Many years ago the guys on Car Talk compared lifetime car ownership costs depending on if you bought a new car every year, every 3 years, or bought used. I think used was cheapest except maybe they had one alternate called “heap” where you bought a 10 year old car and paid a lot in maintenance. I ran numbers of my own which showed you could buy a car and keep it for 10 years and it wasn’t that expensive, plus you get the joy of a new car every 10 years. 12 years ago I bought a Mazda 3 to replace my 10 year old Honda Civic. I was due to replace the Mazda in 2018, but I put unexpectedly low miles on the car, so it was only up to 50,000 or something like that and prices on new Mazda 3’s were a lot higher than when I bought mine ($22,000 instead of $18,000). If I was going to pay a bunch of money, then I had to look at more options. Plus with retirement a couple of years away, a small car might not be the best fit for me if I was going to travel a lot and/or have a second home somewhere.
If I am going to take long trips, then an electric car won’t work for me because at best they can only go a few hundred miles on a charge and the fastest chargers can do 80% full in 30 minutes. But now they are making plug-in hybrids with larger batteries that will let you run the car on battery power for 20-35 miles, which covers 95% of my trips. Essentially I could have an electric vehicle with a gas engine as backup. I found the Kia Niro, a small SUV (really more of a hatchback almost), which got amazing mileage of 50 mpg and had a new plug-in hybrid model available. I have to be careful with miles per gallon because I don’t put that many miles on a car. In fact, I have only spent $5300 on putting gas in the Mazda over 12 years and 56,000 miles. So better mileage would only reduce that number somewhat, not make it go to zero. If a hybrid could get twice the mileage of the Mazda, it might only save me $2650, so if the hybrid cost an extra $3000, I would lose money. Right now I only fill up about once a month in a car that gets 25 mpg. With a plug in hybrid, I would only need to fill up when I go out of town, which isn’t that often, maybe a few times per year.
With electric cars, mileage can be stated as miles per kilowatt-hour. Kilowatt-hours are what Georgia Power sells you and they are about 15 cents each (including an extra penny for optional solar power as well as taxes and fees including ones for environmental compliance and nuclear construction even though I am using 100% solar) and the Ford Escape gets 3.1 miles per kwh when running on battery only. Trying to equate that to gasoline, if the car gets 40 miles per gallon and instead I use the battery to go 40 miles, that would use 12.9 kwh which means electrical gasoline costs about $1.94 per gallon. That is surprisingly expensive in a time of cheap gas, but would be really cheap if gas went back up to $3 or $4 per gallon. You can get your own charging station (get a full charge in 3 hours using the 220V charger instead of 11 hours using a 110V extension cord) for about $500 (maybe another $500 to have it professionally installed, though I could possibly re-purpose the stove outlet in my kitchen since I have a gas stove) and Georgia Power will give you a $250 rebate. Since I am in Georgia Power’s Simple Solar program, all of my electricity is solar, so mostly the car would be zero emissions.
The regular hybrid model Escape is about $28,000 (equivalent non hybrid is $27,000). The plug-in is $33,000, but you can get a $6,800 federal income tax credit the year you buy it. With the tax credit you can get a plug-in hybrid for less money than a non hybrid! That is, if you always pay MSRP. I can’t find any plug-in models for sale in my area, but I have spotted a couple of regular hybrids. If I have to special order and wait for a plug-in, I am afraid I would have to pay at least MSRP, whereas the hybrids will probably have dealer discounts (I have seen dealer discounts of as much as $5,000 on the hybrid). When there is limited supply some dealers charge over MSRP and they might only be able to get higher end plug-in models that have MSRP as high as $39,000. At current prices, the savings in using electricity for my driving instead of gasoline are quite small, but I could eliminate emissions and wouldn’t have to stop at gas stations. The plug-in also sacrifices a little interior space including a couple of inches of rear seat legroom. And it weighs a few hundred pounds more.
