Contrast Prius and Civic Hybrids

"Stuck with"? We are a two car family (actually three; I still have my Lexus, but it sits in the garage, unused) and have a great Honda van, and my wife uses that from 8 to 5 M-F. But outside of those hours, the Prius is our main family car and we do everything with it.

The way my company car program works, I don't need to buy a personal Prius. It's incredibly cheap for me to use the company car for personal use.

If the two of us are gone at the same time, we use common sense regarding who takes the Prius. The longer trip wins every time. Nights and weekends, the van gets used only for short trips to the grocery store, etc. And that's not because the other car is a Prius; it's because the company program is incredibly strong and it's incredibly cheap for me to drive it for personal use. So cheap, there's no way buying one on my own makes any sense.

Company cars are usually assigned to sales folks, or at least that had been my experience in the past. Sounds like they have a clue. From Wiki:

". . . Several U.S. companies offer employees incentives. Bank of America will reimburse $3000 on the purchase of new hybrid vehicles to full- and part-time associates working more than 20 hours per week.[81] Google,[82] software company Hyperion Solutions,[83] and organic food and drink producer Clif Bar & Co[81] offer employees a $5000 credit toward their purchase of a certain hybrid vehicles including the Prius. Integrated Archive Systems, a Palo Alto IT company, offers a $10,000 subsidy toward the purchase of hybrid vehicles to full-time employees employed more than one year.[81] Clothing companies Timberland and Patagonia, law firm DLA Piper, non-profit American Jewish Committee, software publisher Topics Entertainment, and research firm ABR, Inc. are among companies offering eligible employees significant discounts on certain hybrid vehicles including the Prius.[81] . . ."

In my case, business trips are re-embursed at a rate that only two trips per week are enough to pay for my gas for the week.

I understand that and applaud the corporate policy. Any idea of how many Prius your company provides?

I've formed my own company this past month and nothing would make me happier than to do enough business to buy an NHW20 Prius for corporate use. Of course in my case, that would me after-market products.

Good luck! Bob Wilson

Actually, we have a large selection of cars and vans to choose from--Toyota, GM, Ford, Chrysler, Volvo, Nissan.

I could have had a Malibu for the exact same price and deal as the Prius. Blech. But then, it's not my car, so I don't really care one way or the other. But there's a difference between the Asian philosophy of engineering a car and the American way. The American way stinks, and that shows every moment you're in one.

Sorry, GM. Maybe you've changed things. But I don't have enough time in my life to go testing.

Yeah, I could have kept driving the personal car and gotten reimbursed. No big deal.

There are five or six that I can think of in my general area, just right off the top of my head (but that's out of dozens of cars). Of course, none of them got the car and then three days later tore the dash apart to install the Lockpick...

. . .

The Department of Energy did an early fleet study of hybrid electrics:

One of their earliest studies was in conjunction with:

"This vehicle was operated throughout the State of Arizona by Bank One of Arizona's courier pool. It was operated 24 hours a day, six days a week, transferring documents between branches and a central processing center located in Phoenix on city streets and urban freeways as well in intrastate courier routes, with typical highspeed round trips of 100 to 300 miles."

Is there a fleet manager who might have data about the different cars that could be used to analyze total cost of ownership?

One of the interesting aspects of this study was the initial falloff in monthly mileage in the first three months. Thereafter, the vehicle mileage remains fairly constant. This has never been explained and still has me puzzled.

One characteristic of fleet drivers, or so I've always assumed, is the absence of motiivation to improve vehicle mileage performance. I suspect fleet drivers are schedule driven, more than anything else, and to a greater or lessor extent, isolated from vehicle operational costs. They don't have a financial commitment to efficient operation compared to the demands of schedule.

Bob Wilson