You haven’t heard me whine. Yeah, I’d enjoy it more if gas went back to the 27.9 cents a gallon I remember as a kid, but what the heck. I live 60 miles from where I work… I do get 30 mpg with my G6 though.
I’m not whining either, thanks to my itsy bitsy Volkswagen and my six-block commute.
Unfortunately, the Prius doesn’t, which bummed me out. It’s got two parallel concavities in the roof, running front-to-back, that help optimize airflow. The shape of the roof thus makes it pretty much impossible to have anything like a conventional sunroof or moon roof. There are no after-market options that I’m aware of for the '04-'05 models. It just ain’t built for it.
That is a good point. Many people tend to fixate on the price of gas unlike any other discretionary cost or required commodity.
My inlaws ask me regularly how much I paid for gas the last time I filled up. I usually have no idea. Because they bother me so often, I checked the last time I filled up. It was something like $2.49 a gallon. My SUV holds 15 gallons. My inlaws gave me a smug look and said that I could have paid $2.45 a gallon across town. Let’s see. 4 cents x 15 gallons = 60 cents. There is nothing wrong with saving money on a commodity item but the gas to drive to the cheaper station and back would have surely wiped out any savings. Plus, the one I go to has a mini-mart with things I like to buy.
There was a thread in GQ a few days ago in which someone wanted to know about trading in a fairly new SUV on a Prius. Posters wisely pointed out that the cost to do this would wipe out the savings in gas consumption many times over.
Some people are just really single-minded.
.93 cents? In Edmonton? Hell, the price went down. It is a buck five in Sask right now. When I was in Edmonton a little more than a week ago it was like .96 or so. Albertans and your danged oil.
I drive about 20,000 miles a year. At an optimistic 30MPG (somewhat more than what I typically got on my old Honda Accord) that’s about $1700/year for gas at today’s prices.
Conservatively, my Prius gets about 45MPG. For the same milage, it works out to about $1100 per year. I had my Honda for 11 years. I hope to keep the Prius that long. Total savings in gas: Roughly $6,600. An equivalent to my old Honda today would cost about $20k after taxes. My Prius cost about $25k after taxes. So, not only am I $1600 ahead at today’s prices, in addition to cutting my CO2 emissions about 50% over the same period, I’ve also cut emissions of various smog-producing chemicals by around 90%.
Now, what if I bought a Honda CRV, which, optioned as well as my Prius (I do realize it’s something of an apples/oranges comparison, in terms of some options), would cost me about $21K, at least. For my typical driving, I would expect to get, at most, around 23MPG. That’s probably wildly optimistic.
Cost per year at today’s prices: Roughly $2200. Savings in gas from Prius ownership: about $1100 per year. Times 11 about $12,000. Now, there is the battery issue. Over that span my battery might die and need replacement (Toyota claims it should be good for about 250,000 miles, but who knows). Today that would set me back about 3 grand. So knock that savings over the CRV down to $9000. As for everything else, it’s normal wear-and-tear, just like any other car, so repairs are a wash. I’ll add that, so far, the Prius is one of the most reliable cars on the road. There have been some software issues with some cars, but that was fixed at no cost. The overall mechanics are essentially best-in-class, and most dealers are reporting they’re seeing fewer Priuses in the shop than any other Toyota model. And as Toyotas are generally some of the most reliable cars sold in the US, that’s saying quite a lot.
Isn’t it in part because of the dickwad SUV soccer moms that we’re in this situation? The amount of oil we drill out of the ground and refine every day has some flexibility, but certainly has a ceiling. You get everyone in an SUV - demand goes up, supply goes down, prices jump up, right?
So those dicks who need a 6 ton monster truck to drive their kids to school are responsible at least in part for their high gas prices, and, unfortunately, all of ours.
I think this is because it’s easier to compare the price of gas than most other commodities.
Gas is always priced the same way everywhere (cost per gallon), tax is included in the price, and there’s no volume discount (at least not for individual drivers). So there’s not as much math involved in figuring out the cost of gas as there is in figuring out the cost of many other commodities.
As a former boss once put it, “You barely get any work done when you’re here…”
Actually, I’ve moved on. I’m doing IT Security Admin stuff at the corporate offices of a large chain of consumer electronics stores who think they’re the best place to buy stuff.
