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I've been away for a while but I figured I'd respond to my own criticism with some real numbers. I bought a Prius a few months ago and installed a block heater last week. Now my numbers here aren't scientific (yet) but by my observance I can go from about 50 MPG to about 55 MPG by running the block heater for 2 hours in the morning. It has a 400 watt element, and cost $50. I drive right at around 15,000 miles per year. If I assume that fuel costs $2.50 per gallon and electricity costs $0.10 per kWh, I get a daily cost of about $0.08 in electricity to save about $0.18 in gasoline. So it would take about 500 days to pay off the cost of the heater. Not too bad, and I'd much rather pay for Ketucky coal than imported gasoline.
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