adamyntium

Quickly figure out cost savings for a fuel-efficient car

I have a Prius and I like it a lot*.  It may not be universally seen as stylish, but I don’t care 🙂  It’s not only environmentally sound, it’s roomy, comfortable, and — with voice recognition and other geek pleasures — it’s fun, too.

But you, bottom-line reader, may be asking, “Okay, so what’s in it for my pocketbook?”  Fair question.  So I jumped in my time machine, went a couple of years back, and found this handy Google Spreadsheet that I designed, just for future-you!

Please be nice and don’t erase or otherwise harm this spreadsheet (though yeah, I certainly have a backup just in case :-)).  You can plug in numbers in the yellow “Edit below” fields to see just how much you might save in gas costs with a Prius.

Enjoy… and, as always, feedback’s welcome!

P.S. — Feel free to view and download your own copy of this fuel cost calculation spreadsheet.

*P.P.S. — Quit yer snickerin’ about “runaway” issues. IMHO, this was a tempest in a teapot, with congressmen unfairly vilifying a foreign brand using scant evidence and employing scaremongering techniques. Yeah, yeah, I’m biased, but still…

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Adam Lasnik

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6 responses to “Quickly figure out cost savings for a fuel-efficient car”

  1. ThatAdamGuy Avatar
    ThatAdamGuy

    Hmm, well this is a bit puzzling and disappointing; I can’t figure out how to make the embedded spreadsheet editable. That actually may not be possible, now that I think about it, and perhaps with good reason (here’s looking at you, drive-by spammers!). But if anyone knows otherwise (to avoid me bugging my spreadsheeps friends internally), let me know. In the meantime, you can certainly play around with the spreadsheet via the download link above 🙂

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  2. righini Avatar
    righini

    yesterday i was talking with my mechanic, he’s a suzuki expert and he says that hybrids have expensive maintenance and that they broke too much. Of course at suzuki they do not have an hybrid model, so I can imagine why they tend to be so parochial. I wish more people could speak about ethics (or at least mathematics like you) rather than personal profit in mind. I also wish that at toyota they could develop smaller city car hybrids.

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  3. Jaemi K Avatar
    Jaemi K

    My final car payment on my Cavalier is coming up on July 8. My mother has already started questioning me on what I plan to get next. I’m not in the position to do anything about it, but I do think about it. Now, I loved my first Cavalier and I love this one. I commute 80+ miles a day and my gas mileage varies between 32mpg and 35mpg…and that’s half “city” driving. Not so shabby.

    After the economy went boom and the car manufacturers found themselves in a world of hurt, I kind of told myself I wouldn’t be getting another GM car. I also have personal (read: NASCAR) reasons why I just can’t get a Ford or a Toyota. So I’m mostly thinking Honda. I’d love a Mini, though it may be out of my grasp. Also, what I can’t figure out it, if I could spend $20K on a car, given the commute, which really would be the better by? A Mini Cooper or a Honda Insight? Presuming Insight & Prius gas mileage is comparable, I could save $350/year in gas on my commute. But would I be picking it up elsewhere?

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  4. ThatAdamGuy Avatar
    ThatAdamGuy

    Hmm… $20k. I haven’t priced cars for a while, but that does put you in Honda hybrid territory, right?

    If you had more to spend (~$25K), I was gonna recommend a Nissan Leaf, which I’ve heard good things about :).

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  5. ThatAdamGuy Avatar
    ThatAdamGuy

    Righini, I do think that your mechanic is full of it :p. I’ve read a bunch re: maintenance, and not seen anything that suggests hybrids require more maintenance cost than other cars over time (though I can imagine that — per incident — repairing a hybrid might be more expensive).

    But I agree with you re: the Prius. While I have occasionally hauled around 3+ friends or lots of stuff, that’s been the rare exception. 95% of the time, it’s just me in my oversized Prius, 4% of the time it’s me + a friend. That’s a lot of car for such a small load.

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  6. righini Avatar
    righini

    maybe a city car + affordable rental plans for 1% of the trips? Toyota think of it! 🙂

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