How can one Justify the extra coas of the Plug in?

How can one Justify the extra coas of the Plug in?

For me I bought the PIP for the HOV sticker - 60+ MPG is just a bonus......​

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I feel it was worth the extra cost that gives me and extra hour + a day with the family.​

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I charge at work for free ​

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Tier 1 is .15 kWh at the house.​

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My meter shows -​

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2.5 hours charge time @ 2.87 kWh = .43​

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I have solar at the house so I never get out of tier 1​

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It's unlikely I'd recuperate any additional marginal costs over the Prius.

On the other hand, much (if not possibly all) of that is mitigated or quenched by the combination of California state incentives on top of existing federal incentives. So the huge proportion of Priuses sold and owned in California does have a financial basis and isn't solely cultural.

In exchange, California motivates more car owners to use clean(er) vehicles, even just marginally with the PiP over hypothetically having Priuses (or worse, possibly non-hybrid cars without the green decal HOV incentive). In a state as heavily populated with the numbers of regular commuters we have, that all makes a dent. And since many of these state incentives exist for the current PiP but no longer do for the current-gen reg Prius, that helps. In addition, we bought during Toyota's $3k rebate, which we unfortunately didn't take advantage of as best as we should have, but.. (Note: The $3k manufacturer rebate applied to all cars as well, including the regular Priuses. A constant rebate of $3k is a greater percentage of the purchase price of a regular Prius than a PiP. On the flipside, I get more value on $3k saved on the PiP than I do with $3k saved on the regular Prius

In my particular case, the vast majority of my family's driving is short distances within town, but we also would take advantage of the added benefits of being able to take long trips very economically, which the gas portion of the hybrid still affords us (whereas electric, although becoming more prevalent, is still not at a scale where it's displacing gas, and likely won't be during the best usable life of the car).

So the price difference is there, without a doubt. But it's largely offset, and the additional marginal value received from the extras--versatility of fueling, and our specific driving patterns and distances (mostly short, occasionally long)--outweighed that remaining additional cost. It works great as a commuter vehicle for the right distance. It's ideal for local in-town driving. And it is in no way worse than the regular Prius for longer road trips:

1. I can still make the ~400-500 mi. SFBA-LA/SD run on about a full tank
2. Pure EVs are pretty snazzy, not gonna lie, but even the Model S with the further cruising range only gets to the mid-200s in miles, and it can't refuel at a gas station to my knowledge (unless there's charging stations now)
3. And the other non-Tesla EVs have about half that cruising range or less

 

Of course, I can justify an EV over a PiP too. Especially if I:

1. Commute a lot,
2. somewhere further than ~13 mi.,
3. my workplace has EV-friendly charging spots for employees (which quite a few seem to have here in the Bay Area),
4. I mostly just commute and otherwise don't drive, or drive lots of moderate distances in the Bay Area and the white decal HOV is that much more valuable to me,
5. I *really* care a lot about emissions,
6. I don't take long road trips,
7. when I do, and if I have one of the EVs with a ~60-120ish cruising range, I will just rent a car.

This also seems economically more suited to a specific lifestyle (that is not that uncommon in some places--I've friends who went with the Nissan Leaf over the Priuses because it suited his driving pattern much better and he saved).

That said, the regular Prius itself isn't all that bad either. Some people like my mom, who's retired, don't need to fight commute traffic so the HOV is that much less valuable. And, since she's old-fashioned and understands older technology and use patterns more just due to familiarity, refueling with just gas is a lot easier on her than the additional complexity of plugging in (which she still regards with a sorta "that newfangled stuff" reaction).

Value and utility are rather subjective here, and the variation within it is broad enough, probably much more so than the apparent price difference. Outside California, it's probably less close of a race, but as we've seen, some states are closer to CA-style incentives than others.

(Oh yeah, EV mode driving, even though the range is short is much more zippy and responsive than Eco or even Pwr Mode, and is generally at least competitive in cost compared to gas miles if not a much better deal. I was actually quite pleasantly surprised because I'd initially been thinking of the PiP as "just a Prius with some extra battery-only mode we were never gonna use anyway". And I was mentally intending to use it that way because I thought the HOV sticker itself was just valuable for that alone. But EV mode is cool in and of itself, and the car can recharge in 1-2 hours rather than the 5-12 hrs of other pure EV cars. I suppose pure EVs can just charge for that short a time and travel as far too, but the PiP will just fallback to gas as needed.)

