I’m just a little old lady. I don’t know much about cars.
I like the idea of a hybrid electric car that uses both gas and electric. I understand that the car will run on battery for relatively short trips (which are the vast majority of my trips) but would run on gas if the battery is low. (Either by recharging the battery or directly driving the wheels.)
The saving is in the cost of gas…assuming that the cost of recharging the battery from home or outside chargers is less than gas.
But the car has two engines (gas and electric) so it must be more expensive to build, right?
Where does a hybrid electric car break even on cost?
Wendy
I have a plug in hybrid electric vehicle. I bought it gently used (around 12,000 miles), for just under $25,000.
So far, it has been the lowest-maintenance car I’ve ever owned. It’s coming up on 100,000 miles now, and I don’t recall having yet spent anything on it in terms of repairs. The “normal” maintenance is lower than my traditional gas cars, too, since the oil only needs to be changed either once a year or when it has enough gas-powered miles.
About the only maintenance so far that may be more on the expensive side is tires. Like many electrified cars, it seems to like using those up quickly. I don’t have good enough records to quantify that for certain, though. It could just be that because it’s the lowest cost car to drive of the ones we own, we’re just using it more and putting the miles on it faster.
While it is true that there are “two systems” in it, the reality is that it may very well be a lower-cost way to get electrified driving than an all electric car. This is because a lot of the cost of pure EVs comes in the form of the battery pack. With a relatively small battery, that cost is lower in my PHEV.
In addition, since the gas engine only powers the wheels under certain circumstances (in my car: I believe it’s only if the drive battery is completely depleted or if the car is traveling at highway speeds and is in hybrid mode), it doesn’t have to be a huge engine to still provide reasonable performance. So that keeps the gas engine costs down, too.
All depends on your driving style, how much highway vs city, how many miles, etc.. The more city, the more stop and go, the more slow speed driving, it favors the electric.
FWIW, about 20 years ago, I did a back of the envelope calculation for a midsize SUV for my driving style: 50/50 hwy/city but only 8000 miles a year. A gallon of gas would have to go above $4/gal for my break even point. I’ve never paid that amount yet.
Hi Wandy, here’s a thread from when we bought our Toyota RAV4 Limited a couple years ago… I fell for the simpler, clutches transmission setup of the RAV4, compared to the Hoda hybrid, maybe only 12K miles so far, but mileage has held up an average of about 39 mpg… Been back to the dealer for 2 service visits, one more in September, included in the original deal of roughly $48K… Anyway here’s the link: New 2023 Toyota Hybrid Limited
We got lucky to find this one, someone cancelled their order, we jumped on it…
Having spent the last 6 weeks driving a Tesla Model Y, the only advantage I see in a hybrid would be the dual fuel source in a disaster situation – like the coming Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake. It might be hard finding a charger when everyone is fleeing town.
An ICE engine is always going to be more expensive to maintain, and charging at home is 20% of the cost of buying gasoline for my V-6 Altima. If you’re spending any time at the Supercharger on the road, then you’re paying prices that are equivalent to buying gas for an ICE vehicle.
The maintenance schedule for my Model Y includes keeping the window washer tank full and rotating the tires every 12,000 miles – that’s it.
If you rarely drive your car over 200 miles per day, an electric vehicle is much cheaper – especially if you can find someone who is bad at arithmetic to pay the first 3 or 4 years of deprecation on a new one (about a $40,000 savings for my 2020 Model Y.)
Back in the Mish days, a regular on this board went by BillZ, or some such thing. He was a minister in a church in Detroit, but lived near Ann Arbor. Anyway, he drove Priuses, for years. I don’t know if he is still lurking this board, or not, but he would be a good source for long term, first hand, experience with a hybrid.
As for performance in a long term electrical failure, most of us have seen the long, long, lines at gas stations after a hurricane. But someone with the land area for a solar array, or a whole house generator, running off the mother of propane tanks, would be more tolerant of a mains power failure, than a gas fueled car. Of course, if the quake shook the propane tank off it’s footings, and broke the gas line, or knocked the solar array off it’s foundations, that person would be wishing they had a windmill.
I only carry liability on my vehicles since I can afford to replace a $20,000 to $30,000 car if it’s damaged or stolen.
There was no change in my $1 MM liability only auto policy in switching from a 250 HP Nissan Altima to a 428 HP Model Y. State Farm is still charging a $200 premium for 6-months which surprised me. Presumably in the wrong hands, 4.2 sec, 0-60 acceleration could do more damage to the public.
Saw an article yesterday that Tesla’s captive insurance company has a much higher loss ratio that other auto insurers. It’s almost like Tesla is running a charity compared to the high skim rates enjoyed by other auto insurers (loss ratio of 103% of premiums collected for Tesla, vs the US average of 66%)
Or maybe Tesla’s are more expensive to repair than ICE cars, and Tesla is eating the overhead to have bragging rights. If so that’s bad for you since you aren’t using it, and if you have a repairable accident you will pay more - but you’re not saving anything.
Depends on what your driving record is. I’ve only left the road 3 times in 50+ years of driving – all at 60+ mph during winter Interstate Highway operations. Managed to land right side up in snowbank all three times with no damage to the vehicle. The latest incident was in 2010 on I-80 about an hour west of Chicago. Cost me a $200 tow truck to winch me out the ditch.
Over the last 30 years, I saved enough on auto insurance collision & comp premiums to buy a new car – I’m way ahead of the game to date.
Understand your risks and ability to pay, and “Minimize the skim.”
But I agree with you, if I had a much worse driving record, the Tesla insurance might be attractive if they were under pricing my risk.
Only in a few states. And because Tesla insurance requires full access to the vehicle records, the pricing is kind of odd. They keep a “driving score” and as your score goes up or down, your monthly insurance price goes up or down. The odd parts are that many things go into the score. For example, driving at night lowers your score significantly, so if like driving at night when there is minimal traffic, tesla insurance isn’t for you. Or if you work the night shift, etc. Fast acceleration lowers your score, hard stops lowers your score. And any other behavior deemed “unsafe” will also lower your score.
Unfortunately, I live in a state without tesla insurance, so I can’t even see what my score would be! They only show the score if you have tesla insurance.
I meant to write this yesterday. Strictly speaking, that’s not the only advantage. Another advantage is that you can choose which fuel to use at any time depending on your own preference or depending on cost or depending on time. For example, if you are driving a long distance, and you are time constrained, you may choose to use gasoline instead of electricity for part of your trip. Or if you are at a DCFC and the price is 72 cents/kWh (or some other absurdly high price), you may choose to use gasoline for a while until you reach a DCFC with more reasonable pricing.
