Making money from my Prius

My first experience was renting a Prius for a vacation.
What I saved on Gas paid for the rental.
And that's when I decided on actually buying a Prius.

I would buy another in a heartbeat if we could get one with right hand steering in the US.
My wife is a rural mail carrier.
Her mileage is re-imbursed, but she has a very fuel inefficient Jeep with right hand steering.

 

Right Hand Drive Conversion Kits - Postal Things Inc.

 

My wife's last business trip paid for her gas, an oil change, a new set of tires, AND we still had a few bucks left over.

 

I know what you mean. I think the IRS figures may be up to $.55/per mile now?

I use to use my personal car a lot for work. My employer has now prohibited us from using our personal vehicles to do work related tasks for liability reasons.

The more I think about it, they are probably right on this issue. I know there are certain laws that govern that the insurance follows the car. Which means your own personal insurance may come in as primary insurance to pay for claims before your employer's insurance comes in as excess coverage. But this is not all set in stone. But for liability purposes, things get really hairy if we are ever liable to injury to others and both your personal auto carrier has to come into the action along with the liability carrier for your employer. It gets really messy.

Personally, I love to use my own car. But my employer insist that we do not. They explain that it only takes "one incident" before you realize that it was not worthwhile.

 

Jimbo,

Great post. :thumb:

I note that their conversions are for '04-'09.
I guess the "fly bridge" on the '10 would cause serious issues, may not
be possible without removal... where would the shifter go?

As to the Prius conversions, I wonder how moving the drivers position
to the right side affects the various sensors that are in the seats, etc.

As an example, IIRC, the auto off headlights are keyed to the driver's
seat/door. If the passenger's door is opened/closed after the driver's
side, the headlights don't auto extinguish.

I would hope that the converter has been all through this with a fine
toothed comb. But if I were contemplating their conversion, I would
spend a whole lot of time going over the minutia of the
ramifications/consequences vis-a-vis the various sensors, etc.

 

Can you import one from those crazy brits ?
Also, if I am not mistaken the posted pennies/mile is a tax deduction, not a credit. It is still a good deal but not a great one after you consider maintenance, repair, and depreciation costs.

 

While this really should be profitable, I think you are overstating the degree of profit. Here, $0.05-0.06/mile covers only the fuel, leaving nothing left over for tire replacement, regular maintenance, and depreciation / wear-and-tear.

 

hmm, lets do the math real quick. Let's say he travels 50,000 miles a year. That's 25,000 to his pocket. at 50mpg, that's 3,000 for fuel. a set of really good tires $1,000. Oil change at 5,000 $600. tire rotation at 5000 miles for $200. You still got over 20,000 to cover other repairs, and depreciation. Yeah, he's making money alright. If he bought a top of the line Prius at 35,000 OTD, I can guarantee he can sell it for more than $15,000 at the end of the year with 50,000 on the ODO. He could easily sell it for $25,000 and he still have $10,000 after depreciation.
Lets say he travels 5,000 a year for his job. That's $2500. $300 for fuel, $60 for oil change, $20 for tire rotation. He's left with over $2000. A car will not depreciate more than $2000 because it has 5000 extra miles on the ODO unless it's a brand new car right out of the lot.

 

cpraudio, the "25,000" is a tax DEDUCTION, not money in the pocket. If the avoided marginal tax rate is .25 OP is staring of with $6250 "in his pocket." More than he will spend, sure; but not exactly mountains of money, and we have not considered depreciation and repair costs from the extra use.

 

Actually, the OP has said that he is filing for expense reimbursement at the rate of $0.50 per mile. He would collect $25K if he drove 50K business-related miles.

 

If OP is self employed then yeah it's a tax deduction. But OP is not. He's just an employee. He gets reimburse 50 cents per mile from his employer. I don't know what kind of job you have but if you're getting tax deductions instead of reimbursements then you got jibbed. All the jobs I've ever worked, I get mileage reimbursements instead of tax deductions.

 

Uh, no. By depreciation, I was talking about amortizing the capital cost of the vehicle, not tax consequences.

I amortize by the mile, and plan to keep the car until its value is essentially zero. Because I don't believe that an average Prius will go ($22,000 purchase cost)/($0.06/mile) = 367,000 miles without significant repairs or even fuel, an operating cost of $0.06/mile seems absurd.

 

I think that the OP had in mind his incremental refueling costs: 45 miles x $0.06/mile = $2.70 which will pay for one gallon of regular gasoline in many locales.

If the OP's business travel is negligible compared to personal miles driven, then he can reasonably ignore the incremental depreciation and maintenance cost associated with that travel.

However if his business travel is a significant portion of the total then it would be reasonable to attribute a pro-rata share of depreciation and maintenance when computing business-related travel costs. That would substantially increase the per mile cost, and allow a fairer comparison to the $0.50/mile travel reimbursement policy of the OP's employer.

 

The OP is making some money but probably not as much as he thinks.

Edmunds has a cost per mile calculator.

A used 2008 Prius for example has a cost of 0.40 $/mile:

2008 Toyota Prius True Cost to Own ratings at Edmunds

A new 2010 style IV would have a cost of 0.51 $/mile.

http://www.edmunds.com/new/2010/toyota/prius/101161782/cto.html?setzip=12546&vdp=off

 

. . . . . . his wife wouldn't be the FIRST person to be a Prius Mail Carrier, either:



neither rain nor snow


.

 

i think its a great option as well, but my insurance company requires me to report if my vehicle will be used for business purposes and its a significant increase in my premiums should i report as such.

i used to do it my previous job with my Corolla and even at 30 mpg and only around $.35 (i think??) per mile, i was making out like a bandit. but i was doing it without my insurance company's knowledge since i was unaware that i had to report it. my insurance company would not have covered my had i been in an accident.