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Old 04-10-2008, 10:14 PM   #10 (permalink)
cbergeron
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Georgia
Posts: 64

aerospire - '95 Ford Aspire
90 day: 56.92 mpg (US)

Hindsight - '00 Honda Insight
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Do you own a home?

If you do, you could get a new car the way I'm planning on doing it:

Use the $20,000 to buy solar panels and use the money you save in electricity plus the $2000/year tax credit to make your new car payment.

Using my example, I'm installing a 2kW Solar Array that will save me about $80 a month on my electric bill. The $2000/year Federal tax credit works out to $166.67 dollars a month. Couple that with the fuel savings from driving a more fuel efficient car and you can save an extra $50/month.

When added up, it works out to be $296 / month - which will easily make a decent car payment.

The icing on the cake is the house will appreciate in value by about $17,000 and by having solar panels you won't need a generator in case of a power outage.

I'm doing a writeup about it on my site (work in progress):
http://solar.dashpc.com/
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Last edited by cbergeron; 04-10-2008 at 11:46 PM.. Reason: pictures is spelled with a "t" ;)
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