So, shortly I will be commuting 320 Kms (200 miles) per day round trip to work and back.
I need to buy a small car that will pay for itself. In my current Jeep Grand Cherokee my estimate on gasoline is $40 per day, or $400 per pay cheque.
I’m thinking of buying a small hatch back, like the Honda Fit, Hyundai Accent, Suzuki Swift, etc. If I can cut my gas cost to $20 per day, or $200 per pay cheque then I can afford a $400 per month vehicle without even thinking about the payments.
Perhaps a diesel engine is more cost-effective? Has anyone else done the research on this that you can share with me? I need to meet three criteria:
Low initial cost of vehicle.
Good highway mileage.
Reasonable maintenance costs.
I suppose these criteria are wanted by most consumers anyway, but some opinions on overall costs would be appreciated.
I’d take a look-see at a Ford Focus. Might not be the most comfortable, but quality is good as is gas mileage. From a financial perspective it makes sense as it’s very reasonably priced. MSRP in just over $15K for a base model. A low mileage used one is best. I just bought an '08 for my teenage son…one owner, 11K miles, full warranty, A/C, radio/CD. Not real fancy, but it gets 35 mpg. And having paid only $7,800.00, I won’t eat any depreciation. BTW, the MSRP on this vehicle was under $15K. Hell of a deal to get a one year old car with those few miles and a warranty for that price.
I commute 120 miles a day in a Chevy Cavalier - about 30mpg.
But I carpool too and one of the drivers drives a Prius, which even on highway actually sees over 30mpg and much more when the traffic slows.
I recently (well, about 18 months ago) changed jobs where my commute went from 50 miles per day to 100. After that, I soon parked my 1991 Ford Ranger (at 20 mpg highway) and started taking my wife’s 2001 Hyundai Accent which is getting 38 mpg highway.
The Hyundai Accent hits all three of your criteria.
If I had to replace it I might go with a Civic or Fit but I would not place too much emphasis on low initial cost. But if low initial cost is a big concern for you, the Hyundai Accent is a fine car.
At 200 miles per day, you are going to run through most warranties pretty fast. Hyundai still offers the 100,000 mile warranty, so if you are buying new that’s worth considering.
Don’t get hung up on the whole “small” thing. A late model domestic (err, north american domestic) will be dirt, dirt cheap. I just checked my local craigslist and saw a 2007 Taurus listed for $7900 US. And that’s at a local independent dealership. That’s ludicrously cheap for a 2 year old car. A 2006 Taurus for $6k US. 2003 for under 2 grand. And they’ll all be reasonably reliable for the price.
Maybe a Taurus isn’t your thing, and the gas mileage isn’t that great, but good small cars hold their value so well that it’s harder to make up the savings on fuel costs. And a nice-sized car will be a lot more comfortable for 200 mile/day commutes.
Particularly if you have to bring work home. Those driving hours should be counted as part of hours worked so if you are putting in 50 hrs at work and another 15 driving then you are actually working a 65 hr week. I would be dividing my base pay by the hrs worked to see if the drive makes sense from an hourly wage perspective.
$65,000/year at 40 hrs per week = $31.25/hr
$65,000/year at 55 hrs per week = $21,48/hr
$65,000/year at 65 hrs per week = $18.18/hr
Not a dumb question at all. It is an option, however with my wife’s work and our kids’ school, etc. I’m willing to do the commute thing for at least a couple of years.
I’ve been unemployed from high-tech for 10 months now. I live in Ottawa. The vacuum created by high-tech job losses has been unprecedented in the last year. I have now found a very secure government job that’s right up my alley, but unfortunately I need to commute. I’ve had it very good for a long while – commute-wise – and so now my number’s up.
I will look at staying near my place of employment during the week, and especially in the winter months, but for now I need to economically commute.
No one’s mentioned diesel yet and I have no clue what the cost benefits would be. Comments??
Diesel’s generally only available in a couple of cars; VW comes to mind. I’m guessing you’re not interested in a Ford F350, despite it being diesel.
Another thing to consider is availability of diesel. In my parts (meaning Michigan), it’s not widely available (as in, I can get it at 100% of gas stations).
In theory, diesel should yield the best highway mileage, but the economics don’t really work out (in this country anyways). The biggest problem is that the only two companies that sell diesel cars here are Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz, both of which have much higher than average costs of ownership. Plus you have to pay a premium for the diesel models versus their gas counterparts.
Another issue is simply that the price of diesel versus gas is unpredictable. As you may recall, during the fuel price roller coasters of the last few years there have been periods where diesel was much more expensive than gasoline. At any rate, the days of significantly cheaper diesel are probably over.
Supposedly a lot more companies are going to start offering diesel cars in the next few years, so it could very well be that soon there will be better diesel options out there.
Diesels are more expensive than their petrol counterparts but they have better mileage and slightly longer service intervals.
Whether it is more economical or not depends on the difference in price of diesel fuel vs. petrol, how many kms you do per year, the price difference of the diesel car and how better mileage it has over the petrol version. As a rule of thumb, expect to break even somewhere at the 100 to 150 thousand kilometer mark and from that point on you start having a small benefit from the better mileage.
If you do 320km, 5 times a week that’s roughly 80,000 km per year. So you break even at 1,5 to 2 years.
Speaking of winter months, aren’t diesels slightly worse in very cold weather, both with fuel gelling (maybe not a problem any longer) and more demands on the battery during starting (made worse in the cold)?
My last job was a $15,000 increase and when I added up my time I lost money. I was quite surprised. I’m not saying this to discourage you in any way but don’t ignore your travel time. Hopefully you have an easy drive. My last job was split between 2 locations and one was pure hell to drive through while the other was quite pleasant. Right now, I would be damn happy to drive through hell.
As a complete aside I would recommend you get a stereo with a USB drive so you can listen to books on tape to keep you awake. If you do, buy this. I have one of these and just leave it plugged in as a hard drive. It is so much easier than fussing with an MP3 player.
A lot of the taxi drivers have hybrids here in Vancouver. The cabbies don’t seem to be real ecologically oriented, so I suspect that they save on gas big time.
That’s because hyrids save energy by recapturing the energy wasted by slowing down, which makes them great for stop and go traffic, but on the highway the hybrid system is basically dead weight.
Three years ago I was driving 150 miles per day with a 2005 Hyundai Elantra hatchback. We bought it new and I’ve forgotten what we paid, but it was very reasonable. I was using it for business and had to keep accurate records; I usually got 28-30 MPG in mixed highway and city driving. On the other hand, a couple of guys I worked with had the Ford Focus and both guys all but sang when they talked about their cars.
