Would You Pay $90 to fill your Prius?

how much would it cost to fill the quad cab if it cost $90 to fill a prius

 

Hi Tim,

A small quibble: I question whether you really are getting 50 mpg if you are driving 3.5 miles one way? I suspect the mpg is more in the 30s given the need to warm up the ICE.

In any event, given that you have already incurred the fixed costs of owning the Prius (monthly auto payments, insurance, license fees, etc.) then I agree that the incremental gasoline and maintenance cost associated with your relatively short commute (7 miles per day x 22 weekdays/month x 12 months = 1,848 miles per year) will be less than buying a T pass.

However may I suggest an alternative: depending upon how frequently you need your car to leave the city, visit your other real estate etc., might it be more economical to rent a vehicle for those occasions? In that case, you may determine that paying for periodic rentals and the monthly T pass may cost you less than owning a new Prius.

 

Gasoline should be $10 a gallon, with the "extra" going to infrastructure such as walking and bicycle routes, electric light and high speed rail, and photovoltaic panels on every roof of every school, home, business and church - all based on sustainable, renewable (solar, hydro, wind, geothermal) energy. At the same time I will be driving a PHEV Prius and Toyota pickup that has double or triple efficiency over the current Prius.

 

Then prepare for collapse shortly. At $135 a barrel, when that gets through the futures, refinery, and finally to the pump, the current price of oil *already* puts gas at $7 / gallon. We just haven't seen it at the pump yet. Our current price reflects what the futures market was doing in early April.

 

Good point sorka

 

That's just the rock falling into the pond. The ripples are a long way from the shore, but they are coming.

 

I paid $60 to fill up day before yesterday. Price went up 14 cents a litre from the $1.53 I paid, the next day. It will now fall again until next Tuesday. The price on last weeks cycle rose about 2 cents so given that I expect the price per litre to rise about 56 cents a litre to about $2.09 meaning my 39.21 litres of petrol would cost about $81.95, so the $90 tank is coming with in the next 12 months.

It is worth noting I was paying $80 to fill my Camry before I got the Prius and I only got 2 weeks from a tank, now I get almost 3 weeks from a tank in the Prius so I will still be better off with my Prius than I was with the Camry and $1.30 a litre petrol and much better off than I would be with the rising price.

 

cost us $70 to fill up our camry wagon... that lasted 5 days. when the wvo car is actually running, we stick $70 into that once a month or so.

now for us, that's nearly 2 weeks worth of groceries. meaning, that if we had just one conventional car, we would have to give up pretty much everything else or discontinue eating. we've already given up the discretionaries. i know a lot of people who are in this situation too. this crap is about to chop my shoestring in two.

 

So, in theory, we should never see $5 gas then? Oops. The problem is, we already HAVE $5 gas. My corner station is up to $4.55. If this synthetic stuff is going to save us... uh... where it is?

Hmm. I did this when gas was $1.65. Joke's on me, I guess!

If you can do that now, why are you waiting? You do realize that we can avoid the pain, yes? We have the ability to help ourselves... we just won't until we have to, apparently.

 

My MFD read 55.3 before I left for work this morning and it read 55.4 when I finally pulled into my parking spot and shut it down. The first 5 minute block is always around 30 mpg, but then I usually get two more 5 minute blocks at 75+ mpg. Yes, it takes about 15 minutes to go 4 miles in Boston. My numbers do get a big boost every time I leave the city (driving tens of miles at 60+ mpg), but I've learned to hypermile through the city pretty well.

"Renting a car" in the traditional sense would not work for me. I leave the city several times each week to go shopping, hit some golf balls at the driving range, or run errands for work. Then every weekend I make that 120+ mile round-trip out-of-state. It would just be a real hassle to arrange for a rental car that often. And did I mention I'm under 25? That adds some hefty fees.

That said, we have a company here in Boston called Zip Car where you can pick up a car anywhere in the city on short notice and rent it by the hour. That probably would work well for me, but I didn't know about it until I had already purchased my Prius.

However, this arrangement is only temporary. A year from now I'm moving out of Boston down to the rural south and public transportation will no longer be an option. So I don't feel bad having just recently bought a car, as I would have to buy one soon anyway.

Tim