Driving a Prime--Are We Just Smarter?

Well I don't have a Prime, but have a Gen3. I also own a Lexus and Infiniti. Gen3 is my daily, as it is too expensive to drive the Lexus or Infinite daily. Plus I enjoy my Prius! When I do need to show off at the Valet I drive the Infinite Lexus is now a show car and is a garage queen.

 

Why, YES, we are smarter.

 

I am going to take a contrarian view.

I drove 30,000 miles a year for 10 years as the IT Department for a Mental Health Organization in northwestern Mississippi. If you drive enough, the cost of gas is important. If you drove 6 blocks to work in the morning and 6 blocks back home, you can never commute enough to make a Prius a good investment. You might as well choose a car by purchase price.

Since I retired in August 2016 I have only driven 7,000 miles. if I were buying today, it would not be a Prius. Perhaps a Kia Soul.

 

Why not a Skoda?!

 

I have no idea where to buy a Skoda in the US, and I am huge, so I have to fit in the car. Karoq?

 

The Prime is an outstanding value but it is not the car most people *want*
I'm eyeing an electric bicycle that costs ~ $3k I might use 2 hours a week

<<shrug>>

 

I had a 2012 Prius V, and I was able to swap it out for a new Prius Prime. I had a bunch of negative equity that got transferred over, so my payments are ridiculously high. (The car I traded in on the Prius V had negative equity, and it has just gotten bigger.) There's no way to get out from under this unless I give it back to the bank and then declare BK, which I'm not keen to do (and probably wouldn't succeed at right now anyway). But if I'm going to have to drive around in a car that's too expensive, it might as well be a brand spanking new one!

Aside from that, I rarely drive more than 30 miles per day, and the cost to charge the car for that distance is about $1/day.

I really like not burning gas, but it's not cost-effective unless the price of gas continues to stay above about $2.75/gal.

 

Smarter; a relative term ... that doesn't account for disposable income. Example?
Folks who bought a prime, because their credit score lets them, yet they can hardly pay the rent & buy groceries? it wouldn't be smarter.
Family size Examples:
3 kids? Our daughter would either have to leave hubby home or the 8yr old.
Oh - & baby #4 is on the way. Yeah, those two need another Hobby. But a Prime would not be smarter.
Pro USA?
It's almost impossible nowadays to buy a car completely made in this country, but many want to do their part for u.s. manufacturing.
Other "no-Prime for us" perfectly good reasons (not
counting other posts);
Only vehicle, & it has to haul/trailer heavy loads. Or,
Existing car still has 100K miles left in it.
Etc. etc etc
iow, for some, it'd be unwise to get a prime. So rather than prejudge one's transportation choice(s) as being (less) smarter - maybe understanding each buyer makes the smart choice that's smart for them.

.

 

intelligent choices vs emotional choices, twas ever thus.

 

I was amused by OP's rationale, that buying a Prime leaves money for other things. As if everybody would agree with his choices for other things.

 

Personally, I 100% agree with the OP's outlook on the matter myself, but as others have posted, everyone's different, and you can't chide them for their choices.

For instance, someone else could rightly say "I saved almost $30,000 because instead of buying the Prime, I simply ride my bike, take the bus, and rent a car once a year when I need to take a long trip."

Or, someone else could say "I bought a Prime over a BMW to save money... which I then used to buy a used Hummer, because I just love cracking streets and burning gas like air."

I'm of the "car's only purpose is to get you from Point A to Point B" school of thought as well, but people have their passions, including cars. Some will spend a small fortune on yearly Disneyland passes. Others on collecting rare stamps, Beanie Babies, or Moon rocks, and others on taking trips to Pitcairn Island or the Galapagos.

Even if I had bags of money, I'd never get a luxury car because to me it's a total waste of money too, but eveyrone's different, and others might like the comfort, the status, or simply the design of the car itself. Remember, to a Toyota Echo or Yaris owner, the Prime might seem like a waste of money

 

Clark also drives a Tesla (model S iirc). He did a write-up as to why that choice (for him) was so economical - if you can believe it.
But yeah, as for the Prime or any other car, many people nowadays are just doing with having a car. After all, $30k will buy a lot of uber rides if you don't need to go too far too often.
.

 

Clark was parroting iseecars.com, and that firm had its data misrepresented.

And just so you know, they conclude that an SUV is the vehicle of choice.

 

Cost may have been implied, ensnaring Clark. But all the data they had was on was odometer readings at the time of resale. My point is that the odometer readings available are being misconstrued as a surrogate for vehicle longevity. It is simply impossible to conclude that the Prius is X% more likely to reach 200k miles before junking than the average car from the data.

The data says that the fraction of Prius being sold on the used car market that are high mileage cars is ~ double the average.

 

Prime cause I can drive on ev only

 

My four reasons, not necessarily in order of importance:
1) because no other car available has the "auto re-fuel" feature ( solar roof) I just left parked the car under the sunlight and she does the trick
2) because I've seen around Ferraris, Porsches, Lamborghinis and many other luxury/sporty cars, but I havent yet encountered another Prime
3) because it's the first car I own in which I can listen to good music, decently played, at low volume, without any background noise
4) because the life is good.