Top 10 Fuel Misers
The most fuel-efficient new vehicles on MSN Autos, according to EPA
fuel economy data.
Okay, we expect to see the Toyota Prius, that darling of the greener-than-thou sect at the top of the list, and it is.
With a revised gas mileage rating of 48 MPG city, 45 MPG highway.
You have got to be fucking shitting me, people. First off, the fucking piece of shit Geo Metro got 45/50 MPG back in 19-fucking-90. For about a QUARTER of the price of the Prius. Hell, the mid-90s Volkswagen Passat diesel got 50+ MPG, and that was a mid-size, comfortable car.
Secondly, when we were looking at trucks, the Toyota dealership had a Prius and a Corolla next to each other in the showroom. They were comparably equipped, and the Prius cost $10K more.
The Corolla is rated 28 MPG city, 37 MPG on this same list.
$10K for 20 MPG improvement *IF* you only do city driving. At 10,000 miles a year, that means the Prius uses 208.33 gallons of gas to the Corolla's 357.14 gallons. Even at $3 a gallon, that means the Prius saves a whopping $446 a year. So the $10K difference in price will be made up in 22 years.
If you're talking 10,000 miles highway driving, that's 222.22 gallons a year for the Prius and 270.27 for the Corolla. At $3 a gallon, that's a savings of (are you ready for this?) $148 a year (for those keeping score, that means you'd have to drive your Prius for 67½ years to break even...)
You've got to be really fucking bad at math to think that the Prius is going to save money on gas.
Or a poseur douchebag who slavishly follows fads with the intensity of the average lemming.
9 comments:
One caveat: purchasers of a new hybrid get a pretty large tax credit that they can apply to their forms when they turn them in on April 15th. Not sure what it is, but, yes, our politicians have told us what is the "proper" car to purchase.
Hokay, Prius owner here. No, not a trend-following poseur douchebag (at least, I hope not). I wanted to replace my piece-o-crap Focus with something with better milage, since I have a 52-mile roundtrip commute to work; there was the tax credit and there was an incentive interest rate at the time (Toyota had made too many of the things).
You can beat those EPA estimates fairly easily - as long as you don't drive like a maniac. If you're really obssessed, you can beat even the old EPA numbers.
Yeah, the Metro got good milage. It was also a three-cylinder tin can the size of a shoebox. You should really be comparing the Prius to a Camry or Accord, not a Corolla, because it's more akin to them in terms of inside space and carrying capacity (really: The exterior is deceiving because of that weird shape). Beats the hell out of those cars for fuel economy.
You might not get the tax credit. The credit is tied to model sales and I think the Prius credit expired last week. If you still want a $2,000+ credit, you'll need to buy an Altima hybrid - since it's fairly new to the market.
adamg,
Apologies, sir. My ire was aimed at those who wear their Prius ownership on their sleeves like a badge of honor.
It's the same platform as the Corolla. Plain and simple.
Besides, the Camry isn't all that much bigger anyways.
I don't disagree with you in regards to the Prius making sense for an individual in strictly economic terms. However, I think hybrids are going to be more and more common and reasonable in the future--Not so much in "ultimate mileage" vehicles, but rather to give decent performance from economical but anemic engines.
I have to agree, those mileage numbers aren't all that impressive.
I had an '02 Saturn that got 40 MPG on the highway. It was a stripped down model with a 4 speed that cost 12k new.
I don't see why they can't do that now.
I have no problem with the Prius in and of itself - it gets good gas mileage, doesn't require the car be plugged in, etc.
It's the promotion of the car as the be-all, end-all, "gotta-have-it-unless-you-hate-Mother-Earth", stop Global Warming solution.
It's good. But there have been better.
And this is a model that has been out (at least in Japan) since 1997. One would think that they would have been able to wring better mileage out of it by now.
Instead, all they did was change the body style to be different from the Corolla so they could sell more as a status symbol...
It's the promotion of the car as the be-all, end-all, "gotta-have-it-unless-you-hate-Mother-Earth", stop Global Warming solution.
I just bought a full-size, brand-spankin'-new Ford F150 with the 5.4L Triton V8. It gets around 20 on the highway.
Anyway, I don't "hate" Mother Earth, I just think she's kind of a douchebag.
Well, I have a friend with a MS in Chem Eng and a PhD in Mech Eng. I really trust his judgement in things like this.
When I met him for lunch recently, I was surprised to see he was driving a Honda Civic instead of a Prius. When I asked him why...he said the 4 cylinder Civic get better gas mileage for the kind of city driving he doea in Houston than the 6 cylinder Prius. It's just not worth the trade off.
Incidentally, his MS project was building a electric
generating "farm" from those windmill thingies in a field outside Bakersfield. He now works for Shell as an ME.
4 cyl. '07 Camry gets about 26 mpg around town, even the way I drive.
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