Aptera annual fuel cost vs Prius-Interesting math

[Devil's Advocate]

Also, the 300 MPG for the Aptera is calculated at about 120 miles driven, in the hybrid version you still get about 50-60 miles electric only. So if you only went 60 mile s a day (average commute even in SoCal) you have a nearly zero gasoline cost. Now you are saving $1600 a year, and that is over the Prius' fuel use!!!

Even at the low end of the Aptera's fuel economy about 130 MPG (driven over 300+ miles in a single day) you are still over double the Prius mileage!

Plus the car seems more useful, and cooler, than a Smart or any of the other "affordable" electric cars.

[pdhenry]

Purchase price alone doesn't cut it unless you're never going to sell. Cost of ownership should include a calculation of resale value.

[nerfer]

You're assuming gas costs will be constant for the next 20K miles. That's highly unlikely, given recent trends (over the last 6 years) and projections of supply/demand, I would conservatively expect gas prices to go over $5/gal in 2 years time, and probably over $8/gal in the lifetime of the vehicle (which affects the resale value even if you don't own it that long). Again, this is an issue that was used against buying a Prius, that their resale value would be less than an equivalent car.

And there's the value of satisfaction of doing something right for the environment, not what is necessarily cheapest. In the long run, and particularly if we add the costs of pollution to the source of origin, those two would be the same thing, but that's not the world we live in.

[hyo silver]

Originally Posted by nerfer

...And there's the value of satisfaction of doing something right for the environment, not what is necessarily cheapest. In the long run, and particularly if we add the costs of pollution to the source of origin, those two would be the same thing, but that's not the world we live in.

Ahh, but it IS the world we live in. Environmental costs are all too real, and it's our current economic model that's the fantasy.

[PriuStorm]

Originally Posted by F8L

I'm broke and cannot afford a new car but when the day comes that I can afford one it is going to have to get better than 100mpg.

Well, if you do decide on the Aptera, I hope you'll host a Show-n-Tell

[doubleg2005]

and by show-n-tell, they mean "let us all come over and play with your new car"

or you could take a road trip and visit us in strategic points throughout the country. i bet you could loop the country on 3 tanks or less...

[F8L]

I completely understand and agree with what you guys are saying, although Devil's Advocate lost me with the $1,600 savings since you would still have to pay for electricity unless you outright own your solar array to recharge the batteries.

I'm not trying to argue against getting a super high milage vehicle. I just wanted to show how you would be required to get some pretty high MPG numbers to beat owning a current model Prius. It's a diminishing returns kinda deal. From 15mpg to 50mpg is a huge savings but from 50mpg to 85mpg the savings do not ramp up so quickly. Even at 300mpg it's not as large as one would anticipate. Again, assuming a $4/ga rate. At $9/ga the math changes completely and so do all of our lives. LOL

If I got an Aptera we would be partying at my place with free test drives for everyone!

[PriuStorm]

Oooh yeah!! Did you put down your deposit??

[Devil's Advocate]

F8L - you're right I just plain left out the electricity cost. But here in NV (where I am considering a solar array, I mean good god could I have more sunlight!) electricity is about $.08 Kw/h. So at 20,000 miles x .0965 Kwh/mile x $.08 Kwh = $154.4 total cost for a years driving if you never drive over 50 miles a day! That's a savings of $1,445.6 a year.

I'm probably going to get one since I have a trailer that I tow with the Prius for any hauling I need to do, (yard waste, motorcycles, furniture etc.) and don't need something really big for commuting. Plus its freakin cool.

It will also be really cool to go from Orange County CA (may be working and moving here soon) to Las Vegas NV and back on about 4.125 gallons of gas. (the Prius takes about 12.75)

[DaveinOlyWA]

well my sig reflects the worst case scenario for the savings when driving an EV verses both the Prius which i still have and the Corolla the Zenn replaces which we no longer have (after about 4 months, we never had a situation when the corolla was needed so we got rid of it).

the straight gas savings comparison is straight forward enough but the 2nd part takes into account what vehicle would have been driven if the Zenn was not around. so its a combination of savings from both the Pri and the Corolla. to do that, we need to look at the use of the Pri and determine how much of that driving would have been done on the corolla (about 75-80%) since before i was the primary driver of the Pri, the mileage i now drive on the Zenn would obviously been on the Pri. when i first got the Zenn, i tracked every mile driven on the Pri to determine if the corolla would have been used previously. i dont do that anymore... now i just think back to how the Pri was used since its the only option for any family trips (probably had all both of us in the corolla maybe 3-4 times max.??)

so if you look at an average savings of around 6 cents per mile between the Pri and the Zenn, it balloons to around 11 cents per mile if the corolla would have been used.

so i figure to put about 6,000 miles on the Zenn a year so we are looking at a rough savings of 11 cents*6000 or about $600(just using summer figures to simply)... obviously, that is not going to recoup my $14,500 investment anytime soon...

but we also have to look at the replacement cost for the corolla, it was on its way to some hefty repair costs... and also the est $150 in general maintenance costs for the Pri.....(Zenn... currently ZERO...probably will stay that way until replace either tires, batteries or brakes...there is pretty much nothing else to maintain...)

so getting a vehicle with significantly higher mileage is a thing that has to be weighed carefully. financing anything is something i did not have to deal with and i will say with two vehicles, my monthly "fuel" costs run around $100 a month... that includes roughly $15 for electricity to power the Zenn...


**EDIT**

oh ya...one other thing to throw in there... in the next probably 2 weeks or so, i will pass the $100 mark for "fuel" costs for my Zenn...chew on that for a while