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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (1320)	8/8/2008 2:45:02 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86355

A Prius has a 5 year pay back... very good. That depends on the assumptions your using as to what other car you would buy instead, and how much you drive. There is no hard specific 5 year pay back, it all depends on what scenario you set up, and in many reasonable ones it would be a lot more than 5 years (even before considering time value of money). I did a calculation of a 2005 Prius vs a 2005 Ford Explorer (intentionally picking a vehicle with poor gas mileage), and it took 6 years to get payback with the Prius, even before considering the time value of money on the larger up front expense (over $10k more) for the Prius. Change that from an Explorer to a high gas mileage conventional car and its probably even longer. Which doesn't mean I have anything against Priuses, or think they don't make sense for some people, but they often don't make sense strictly in economic terms. Go to a pure electric or plug in hybrid. and you save even more on energy costs per mile driven, but you add even more to your total cost. Highly likely we would be much less involved in the ME. No its not.