As a followup to yesterday's post about fuel efficiencies (in which I made several typos that are now hopefully corrected), I thought I'd look at our current Honda Accord and compare it to the Toyota Prius (which we're at least considering buying in the future), to see what kind of gas savings we could actually expect. I'm going to compare city mileage as that's the majority of what we put on our vehicles.
Accord = 9.4 L/100KM
Prius = 4.0 L/100KM
Since we put about 10,000 KM on our car each year, that works out to:
Accord = 940 L / year
Prius = 400 L / year
If we assume $1 / L for gas (the current price, -ish), then it looks like a Prius would save us about $540 / year at the pump (fairly close to the $500 / year estimate that I spitballed in this post, last week). Of course, if gas prices go back up into the $1.50 - $1.60 / L range that they hit at the peak last year, then it would be more like $800 / year in savings. Assuming that we continue to keep our cars for 5 or 6 years only (as we always have in the past), then we really need to see the hybrid prices (after any government rebates and other incentives) come down to within about $4000 to $5000 of a comparable non-hybrid model, if we're to ever break even. Will that happen? Are we, as a society, truly committed to breaking our dependency on oil?
As I've written before, what I really want is a plug-in hybrid (along with solar panels on the roof of our house) so that the only times we actually go to the gas station are when we're traveling. That era of vehicular freedom can't get here soon enough for me!
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Interestingly enough my "Gas Guzzling SUV" got 8.1L/100KM on the last fill up.
Buick Rendezvous was best in class for fuel efficiency when we brought it (2003) and it is satisfying to know that it is better then some cars.
Now, most of that was highway driving, but still a pretty good number IMO.
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