Doing a rather average amount of driving in a year - 20,000 or 30,000 miles - I find that I am saving 500 to 1,000 gallons of gas.
If he is driving 25,000 miles. A 25mpg car would user 1,000 gallons. To save 1,000 gallons he would have to use no gas in his new hybrid. The Lexus might use more gas than an average car but still his figure seems unlikely.
A quick search on the net and I get "LEXUS ES 300/ES 330 ... EPA ratings: 21 mpg city | 29 mpg highway."
hwysafety.org
familycar.com
fueleconomy.gov
So 25mpg doesn't seem that out of line.
Now lets look for the Honda Accord Hybrid.
MPG (city/hwy) 30/37
If you just average the numbers you would get 33.5, but lets use 35 to be more generous and to make the calculations easier.
Lets take the high end of the range of miles he says he drives. 30k. 30,000 miles at 35 mpg. He uses about 850 gallons of gas. If he only got 25mpg he would use about 1400 galons of gas. So that an extra 550 gallons. You get the low end of his proposed savings if you use the high end of his estimated mileage combined with a more generous estimate for the hybrids mileage than for the Lexus.
Using this savings of 550 gallons and giving a high estimate for gas cost of $2.50 (I've never paid that much in my life but gas prices have beeng going up) and you get a savings of $1375 a year. He pays back the difference between an equivilent non hybrid Honda (which also gets about 25 mpg) in less than three years even if you include the interest he paid financeing a larger loan. For him it probably makes sense.
But than he drives 30k a year. I drive more like 10.
Another thing to consider is that the hybrid has gas saving technology beyond the fact that it is a hybrid. Such technology could be applied to conventional cars. Still hybrids technology is more ready for mass use than it used to be, that much is certain. The Accord Hybrid seems like a pretty nice car.
There are some 200 million cars and light trucks on the road in the United States, and if even half of them saved as much fuel as I do now, the total savings would be huge: 50 billion or more gallons of gas a year.
Its unlikely that half of all drivers drive 30k or more miles per year. Also replaceing 200million cars with new Honda Accord Hybrids would cost $6,000,000,000,000 or 6 trillion dollars, or more than 40% of the US GDP.
Tim |
