On the Smart (at 40 mpg and gas at $3.20 a gal) our cost will be around $8.00 per 100 miles. That's $80 per 1000 miles boys and girls.
What does your present car cost per 100 ? Wonder where the money goes?
A2Jack.
My wifes 01 Civic Sedan 100k miles on the clock, gets 30 in town and 39 on the highway - real numbers. Gas (reg) is about $2.75 so quick math is $9.16 per 100miles in town and $7.05 per 100miles on the highway.
Pretty good if you ask me.
I must admit when I saw the announcement on the official EPA mpg on the Smart I was surprised and disappointed. I would have really expected more.
My wifes 01 Civic Sedan 100k miles on the clock, gets 30 in town and 39 on the highway - real numbers. Gas (reg) is about $2.75 so quick math is $9.16 per 100miles in town and $7.05 per 100miles on the highway.
Pretty good if you ask me.
I must admit when I saw the announcement on the official EPA mpg on the Smart I was surprised and disappointed. I would have really expected more.
Why would you be surprised and disappointed with the "official EPA mpg"??
They are NOT real numbers.
Nothing more to say that hasn't already been said umpteen million times here....
Because for once the numbers the EPA is putting out do seem to coincide with more real world driving that in the past. Hopefully these do come in significantly above EPA ests..
When I started this MPD - Miles Per Dollar - thread I wasn't sure how it would work out.
Now that Super Unleaded is $3.419 I really think folks should look closer at using this gauge of measuring rather than MPG. It definitely tells the true story better.
I'm trading a loaded 2006 Subaru Tribeca seven passenger Limited that has NAV and rear DVD. It also has puddle lights.
It has 52,000 miles on it as we purchased it 08/01/05.
Value depends on who is looking at it at any given moment. It too uses Super Unleaded and gets 21+ MPG. But when you look at MPD that is 6.1 MPD. The smart should get almost double that at 40 MPG that will be 11.7 MPD. And even at say 36 MPG that comes to 10.5 MPD.
My round trip to work is 70 miles. So it is currently costing me $11.48 to go back and forth to work each day. With the smart at 36 MPG that is $6.67 a day. Bottomline is $4.81 a day less in gas costs. Over a five day week that is $24.05. At an average 48 work weeks per year that is a savings of over $1,150.00 a year or almost $100.00 a month. At 40 MPG that is $5.98 a day with a $5.50 savings in gas costs. Over an average 48 work weeks per year that is a savings of $1,320.00.
Also, I finance my cars so the amount financed will give me about a $300.00 per month less car payment. If my savings is 30% on my auto insurance that's another $30.00 per month.
The overall potential is there to save over $443.00 in car insurance, car payment and gasoline expense.
The ONLY thing I worry about is the reliability of the smart.
So if you measure your MPD there are hidden amounts and everyone's will be different based on their costs and other factors - such as miles round trip and so forth and so on.
I think that one of the variables that were left out of the article "Gasoline's new math: miles per dollar" is the cost of the initial investment of the car! For example in you have a $24,000 Prius that you drive 100,000 miles, that cost you $0.24 per mile, where a $15,000 Smart would be $0.15 per mile. I don't think that you can leave that out of the formula. I tell people that I have an economy car, versus a Prius which is an "ecology car". I'll never spend the $10,000 difference in gas, even if I drove a million miles!
I think that one of the variables that were left out of the article "Gasoline's new math: miles per dollar" is the cost of the initial investment of the car! For example in you have a $24,000 Prius that you drive 100,000 miles, that cost you $0.24 per mile, where a $15,000 Smart would be $0.15 per mile. I don't think that you can leave that out of the formula. I tell people that I have an economy car, versus a Prius which is an "ecology car". I'll never spend the $10,000 difference in gas, even if I drove a million miles!
Neither car is likely worth nothing when it's time to move it along. