Hello all, anyone want to check my math? Hoping this board is general enough for a question like this, which totally, in a tangential way, impacts my investments.
We both have older cars, and we need to road trip to see family. I was going to rent just to save wear and tear on our cars, but the prices have gone up a bit since I looked some time back.
Then I realized that the price of gas is up so much, that a newer rental would have better miles per gallon. Would the difference still make the rental a decent idea?
So…the Toyota Corolla gets ~41mpg highway. The GF’s Nissan Murano gets mid 20’s at about 10yrs old. That is about 20 miles per gallon difference.
Then you take the 1600 miles and divide that by the 20mpg difference getting 80 gallons? Take that 80 gallons and multiply by (guessing) $4.50/gallon avg gas prices for $360 gasoline savings with the higher mpg rental.
So…if the rental is $750, and you are saving $360 then only paying $390 for a week long rental and keeping miles of our older vehicles.
Did I do that right/correctly? I am NOT a math wiz and I barely get by with calculators and spreadsheets to help me.
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Have you considered renting an EV for the trip and get even more savings? You would be close to break even.
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Actually, now that I asked it seems I did something very convoluted there…so…
Murano - 1660m / 25mpg = 66.4 gallons
Carolla - 1660 / 41mpg = 40.5 gallons
…that means that the overall difference is only 26 gallons one way. That is a total gas savings of (26 * 4.50) $117.
LOL…totally not as exciting numbers, but probably more correct? Sigh. So that would give savings of $234 in gas for whole trip.
Hmmm.
For living in the NE, it is amazing that none of the near by rentals have any EV’s or Hybrids…so strange. People love them up here.
Given the price you quoted, it doesn’t seem like it could ever be worth renting the car. Depreciation on a ten-year old car like the Nissan Murano is unlikely to be more than $0.10 per mile or so. No more than one or two hundred bucks for a 1,600 mile trip, $200-300 bucks for the round trip. If you’re paying $750 for the rental, you’re not going to make up enough in gas savings for it to be worthwhile.
I guess I was going more with avoiding the mechanical issues of putting 3000 miles on an older car. Not even worried about depreciation as that means nothing in the avg owner’s world where there isn’t a new car every five years.
Putting mileage on cars just wears them out, and those are for getting to work and hauling things for the homestead.
My ease of mind was easily around $400 for the rental over a week.
Driving a newer car versus a high mileage older car seems like a no-brainer
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