Calculate savings on gas driving Prius

They need to work on a hybrid that gets better all round mileage. If I'm stuck in a traffic jam, a Prius helps but not when I'm flying at 90 down the

Charles of Kankakee

I don't know what the mix is, or how fast the mix is changing. What I do know is I live in an area where I drive 40+ miles to work, and only about 5 to 8 of it is considered conjested. I have about 200,000 thousand neighbors that all make essentially the same commute in differing directions of course, but the profile of driving 30+ miles or more is pretty much the norm.

I think that is the right way to look at it. Get the Prius for other reasons because the mileage numbers can be achieved with other kinds of cars at a lower cost.

PS Pretty much everywhere is looking at longer and longer commutes because homes are cheaper in the outlying areas, but the jobs remain entrenced in the cities. Where I live, for example, the jobs are in Orange County and San Diego. But these areas are pretty much built out and the only new homes are where I live. People take the jobs in the OC and San Diego, but buy the homes in my area. They have to drive 60 miles to work. If they could get a home in San Diego, or the OC, and drive 5 miles to work, then they could do it in an electric car and be fine, but this just isn't the reality that most of us have.

"Charles @ Kankakee" wrote: snip

Well, yeah, I was, at 11:10 (nearly 6 hours ago now) it's 17:40 now.

I am at 16:23, so it must have been over half an hour since you posted it. It is 21:23 GMT

Charles

"" wrote: > Dbu'' wrote: > snip > >

Prius is so you will feel better about driving. Thats it. you wont save money, you wont get smarter, you will prob attract a bunch of people who smell like pine tree and B.O. Its not any more comfy, more loaded, or better in any way (besides the use of the car pool lane in select citys), than any other SIMILAR car. I could compare a 2006 lincoln navagator to my kids tricycle and say that the trike is much better.. it gets a million + miles to a gallon, I?d like to see the prius touch that :roll: sure some people may like the way it handles or the smooth ride, but some people prefer chevy to ford, or the geo prism to the toyota corrola (same exact car, shy some trim) that doesnt mean that one car is better, just better for you. Nobody wants to feel they didnt think something through all the way, so you get a bunch of people defending the prius to the death. and the people who did think it through are tired of getting mocked for there choice. If you wanna save money, dont get a prius. if you want a prius, for heavens sake get one.

Let's boil this down to the one sentient statement, the one above. This is exactly it. Actually, you will save SOME gas, but not enough to cover the cost of the car.

But, some like the Prius. Buying the Prius for the sake of driving a car you like is the reason to buy it.

Unfortunately a lot of greenies don't do enough research to see that they really aren't saving anything but making a statement. Oh well...

They didn't figure it out back when GM was selling electric cars, either, that the electricity had to come from 'Somewhere'.

Charles of Kankakee

Yes - but when electric cars were all the rage, the Utilities were giving away the electricity effectively 'for free' for the chargers. Or they were writing it off against a public subsidy...

I installed a few public charge stations (small-town City Hall that had an electric RAV-4) and the Edison instructions were to tap in before the meter and main, and use a fused disconnect going straight to the charging station. I assume (yes, dangerous...) that they had the same basic thing for residential charging stations.

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Yes, but you knew they wouldn't have continued that forever. And it does cost in terms of energy consumed to produce the electricity that goes into the battery, which is what they weren't exactly thinking about when they were doing this in the 70's and 80's.

Charles of Kankakee