See raising gas prices does affect driving behavior.

I was chatting with my barber the other day. He bought a 4 cyl Altima to replace his '93 Tahoe as his primary vehicle. Why? Gas prices. He said that he had always bought performance cars but this time around FE was definitely a factor in his decision.

 

My behavior has changed a bit ... I'm trying to drive the speed limit. Not an easy thing to do, but I'm getting above 50 MPG now ... usually about 52 - 53 MPG on each tank. Previously, at my slightly higher speeds, I was getting 47 MPG.

 

I went to the owner a week or so ago and asked him if he'd consider something to save the company money. Well sure he said, so I asked him what the average salesman on the company dime cost the company a year for their fuel useage and he say's somewhere between 4-7 thousand dollars. So I said if the salespeople leased a hybrid and saved the company 25% of that would he consider giving them a $25 dollar a month bonus? after some number crunching on the calculator he looks at me and says "done". So company policy is drive a hybrid and get a 300$ bonus for a year.

 

Brilliant, Frank. Any idea how many litres of petrol that'll save a year?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tripp @ Apr 14 2007, 10:04 AM) [snapback]423257[/snapback]</div>

tripp I couldn't even begin to guess, but there are about 20 vehicles that have a company credit card excluding the 23 diesel vans in our fleet. Then there are 7 branchs so it adds up. Boss's wife has a Prius and one of the "wigs" has a TCH and he's doing about 35 US with it, so the boss knows it's a good thing. One of the sales people is looking at getting a TCH as well, and she's queried me on a couple of occasions about fuel economy and reliability on our Prius. She's also taken one out for a test drive and said she really liked it. The boss will probably choke another deal out of Toyota Canada as he did to get the one that the sub boss has. Were a Toyota dealer but for industrial equipement.

 

If petrol in CA costs $1US/litre, and they spend (CA$5K/car*year) * 120 cars, they are using about 600,000 litres of fuel a year.

Saving a quarter of that is 150,000 litres annualy.

Back to the Boss' calculator: 36K spent on employee awards, leaves about $1K/year to spend on a more expensive lease of a hybrid to break even on capital expense. The PR benefit, environmental benefit, and savings on maintenance and use of a extremely reliable vehicle are icing on the cake.

Smart boss, and smart employee

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(EricGo @ Apr 14 2007, 07:09 PM) [snapback]423424[/snapback]</div>

So 150000/3.78 = 39682.5 gallons (US). At ~20lbs/gal thats 396.8 tonnes of CO2 avoided per year. Not to mention the other pollutants. Stickin' it to the House of Faud to boot! I like it.

 

Not only people buying cars for FE, but I've noticed a dramatic drop in freeway speeds, since gas costs have started to soar, again. Especially during off peak hours when people used to take advantage of the light traffic and race home. The only one's that seem to do this these days are the hybrids and the occasional boy-racers. LOL!