Tesla EV pickup truck!

[Hersbird]

Originally Posted by Xist

[It is VTEC (Variable valve Timing and lift Electronic Control). VTECH is a brand of cordless phones]

And an auto repair shop in my town

[aerohead]

I calculated the capacity factor for my Toyota for the last two years.I drove two days a week.One hour on each driving day.For 104-days,that's 104-hours,out of 8760-hours for each year,for a capacity factor of 1.18%.
So I paid for registration,inspection,insurance,fuel,and maintenance on an 'asset' which was 98.81% useless.
It's more time than I spend at the laundromat,but I'm beginning to look at my vehicle the way I look at a washing machine in town.And I'm beginning to understand that while I do need mobility,I may not really need to own transport.

[Fat Charlie]

If you're going to cite fuel, you might as well count depreciation as a "cost" too.

They're all real costs, but looking at whether or not you need to own car or truck shouldn't be based on "how much time do I spend using it?" but instead "do I need to own it?"

If you need to own it, then it doesn't matter that you only use it twice a week. If you can do without that twice weekly drive to a place half an hour away, or can find a way to do it without driving yourself, then it's a different question.

At a bare minimum, I may spend five and a half hours a week in my car. To me, that doesn't make my car 96.73% useless. To me it means that at a bare minimum, I have to use it 6 out of 7 days, or 85.71% of the time.

You use yours 2 days a week, or 28.57% of the time. If you don't really need to run that errand, or don't need to do it so often, or don't need to drive yourself, then you need to rethink owning it. Unless you're owning a car just to own one, your car ownership expenses are really just expenses of your decisions that call for you to own one. Owning a car isn't an independent expense, it's an independence expense.

[Xist]

I use my car two hours a day three days a week, plus trips to Phoenix. Wednesday and Thursday I do not have enough clients. I really do not think that our office staff is doing their job. The lady who does speech with my brother does the same thing as me, she just has more clients. She says that she drives 50,000 miles a year. She also says that she gets 20 MPG.

Right there is enough information that I am way smarter than she is. Maybe she has a reason to drive that much. while I have averaged 11,541.37 miles. I probably missed some fill-ups. She does not have four times as many clients as I do, but I have averaged 35.1 MPG and 6.78¢ per mile just for gas.

She lives in the same area, she probably pays the same amount for gas, but I doubt that she gets $1 gas discounts at Safeway because her mom has tons of medications. Her gas bill would be around 11.865¢ per gallon and $5,932.5 annually.

If I had a reason to drive that much I would spend $3,390.31 or $2,542.19 less.

So much smarter!

Plus she is shopping for a new Ram.

[sigh]