On Mon, 05 Sep 2005 10:31:54 -0700, Mark & Juanita
wrote:

On Mon, 05 Sep 2005 08:55:01 -0400, Roy Smith wrote:

In article t,
"BillyBob" wrote:

Or you could pay a few thousand more for an unproven hybrid and hope it will
get the purported 40 mi/gal

My wife's Prius (a 2001 model, IIRC), really does get in the low to mid
40's. Here's a guy (http://randyrathbun.org/prius/prius_mileage/) who kept
track of his gas for 3 years, and averaged 47 MPG (that's probably the
newer model, which gets better mileage than the older one my wife has).

Or you could pay a few thousand more for an unproven hybrid and hope it will
get the purported 40 mi/gal and save $750/year. That's at $3.00/gal.

I'm not sure what "a few thousand" means, but let's assume you mean $5k.
That pays for itself in about 6-1/2 years. That's not a bad ROI.

... if, and this may be a big "if", you don't have to replace the
batteries in those 6 1/2 years. Then the payoff is farther out. Seems
like waiting 6 1/2 years is a pretty long time to wait for break-even to
me. I certainly would think twice if I was told that an investment would
take that long to just break even.

I eyeballed a hybrid a couple years ago but lost interest when they
said I'd have to replace the batteries every 3-5 years at a cost of
more than 8 grand. I sincerely hope that's not true of the newer ones,
but it's kept me away from serious consideration ever since.

--
"We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"

Tim Douglass

http://www.DouglassClan.com