A little over a year ago I bought a Toyota Prius. I’ve been tracking my gas usage for a year and recently I paid more then $3/gallon for the first time, so I thought it was time to report on the Prius.
There were two reasons I bought a Prius. First, it’s a fun car. It really feels like the future, and I love it. The dashboard is beautiful, the backup camera is fun, my in-dash MP3 cd changer is great, the smart key (I don’t need to remove it from my pocket to enter the car, lock the door or start the car) is great, I use the bluetooth speakerphone a lot, and it has plenty of room. It’s a great car. I really love it. Secondly, it gets much better gas mileage than most cars, so I potentially save money (I’ll discuss that more in a bit) and I reduce pollution due to me burning less gasoline. On the first point you will either agree with me or not, but on the second issue we can be a little more data oriented.
So, I spent $823 to drive 15K miles in a year, and I got 46 MPG. If I bought a car that got 23 MPG, I would have paid $1646 to drive the same distance. Naively, if we extrapolate for 5 more years with constant gas prices, I’ll save $4938. In addition to these ongoing cost savings, I got a $3100 tax credit this year on my income taxes. So, adding that in, that’s $8038 saved by buying the Prius over 6 years. It is true that the sticker price of the Prius is higher (say 22-25K) than a Civic (say 15-17K), but when you add in the $8000 saved, it may well be worth it. Indeed, even ignoring the tax credit, Intellichoice says you have a lower total cost of ownership with the 2006 Prius ($19,897 over 5 years excluding tax credit) than the 2006 Civic 4 Door ($22,543 over 5 years) (ownership costs include expected maintenance, fuel costs, and depreciation amongst other things). In fact, the Prius is the cheapest car to own according to Intellichoice.
Secondly, I realized I was paying way too much for auto insurance from my old provider. I have a great driving record, no tickets in the last 10 years. I am out of the dangerous 18-25 year old bracket and live in a pretty decent neighbourhood. On top of all of that with a new Prius the insurance companies realize it is a new, reliable car with good safety scores as well. So what I did was shop around for cheap auto insurance quotes online, compared all the deals on offer and managed to find a deal that saved me a further $340 per year. That’s an extra $1800 a year saved. Combined with the gas savings by driving a hybrid I project that I will save nearly $10 000 over the next 6 years – that is a good chunk of money that can be invested!
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