Howdy!
I'm the creator and owner of Champrius, the Champion Camping Prius. I'm a mathematician by training and am interested in bringing various aeromods and ecomods mainstream. I've participated in three successful startups, and did business consulting for many years.
I have seen lots of quality data about the fuel economy increases gained by various mods. But there is much less data about their
economic impact on the owner, which is one of the compelling value propositions for many decision makers. Some people want to save the planet, and some want to save their wallet.
Let me give a concrete example. When I first bought my car Champrius, she got 39 MPG. I spent $600+ dollars and 4 hrs+ of time getting her a tune-up and new tires, which increased mpg to 42, or ~ +7% increase. When I did grille blocking, I spent $20 and 30 minutes of time to get an equivalent outcome (actually slightly better). Presented in that way, it's a no brainer to do the ecomod. It's cheaper and faster. And as a product pitch, to be able to say: "Buy this $40 widget and you'll save $20/10K miles driven" is also a no brainer purchase decision.
Moreover, there is also long term revenue. There's a notion in business called
Return On Investment (ROI). That's how long it takes a money saving improvement to payback the initial amount it cost; the cost / ROI is the rate at which it generates "extra" revenue (assuming zero maintenance). As such, I've not only tracked the FE improvements for the various ecomods but also their ROI.
I've noted an important trend that ye ecomodders might be interested in, which is that
small ecomods have much better ROI than large ones. When I first started ecomodding I was gung ho and slapped a boat tail on my car, and saw huge mpg improvements. But that cost a lot of upfront moola, had a lot of risk, and took a long time to pay itself off (~35K miles).
If I had to do it all over again, I would do it much differently. First, I would begin with deletions with near zero cost or time. Second, I would do all the small ecomods with low ROI (< 10K miles) and highest cost/ROI rates. Third, I would then use the savings from that to fund larger projects.
Another benefit of doing taking the small to large route is experience accrual. I made some major (and costly) mistakes on my large mods, which being expensive, cost me a lot. It makes a lot more sense to make our novice mistakes on low cost parts and materials than high cost.
In the end, it all came out in the wash. I've already saved more in gas from my mods than the original price of my car. But I could have saved enough to be halfway into a new car had I taken a different approach. Meaning, to focus on the mods that
save money at a faster rate rather than those that improve fuel economy more.
Anyhoo, I hope other modders out there can benefit from my experience. I certainly don't get any benefit from it.
