High MPG Cars Save Real Money
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It’s summertime and like many families, we’ve been on the road. While we haven’t been able to take a monster road trip (yet), we’ve taken plenty of day trips to the beach. Needless to say, we’ve burned more than our fair share of gas. We were sitting at the pump this weekend, when I came up with simple way to illustrate the craziness of the gas crunch for the kids …
When I first wrote about hybrid cars last summer, gas was in the $2.00 per gallon range. A year later, and we’re seeing prices that exceed $2.50 per gallon here in the glorious Garden State.
So are we driving to the beach in a hybrid? Of course not! We’re stuck in a SUV (and it isn’t a spiffy new Mercury Mariner Hybrid).
“Imagine you have to drive 450 miles per week,” I said to the young’uns. “And your gas-guzzling SUV gets a lousy 15 miles per gallon, just like the Woodie here. Gas costs $2.50 per gallon. How much would you spend on gas each week?”
It took the kids a while to think about it. After a bit of help with the math, the answers arrived.
“If the SUV gets 15 miles per gallon, it will take 30 gallons,” came the reply.
“And how much does 30 gallons of gas cost?” I asked.
“Whoa. At $2.50 per gallon, it will cost 75 bucks!”
It was time to show them the alternative …
“Lets say your friend has a car that gets 45 miles to the gallon, and he has to travel the same distance,” I said. “How many gallons of gas will it take for him to drive 450 miles?”
The math was pretty easy this time. It didn’t take long for the answer.
“Just 10 gallons, Dad.”
“And if your friend had to pay the same $2.50 per gallon, how much would he spend each week?”
“Only 25 bucks.”
“So how much more would it cost to drive the gas-guzzler, compared to the car that delivers great mileage?”
“Wow. 50 bucks more each week!”
“Yup … enough for a car payment on a gas-sipping compact …”
There’s been a good bit of hullabaloo about the American auto manufacturers giving “employee discount” prices this summer. But what’s unfortunate is the relative lack of choices in high MPG domestic vehicles. Take a look at this list of cars that average over 30 MPG and you’ll catch my drift …
My son had one more question.
“Dad, if we get a car that gets really good mileage, can we get a computer installed in the dash and monitors in the headrests?”
For the kid, forget the cash spent at the pump. It’s all about the ICE, baby.
3 Comments
Wes
July 30th, 2007
at 11:59am
Very touching story but…
keep in mind that the price of hybrids are still drastically higher than normal cars, hybrid cars are more expensive to repair (fuel cells have a life expectancy of 5 years and are very expensive to replace), and the less gasoline you purchase, the less taxmoney is going towards road improvements.
So while you may be saving a thousand/year or so at the pumps, you will be paying out that “saved” money in other ways eventually.
David
April 21st, 2008
at 4:18pm
… And remember that Volkswagon was making 50mpg diesel cars clear back in the 80’s. The Germans are debuting mpg++ cars, headed for 150mpg by 2009 (diesel fuel, not electric). And we are happy about 30+mpg?
Bill
July 27th, 2008
at 4:58pm
It is not all about saving money. It is about get away from the big oil companies that make BILLIONS of dollars (that is with a B not an M) in profit every quarter (read that again that’s a quarter not a year). Also it will make us less depended on the countries that control most of the oil in the world that promote terrorism. Eventually in the end we will save money and hopefully some of the environment.