Toyota makes a plug-in version of the Rav4 which gets better reviews than the Escape, but costs more (at least $38,000). It might be a possibility, but I think it will also be very hard to find. One article I read said that if you divide the number of plug-in Rav4’s built by the number of dealers, most dealers will only get 3 Rav4s this year. It qualifies for a $7500 tax credit, has a little more cargo volume, but isn’t as responsive in driving.
Ideally, Ford would really ramp up production of the plug-in models so that they would be waiting on a dealer lot and I could get dealer discounts so that I could potentially get the plug-in for less than the regular hybrid once I include the tax credit. I am not sure if that will happen any time soon or ever. But in the meantime I have a car that works fine for my current purposes and it costs me very little to own it.
Today, I went for a test drive at a dealer. It is definitely a nice car, handles well, feels very modern, and the mileage on the hybrid is amazing for a car of this size (a small SUV, so about the same size as a Rav4, Forester, or CR-V). The salesman and I both wore masks the whole time unless we were outside at a distance. They didn’t have any plug-in hybrids on the lot and acted like they didn’t know anything about them (they can’t sell what they don’t have). We went out in a hybrid Escape, but it was a top of the line Titanium model for $38k. Later they pulled a basic SE Sport hybrid, but it still had a huge sunroof and (fake) leather seats, which the SE Sport isn’t supposed to come with. That is because this one had a $3,000 option package installed! So that is reality. Even if I know what I want, they may not have it or want to sell it to me (or even make it; if Ford can sell plenty of expensive models, why make cheap ones?). The nice thing is they were taking $5,000 off the list price. But, the destination charge was $1245 (on the sticker, but added to MSRP), they have a $699 documentation fee and they do dealer applied paint protection for $595 (seemed to be some wiggle room on this). Also you pay 6.6% in Georgia sales tax (almost $2k, and unlike annual ad valorem tax, not deductible), plus a few smaller charges. This dealer had more hybrids on their lot than most, 7 in all, but all but 2 were Titanium models (with $2k option packages!) and the others all had $2-3k option packages. I asked about a color they didn’t have and they said it had to be ordered from the factory which would take 8 weeks. They were offering a financing deal, but to get the biggest discount, you couldn’t get 0% financing. Instead, if my credit report was good, I could qualify for 1.9% financing, which I could do, or just pay up front. Will have to follow up and see if I would have to order a basic model and what kind of discount I could get. Otherwise, might wait until the plug-ins are available, though I am not optimistic about that.
The salesman told me yesterday that their July promotion was going to end that day and an August promotion would be in effect the next day. I checked to see this morning and they replaced the $5,000 off deal with $3,500 off. It’s not like they had anything I was going to buy yesterday anyway, but the incentives are going down as the economy gets better, I guess. He said they had crazy incentives a few months ago.
The salesman called later that day and said he could still give me $5,000 off if I bought right away and they could backdate the paperwork, which was nice, but I said I didn’t want to get a car with the expensive package on it and they didn’t seem to offer basic models, which got no response. I said I would keep an eye out and be in touch if I saw anything. The next day I got an automated email saying the cost had dropped $1,250, which still didn’t get to $5,000 off, but I clicked the link anyway. That was off of the $5,000 off so now it was $6,250 off. That got it down to $26,800, which was below the base model MSRP with no options and there are some not at all valueless things in the package like the giant sunroof, nicer wheels, fake leather upholstery, a power tailgate, navigation system, remote start, and adaptive cruise control which keeps you from running into the car in front of you and then speeding up again when they speed up. I called them up and said I was interested, so I will go back tomorrow and probably get it except I don’t have the money in my bank account.
You’re too sexy for your hybrid! Sharp looking automobile. ENJOY!
Before going in to buy, I did more price checking. I found an almost base model Escape LE Sport Hybrid at another dealer ($395 option for the color red). With their discount, the price was only $24,539, so $2,266 less. But I’m not crazy about the red, and maybe all of the extras make this one worth more. Then Mom said I should check a dealer closer to her, and they had a base model available as well, this time in acceptable gray, with no option packages at all! That’s $29,510 MSRP including destination and they were going to take $3750 off, getting it to $25,760, so only $1,045 cheaper.