
He could have replaced the battery (3 or 4 grand, tops, or what an automatic transmission goes for--which might have been done for around these miles in a conventional car) and kept motoring on. Or gotten a better trade-in. If the rest of the car was shot then I have to wonder if any other vehicle likewise would not be shot, and thus subject to the same depreciation.