[kinscore]

Hello all,
my name is Kipling. I've been reading ecomodder for a while now, and for quite a while I've been interested in thinking about what sorts of personal vehicles would reduce pollution, resource consumption, operating costs, and congestion. Things like microcars, motorcycles, scooters, velomobiles, cabin scooters.

I had a 2007 Yaris hatchback with a 1.5L I4 and a manual transmission, which of course has pretty good fuel efficiency from the factory. I popped on some moon hubcaps and it was good to go.

But the Yaris was retired and for a while I was riding the bus, and that allowed me to think out my transportation situation. The Yaris was probably the right car to buy when I did, but what I wanted had changed. From a purely economic standpoint, starting with the assumption that I would own a car (mostly for the convenience) and that my short commute (which can be mostly highway driving if I do it outside of rush hour) would not significantly increase maintenance costs, I determined that with just 22mpg I would spend less than the $70/month of a bus pass (though I didn't factor in things like non-commute driving or the occasional train I would have to pay for separately, nor did I formally factor in externalities, side-effects, etc. like pollution, congestion, travel time, convenience, exercise, etc.). By this measure my Yaris was actually cheaper by a good margin.

Since I'm a homeowner and I'm about to build a garage (I like working on cars, motorcycles, and other projects for which a garage is useful) and do some landscaping including trees, I decided to get a small pickup truck (I hate renting and driving the giant hardware store trucks, and renting from somewhere else to drive to and from the hardware store is really inconvenient). I got a 1992 Toyota Hilux 2WD with a 2.4L I4 and a manual transmission. EPA over 22mpg highway and under 22mpg city. Maybe cheaper than the bus but certainly room to improve, so I'm planning to make some primarily aerodynamic modifications.