Anne Neville, I agree that gas is an easy target because of the way it’s priced and the fact that those prices ate posted all over. The folks that amuse me are the ones among my friends and acquaintances who keep their cars for 3 or 4 years, drive expensive models, and can’t seem to grasp that their $450 lease payment dwarfs their $120 gas card payment.
Loopydude, keeping a car for 10 or more years, as you and I try to do, obviously changes the fuel-to-vehicle cost ratio dramatically. My comment was directed at the rapid turnover types.
Hmm, sounds like Barbarian thinks we’re careless idiots around here.
I’m on the waiting list for a Prius, which will replace my diesel Golf (gets about 35mpg). I live about 10 miles away from work (in a condo that I purchased with an interest-only mortgage.
Taking into account that I routinely send a little extra money to the mortgage company to apply to my principle, does this mean I get to bitch and moan that the price of gas has nearly doubled in the last 3 years? When I first bought the Golf, I filled up for $1.39 a gallon. Yesterday I paid $2.99 a gallon. You bet I’m gonna bitch. Even if it makes sense, doesn’t mean I need to like it.
As an owner of a Suburban with a 44 gallon tank, my only complaint is the gas stations that have a hissy fit about taking $100 bills, even when there is no change to be given. Thankfully, I need to only fill up about 1.5 times a month.
I blame Canada because of their goofy money coloring scheme.
I did the comparison between the Prius and the Honda CRV before I bought. I picked the CRV. I get 24 mpg, and the insurance isn’t so high. The insurance on the Prius was going to be another $75/month, because it was a new model, and repairs are really high. I’ve been sideswiped, rear ended, and have hit two deer. Even though I’ve never gotten a ticket, I’m not very lucky…insurance wise. Or maybe I should say that the insurance company isn’t very lucky in insuring me.
Yeah, I live 45 minutes from where I work, but what I save on property taxes more than pays my gasoline bill, even at the $2.79 I paid this morning.
I drive a fuel-efficient car, so it’s not gasoline prices I’m worried about. It’s propane costs to heat the house this winter that have me worried. I’ve not heard from the company yet, but if it costs me twice what it did last year (and we’ve already closed off several rooms in a 1900 sq. foot house), that is going to be a hardship for us. My husband is a school teacher and I’m a state employee, and the measly raises we get aren’t going to make up for the rise in price. Frankly it’s depressing to work hard for your money and see your standard of living go down instead of up.
Strange my Standard of living peaked around the end of 2000. Probably part of the reason, I hate Bush Jr.
The news are doing puff pieces on the cost of gas lately - asking Joe and Jane Average what they think about the price of gas as they fill up. No surprise - most people don’t care for it. I love to see the occasional person who actually says, “Well, I don’t have to drive. I make this choice, so I pay the price.”
I keep hoping the cost of gas will drive a few SUV shoppers into something a little bit more realistic, but Calgary is a very rich town (off of Oil & Gas revenues, ironically), and people like their comforts here. They like to live in new houses in new, sprawling suburbs and drive new, large vehicles and commute 50 km a day. They don’t care for carpooling. We are huge consumers here in Calgary.
Y’know, my car is only middling on milage (though pretty good for a 15-y.o. car), I have very little income, and I don’t complain about gas prices. Seriously, they’re not that high. They used to be much higher, counting inflation.
This year we installed a solar water heater (was propane) and since our old farmhouse still has a coal burner we may just run it this year. We simply cannot afford propane being much more then it was last year. Where coal from my coal neck of the woods is not that expensive, though very dirty.
And if oil continues its march up, next year we rip out the walls and put in more insulation. This summer we re-did the roof, tore it off and put a new one, with R-38 replacing the R-9 insulation it had in the past. Hoping that saves us some.
I forgot to add, I’m considering getting a scooter for my commute, but one of the reasons I’m hesitant is because of all the large, aggressive, poorly-driven behemoth-mobiles on the road. I think they’re aggressive to me now, in my Sundance - I can only imagine how aggressive they will be to me on a Vespa. They won’t even notice me on the road with them.
I drive a 2000 F150, so I’m not exactly fuel efficient. But other than wince when my husband tells me how much it costs to fill up, I don’t complain. What I will do is laugh when my MIL comes to visit next month and shows wide-eyed shock at how much it costs her to fill up her SUV. And she’ll finally realize one of the reasons we hate driving six hours to visit her, and why we don’t want to come visit every time she has an idea in her head about it.