If people ask if the Prius is really a good deal, have them check out this Consumer Reports article on the best value cars in the US. The Prius Four is #2 after two tested Honda Fit models. They did not test the Prius Two, so it is not listed. Based on the math, it looks like the Prius Two would be #1 if they had tested it, since it costs thousands of dollars less. New car values: Best and worst (No registration required).
The basic formula on the Consumer Reports value ranking is what the car would cost you if you bought it new and sold it after five years, and they adjust for how highly they ranked the car in general. The Prius Two rules in value for the money because it is well-priced, very reliable, has good practicality (five passenger, hatchback, etc.), has good safety, has good resale value, and gets the best gas mileage possible.
+1. This idiocy just reminds me why I stopped subscribing to Consumer Reports 5 years ago, after being a subscriber for years.
I have a spreadsheet that I've used for quite a while that calculates and ranks vehicles based on expected lifetime, cost, insurance, mpg, maintenance, etc. Cheaper initial cost almost always wins the prize. A 2010 5sp Honda Civic base model was significantly cheaper to own than the Prius I bought because it was $7000 less.
It would be nice if they had an adjustable online spreadsheet where you could adjust the factors for your own preferences, but even for subscribers (I'm one) they don't do that. They do have more detail for subscribers: The Honda Fit's cost per mile is $0.44 versus the Prius's $0.47, but the Prius gets the better road test score, 80 versus 76. Both get the highest reliability rating.
The elephant in the room in this kind of analysis is the resale value, and there is just too much variation in that number to let the final result be in anyway meaningful. 2 Fas recently sold his 450k mile, base G2 Prius for $5k. Over the close to 3 years of ownership he paid about 5 cents/mile for fuel. The capitalization cost ignoring interest was about 1600/450 = 3.5 cents a mile, for a grand total of considerably less than 10 cents a mile. Not THAT is awesome TCO, that no one could have guessed from CR's way of accounting costs.
The elephant in the room in this kind of analysis is the resale value, and there is just too much variation in that number to let the final result be in anyway meaningful. 2 Fas recently sold his 450k mile, base G2 Prius for $5k. Over the close to 3 years of ownership he paid about 5 cents/mile for fuel. The capitalization cost ignoring interest was about 1600/450 = 3.5 cents a mile, for a grand total TCO of about 10-11 cents a mile. Now THAT is awesome TCO, that no one could have guessed from CR's way of accounting costs. I'll be the first to grant that 2Fas is an outlier, but CR overestimated his costs by 300% I do not have any problem with CR's accounting methods btw, since they are transparent. Readership who do not understand though that the number is a huge YMMV are not getting their moneys worth.
An available template for making your own spreadsheet is on edmunds.com It's under their TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) tab.
This will always be the case as long as US gasoline is underpriced, as least in comparison to most worldwide pricing. Since you already have this spreadsheet, an interesting figure to post here would be the gasoline price that makes the Prius and Civic operating costs equivalent.
