pianotuna wrote:
Hi westend,
If you run the numbers you will find a hybrid is a bad investment possibly even if it is a Phev.
Not necessarily. I bought my Honda Insight used for 16K in 2004. I've since put 120,000 miles on it, and it has a present value of about 5K. During this time it has averaged a bit over 50 mpg. If I didn't have it, I would have driven the minivan to work every day (same number of miles) at about half the gas mileage.
So, I saved ~60,000 miles worth of gas at 25 mpg (plus lots of wear and tear on the much more expensive minivan, but let's just look at the gas), or at $3 a gallon on average, $7,200 worth of gas. That's $12,200 (leaving less than $4K to go, or about another 60K miles before the car has literally paid for itself). Now consider that it kept me from needing to replace a $35K vehicle (which has 65K miles on it, but would have had 185K miles on it if I had needed to drive it to work every day), and the savings is considerable.
This is harder to calculate, but maintenance on the Honda Insight has also been A LOT less than maintenance on the minivan. The tires are less expensive, the service intervals are less expensive (by about $100 for the 30K ones). It still has its original brakes (regenerative braking will do that). It's needed one new battery pack, but that was free (covered under warranty). If this one fails before 142K miles, the next will be free also (there's a fair chance of this, they last about 7 years in this car) - Honda is warranting the electric half of the hybrid system for that many miles on this particular car.
Thus far, the car has been completely reliable with no repairs needed. I've no reason to believe that I won't be able to drive it (at least) for another 60K miles.
