Bob Collins at MPR notes that with falling gas prices, the mathematics of hybrid cars works out a lot more slowly:<\/p>\n
According to the Associated Press, if energy prices don\u2019t move much \u2014 and, yes, we know they will \u2014 then the payback period now is longer than the life expectancy of the car.<\/p>\n
AP took the two popular hybrids \u2014 the Toyota Prius and the Nissan Leaf \u2014 and compared the payback period from July to now.<\/p>\n
Toyota Prius<\/p>\n
Approximate price premium: $4,300<\/p>\n
Annual fuel savings based on July gas price: $534<\/p>\n
Payback years: 8.1<\/p>\n
Annual fuel savings based on current gas price: $313<\/p>\n
Payback years: 13.7<\/p>\n
Nissan Leaf<\/p>\n
Approximate price premium, including electric vehicle tax credit: $7,330<\/p>\n
Annual gasoline savings based on July gas price: $796<\/p>\n
Payback years: 9.2<\/p>\n
Annual gasoline savings based on current gas price: $281<\/p>\n
Payback years: 25.8<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Hm – maybe that’s why the MPR crowd has been throwing spitballs at the Bakken oilfields all these years…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bob Collins at MPR notes that with falling gas prices, the mathematics of hybrid cars works out a lot more slowly: According to the Associated Press, if energy prices don\u2019t move much \u2014 and, yes, we know they will \u2014 then the payback period now is longer than the life expectancy of the car. AP […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-trains-and-automobiles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50382,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50381\/revisions\/50382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}