Quote:
Originally Posted by JSH
Hybrids save money over the life of the vehicle. A Camry LE is $25,845 and rated at 32 mpg. A Camry Hybrid LE is $28,080 and rated at 52 mpg. FuelEconomy.gov tells me that is a savings of $550 per year with gas at $3 a gallon. That extra $2235 purchase price pays back in 4 years. At 15 years you are $6,000 in the black on fuel savings alone - not even taking into account that the Hybrid will have it's original brakes while the Standard Camry will likely be on it's 2nd to 3rd set of brakes / rotors.
At 15 years you are at 214K miles driving the average US mileage. At that point a car is pretty much fully depreciated. Prior to the current vehicle shortage we are talking value of a few thousand dollars. Any major failure will send a vehicle that old to the scrapyard. However, if you wanted to replace the battery an OEM Toyota pack is $3500 + about $500 in labor. Most people would put that $4K toward a new car - no different than if the engine or transmission needed to be replaced for thousands of dollars.
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I'm no expert, but it just seems that if every car were a hybrid and therefore every car basically had an expiration date of 15 years, that would put an end to the poor man's car, period. People who buy new cars might not be affected, depending on the demand and such. But if car's are worthless in 15 years, then what will be the prices of 10 year cars, or 5 year cars? It seems like there'd be some effect, probably good for the richer but bad for the poorer.
For an example I would love to put 4,000 towards a new car. I could even sell my Avalon for $10,000 (maybe more) and the Prius for a couple and have maybe $15,000 for a down payment. But I don't think there's anything out there I could afford right now with the way prices are even with a downpayment like that, at least not something that would be better or equal to what I already have.