Anybody thinking about selling their old car and buying a hybrid should check this out: Brandon U. Hansen at OmniNerd calculates the monthly gas savings of trading in your current vehicle for a hybrid; how much you’ll need to take out in a loan; monthly payment of the loan compared to current car payment; and (voila!) a pretty graph showing the “maximum economically justified hypothetical hybrid sticker price vs hypothetical hybrid gas mileages for various gas prices.”
The post considers lots o’ info about hybrids, and comes to the conclusion:
While no “green” person would ever advocate buying a hybrid for purely economic reasons, it is painfully obvious that existing hybrids lack the ability to make up for their steep prices with gas savings.
Bummer. According to this, at least, hybrids don’t yet have the right appeal to the typical American consumer.
Maybe you knew that already. But aren’t the equations and graphs cool? I think so; then again, I used to do long division for fun.
