Virginia/DC/MD Hybrid Sales Up in 2013 including FORD's

Cost savings depend on how much you drive a year. I drive 30,000 miles a year, over twice the national average. I traded a Subaru Forester that got 24 MPG for a 2009 Prius that got 46 MPG, not quite twice as much.

30,000 / 24 = 1259 gallons a year
30,000 / 46 = 652 gallons a year
so you are saving 607 gallons a year. At $3.50 a gallon that is $2,100 a year so I would make the $6000 in 3 years.

 

Jimbo's calculation is much simpler. The $6250 fuel costs savings over 5 years calculated with 47 mpg/15,000 miles per year compared to a similar car class and its average mpg. At 38 mpg, like the Acura ILX Hybrid, the fuel savings is $4250.00. Compare Side-by-Side

 

There is a savings on the gasoline fusion, the gasoline civic, etc. You need to subtract to get the savings versus the things. epa says you save $2500 in gas over 5 years, but you pay more for the car. The state wants to grab your gas savings and turn $500 into a tax. How is that fair, to grab that money as extra taxes. Its not, they simply don't like hybrids, and I assume like OPEC. Call it the opec support tax. A tax to get people not to buy hybrids so that they will give opec more money. That might punch those anti-prius politicians right in their glass jaw. Next on the opec support tax - if you drive less than 15,000 miles a year, then you owe more taxes since you didn't pay it in gasoline.

 

Depends on the miles per dollar you are getting now how a hybrid makes sense.

When doing my purchase calculations, I used the actual fuelly MPG of my car and compared it to the fuelly MPG of the car I was considering and used a 6 year period using a simple spreadsheet. The difference in fuel costs for 12k miles per year over 6 years was slightly more than $10k and I didn't inflate fuel costs over the 6 year period which I could well have done.

I did not include any costs of maintenance, differences in taxes, costs of insurance, etc as those would be different (lower, higher, higher) no matter what new car I bought. And I didn't include the difference in cost of premium fuel versus regular fuel which can also come into play.

So to me $6250 over 5 years is very reasonable given the age/size of the average car and thus the poor mileage per dollar people are now getting .

You elected them, you can vote them out.

 

It isn't just the governor, the legislature passed the bill the governor can sign or veto. It is the legislators who start or stop the process that initially gets a bill presented for signature. Rural dominated, down state dominated. Pickup-truck crowd. Sure they want cheap gas and want to hang the needed tax revenue on someone else.

Yes, I'd be disappointed if I owned a Prius and still lived in VA.

 

One of the political arguments I've heard is that the poor can't afford new or used hybrid vehicles which get high MPG and only the affluent can afford hybrids - so increasing levies on hybrids ( and people who can afford expensive diesel vehicles) is more socially progressive ( tax the rich and don't tax the poor). Given that there already is a luxury gas guzzler tax - the affluent who purchase conventional gas vehicles would still pay big time. Hence, the VA $100 tax an alternative energy vehicle extra a registration time is suppose get rid of any loopholes where the the well to do might try to pay less.

Because the price of gasoline goes up and down - I prefer to look at the number of gallons I use per year (and save) and then convert that into its dollar equivalent. I travel about 12000 miles per year. My previous vehicle got about 22 mpg, so I was using about 545 gallons per year. My 2010 Prius (which I am hypermiling) gets about 60 mpg, so I am using about 200 gallons per year now - which is a savings of about 345 gallons per year. Over the last three years gasoline has averaged about 3.20/gallon and I've had to pay about 14 cents/gallon in tax so I am paying about $48 less in gasoline tax than I had when I was driving my previous conventional gas vehicle (1990 Honda Accord LX Auto). If I drove my Prius normally and did not hypermile I would be getting about 48 mpg and be using about 250 gallons per year - using about 295 gallons less and paying $41 less in gasoline tax. However, suppose I had gotten a conventional gas vehicle like a 2010 Hyundai Elantra Touring which gets about 27 mpg (this car is about $3000 less expensive than my Prius) - I would be using about 444 gallons per year which would be 194 gallons more than a 2010 Prius if driven normally for the same distance - the 14 cents/gasoline tax difference for a 12000 mile/year would be between $62(Elantra Touring) per year and $35(Prius Liftback) - -or $27 .. so paying $100 more for a Virginia hybrid registration per year can be thought of as a shift in tax burden of $73 per year per alternative energy vehicle at the time of purchase. This number drops as the miles per year increases. For example if I increase the distance per year to 24,000 miles per year the cost of a 14 cents/yr gasoline levy would double to $124 (Elantra) and $70(Prius) with the difference doubling as well to $52.. The difference in fuel tax does not reach $100 until both vehicles are each travelling 46,153 miles per year - which equates to a 887 miles/week -- that is alot of commuting !!

 

It all depends on what you compare to, how you use it and how MUCH you use it. I personally compare to my old 95 Buick I used on mail route, 28 mpg on the road and 12 mpg on the route. I run a 61 mile route plus 20 miles round trip to and from the post office.
Dividing the road miles (normal driving) by 28 I get what I USED to use, but on the route I used 5 gallons a day, now about 1.2 gallons. I've tracked it by dollars saved (kinda wish I'd done gallons too). After 3 years on the route plus personal miles on the highway I have saved a little over $10,000 in gas. I'm not sure how many gallons total but the math comes to around 900 gallons a year just for the route miles!
If I count the fact that I would have put 5 or 6 brake jobs on the Buick and have not had to do any at all on the Prius I've also saved around $250 or more on maintenance in that arena, more if I used a mechanc to do it.
As I see it, I paid $21,770 for the car, tax, tags and title and it has paid almost half that back!
My advice to folks is simply to consider it, if you drive a car that gets 40 mpg now and you aren't using it like I do on mail...you'll save a little but not like I save. Personally...I love this car!

 

Politicians are about as smart as smashing your big toe on a coffee table. They would change their tune very quickly if it was THEIR pay that was cut off by their refusal to create a budget. They need to focus on finding ways to balance the budget and not on more ways to tax people.

 

I'm with acdii...we got smart and found a way to stretch our dollar and don't like one bit that a bunch of crooks (oops...politicians...sorry) think they should jab us and screw the savings out of us. I have to budget MY paycheck, gov't needs to learn to do the same. The only incentive left for the hybrids and fully electrical cars will be being green. I'll admit it was the money that enticed me, glad it helps the environment too but it was the money.

 

Paying $4000 is an invalid argument. You can't shift the blame of a poor investment into an argument about tax revenue. The cost of the car has no bearing here. If everyone is up in arms because their civic hybrids cost $4000 more than a regular civic then they need to talk to Honda not the state government.

Eliminating the irrelevant cost of the car and you are +500 not -1500 as you claim. Are you asking for a hybrid car bailout?

 

I'm saying it is people choice to buy a hybrid so the increased cost of the car shouldn't be factored into the argument. It's like saying I shouldn't pay the gas guzzler tax on my Lamborghini because it cost $200,000.

Under the circumstances if I lived in nova I probably wouldn't buy a hybrid. They have all but eliminated the HOV lane benefit for them and now with the tax if I lived there I would probably look into trading for a civic hf or a Mazda 3 skyactiv.