Quote:
Originally Posted by RobertSmalls
Considering that I got in to a very thrifty little car for ~$5000, they'd have to sell their X-car for around $5500 for me to buy it for economic reasons.
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I think you're falling into a logical trap set up by the original poster. It's not properly a question of how much MORE you would pay, but of what mpg you'll get for the money you're going to spend on a car.
Say some of those X-prize cars go into production, as they are. Now unless they're plug-in hybrids with lots of expensive batteries, there's no real reason why they should cost more than "normal" cars, is there? So for the people who buy new cars, the choice is going to be between e.g. a $20K conventional car, and a $20K X-prize car that goes 4-5 times as far on a gallon of gas. And which, to some of us, looks infinitely cooler :-)
So fast-forward 5 or 10 years. Your thrifty little car has gone to that great wrecking yard in the sky, so you need to replace it. Some of the X-prizers have entered the used-car market. So do you spend your $5K budget on one of them, or the used conventional car?