 

Does that 60 mpg include 10+ miles on battery?​

 

I also assumed 3 kWh to charge the battery because that's what someone said earlier in the thread. But how was that number arrived at? Does it account for charging losses?

 

2.75 kWh is what I've observed as the average total, according to ChargePoint reports for my use. So, 3 is definitely enough to cover everything, including less efficient L1 draws.

 

If a person's only priority for buying a car is the up front cost, they should buy a bike, or bus ticket.
If they add aspects of what they 'want' the whole argument falls apart as people often buy options in a car that NEVER end up saving them any money much less paying for itself.

How do you justify buying a car with a sunroof?
How to you justify buying a car with a tech package?
Etc...etc.
At least the PiP saves you fueling money which partially offsets the initial price, if not completely.

If you add other ways to measure options other than price tag, such as using less gas, polluting less locally (and most likely overall), increasing national fiscal health and security, enjoyment, etc then different people will find different cars much easier to "justify".

 

I feel your pain, but IMHO it _almost_ never makes sense to sell/trade a vehicle in the first few years of ownership. This has little to do with the PiP or Prius per se. If you want to refresh vehicles more frequently, a lease might be a better option?

 

if by 'debate contest' you mean the manner in which we 'justify' ... then yes - you hit the nail on the head ... which is why my post above stated that EVERY purchase ... every trade - whether goods or services - we justify ... we rationalize how 'I oughta have this because ...'
We tell ourself;
'I need bread more than gold because I'm starving' ... or
'I need a brand new 44' Ketch because my customers won't think I'm as successful if I only had a used 36' sloop.
we justify ... I stated that briefly above, only to get pushback because some can't grasp it. Sure ... we can always make a less costly choice ... but that's 'because we all have different values. IMO, that's why the OP posts the question ... from the OP's p.o.v. they only see the pip purchase from their narrow field of vision ... and if that works for them in the present then that's ok
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Pure EVs are pretty snazzy, not gonna lie, but even the Model S with the further cruising range only gets to the mid-200s in miles, and it can't refuel at a gas station to my knowledge (unless there's charging stations now)

Check out the map of Tesla charging stations! Use the slider and put in 2014 for the stations for the Tesla super chargers across the country!

Supercharger | Tesla Motors

 

Cars have huge depreciation in value. This applies to ownership of pretty much any car you purchase from a strictly financial perspective.

If you really want to look at bang for the buck in auto purchase decisions, look at what taxi and other transit companies like paratransit companies buy for their fleet vehicles. They do calculate based on cost per distance or some formula where that heavily matters. (Around here, they've *all* been regular Priuses for years. This suggests they get a lot more value out of the Prius over competing alternatives, value that offsets the depreciation, at least to a greater degree, for their usage. While our situations as individuals is different, if you're worried on the financial angle, that's the approach you want to take.)

 

I can see why taxi companies would like the standard Prius. It provides outstanding gas mileage in exactly the scenario that is important to taxi companies: start-and-stop city driving.

 

And lots of sitting in taxi lines (idling many times for gas cars).

Mike

 

In comfort with your a/c on. There are pollution controls in many areas where it is illegal to sit with your engine idling on a taxi rank. Obviously on very hot or cold days you push your luck, but with the Prius you can run your a/c off the HV battery for 15-25 minutes without engine.

The down side is that this ages the inverter and HV battery prematurely as they're being used with lots of full cycling of the battery, but with zero mile recorded. It might be prudent for Toyota to fit an internal 'hours' timer similar to tractors. Perhaps the warranty could be 8 yrs/100,000 miles or upto 15,000 hours (5 hours a day x 365= 1825pa or 14,600 hours total warranty?). Maybe make it 30,000 hours, but the idea could be worthy of consideration.

 

Yes - My mileage drops big time from having to keep an 80 mph pace in the car pool lane

 

My meter showed 2.87 kWh so I agree 3 covers it.....

 

Cost of electricity in California pretty much kills any saving you might gain with EV - EXCEPT - for the current ridiculous price of gas. So today, 28-32¢/kWh for electron juice beats $4.359/gal for dino juice.

 

...yep, electrons are infinitely more easily "recyclable" than dinos (actually flora & ferns)...ha,ha.

 

...yep, electrons are infinitely more easily "recyclable" than dinos (actually flora & ferns)...ha,ha.