Why buy a Hybrid if you don't drive very much?

To be clear, the "payback" in seven years is for the hybrid premium one paid for the Prius. Not for the entire car purchase. Cars are cost centers in the budget.

As the original posters notes, that seven year payback for the hybrid premium may be longer if one drives less than average miles.

But with the neighbors kids having to fight oil wars and all us having to pay for them, $14T in oil war debt so far, $9T in trade deficit costs, global warming, air and water pollution costs, oil industry subsidies of $250B...the best thing you can for the neighbors, the country, the planet and yourself is buy a Prius, no matter how many miles you drive..

 

Assuming everyone paid the Prius markup. I got my prius for a steal, 1/4 of the gas, no payment, can't lose. Btw, most people don't realize how much the piss away at the pump, but that seperates my retirement in Barbados vs North Korea..

 

It looks like the link is about gen 1 battery failures. I wonder if gen 2-3 are as bad ?? I believe the Vancouver yellow cab Prius 420,000 mile battery life was in a 2009 gen2.

 

Which is exactly my point - I was responding to the other posters' comment that Prii battery are seemingly bulletproof and that a 500k service life should be expected...clearly that is unlikely to be the case.

It's hard to truly accurately calculate the initial hybrid premium since there is no other gas-only vehicle that is very similar to the Prius. The Matrix comes close, but neither the level of standard equipment nor the storage space is truly apples to apples. 2-3k is probably a good number, and if the average driver keeps it for about 150k (and dumps it before the risk of hybrid battery failure rises significantly), then they are very likely to come out ahead.

The first link accurately describes the situation with the Gen 2s.

That is about as far from an apples to apples comparison as you can get.

 

(I haven't followed this thread closely...)

Gas Saver Hybrids, Diesels vs. Standard Cars | Which Are Most Affordable? - Consumer Reports claims the "pay back" vs. a Corolla is 1 year and that after 5 years, the savings is $1500. There's far more to cost of ownership than just fueling costs. Depreciation is the biggest cost (from many sources).

Well... not quite. Best would be to get a BEV and not use any oil (and not live in an area where there's high dependence on oil to generate electricity). The next best would be a PHEV and to drive short enough distances that you hardly use the ICE. Volt Stats! Tracking real world usage of Chevy Volts in the wild... shows leaders, at a glance. NGV wouldn't be bad either.

(Per How clean is the electricity I use? - Power Profiler | Clean Energy | US EPA, 1.4% of my region's electricity comes from oil vs. 1.1% of the national average. If you plug in 96706 (random zip code I found for Hawaii), it's 77.6%!)

 

Of course. The hybrid premium gets paid off in less than 7 years (if one paid cash for one's car). Great investment. More of the price of the car gets paid off in the following years. Great deal. Keep it for 14 years, and you have paid the 'hybrid premium' TWICE.

And less if you drive more. But if you live somewhere where time isn't what is killing your car, those savings are only delayed not gone (i.e. keep the car for 20 years (just be sure it gets enough exercise)).

 

If it it is "CLEARLY" unlikely to be the case, you must have numbers for the MTBF. I would love to see them.

 

True enough, but I don't want to only convert people driving Corollas and Matrixes to Prii. Converting people driving F150s and Suburbans are a FAR more important target.

 

Correct. 500,000 miles may be the peak of the curve, but that implys half will fail before that.

I am a contrarian who believes taxis get longer life as they never turn off and the HV Battery is continually pampered. I am not convinced that will map to owners who sleep 8 hours a day and work 8 hours a day.

 

Why buy a bed if you don't sleep in it more than 8 hours a day? Two thirds of the time it goes unused. Wasted.

 

I would suspect that taxi use is much harder on a hybrid battery, , not pampered but worked to death all day long in stop, go, wait for a passenger, wait for the light to change with "Ready" on, AC compressor on, and deep cycling the battery all day, as the battery goes from charge to discharge cycle every time you stop and the ICE shuts down..
I suspect my start the Prius, and drive 40 miles non stop to the nearest town on a 2 lane highway, then park on the street causes far less cycling of the hybrid battery.

 

I'm with you in that thinking.

Based on the few electrical engineering classes that I barely passed and the photovoltaics class that included a brief section on battery types, I am of the mind that the slow bleed of energy discharge when not in use 95% of the time is far more damaging to the battery than being in operation ~30% of the day.

In most batteries it is the deep discharge that causes the damage. While I am in normal ECO operation with my Prius the system never seems to let the battery drain much.

If I leave it parked out in the driveway for a week because I have no demand to go anywhere, then it can be fairly reduced in charge.

Toyota has designed the battery management system to pamper that traction battery as much as possible, but the car has to be 'on' for that to work.

 

I don't see how a normal distribution has any application to reliability / survival analysis.

suggested reading: The Bathtub Curve and Product Failure Behavior (Part 1 of 2)

 

You know that Li Ion pack is warranted for 10 yr/150,000 miles, right?

 

We average ~6k/year. After running the numbers I was clear to us purchasing a hybrid was not our best option. Instead we decided to but a Plugin Prius. We have a short commute and 90% of our errands are 10 to 15 mile RT. I have tracked our driving pattern and fuel efficiency for the past five years. Because we live at the top of a steep hill our std & hybrid always fall short of the EPA mpg ratings (15% to 20%).
In the PIP are averaging ~125 mpg so far. If the price of gas is in the $3.80 to $4.00 range we should save more than ~$600 per year compared to a std vehicle with an EPA rating of 35 mpg (because of the hills). Of course you have to subtract the cost of charging.in our range it would cost ~$150 to cover our EV miles. Over 10 years we should save ~$4,500.

I am convinced the savings will be higher.
Cars.com came up with a formula to determine whether the added cost is worth it.

It's simply the combined city/highway mpg divided by the base MSRP. We then multiply that number by 1,000. This formula can be applied to any vehicle type, hybrid or not. A high mpg rating and low price provide a high efficiency-cost rating.

Std prius III 50 mpg, $23,500 = 2.1 high efficiency-cost rating
PIP 72.5 mpg $32,000 = 2.27 high efficiency-cost rating
Honda civic 32 mpg, $18,165 = 1.76 high efficiency-cost rating

My situation based on life time real mpg & purchase price.
PIP 128 mpg, $25,300 (after incentives & tax credit) = 5.06 high efficiency-cost rating

 

Re: a short commute, a "standard vehicle" w/EPA rating of 35 mpg, per Fuel Economy, there are very few non-hybrids that are rated at 35 mpg combined or above. With short commutes, you will not see EPA combined numbers and likely would fall short of even EPA city values (esp. since the EPA city cycle is over 30 minutes long).

 

I was presenting a best case scenario for both the std and hybrid vehicles. So far PHEVs seem to optimal for driving styles that fall within the car's EV range. The PIP's is rated 50 MPG gas/ 95 MPGe. We are getting 128 MPGe.

 

It strikes me as strange uniquely discussing how and when a Prius battery may fail when many 100,000s of miles have accumulated. What about the rest of the vehicle?

It might have been an interesting discussion 10 years ago, but now we know the answer. The limiting item in a Prius is the battery. More specifically, the 12V lead acid battery. The other battery is just as reliable, if not more so, than the rest of the car. As I still drive my 2001, I'm amazed at how good everything is performing after 13 years.

 

I suspect once you ignore early (defect) failures covered under warranty, and convert from failure rate to number of failures, those two scenarios would produce roughly the same graphs.

 

Personally, I am just going to replace the 12v battery when it dies (which looks to be soon), not trade in the whole car. But yes, the hybrid battery just isn't a worry really. I am racing salt to the end of my car.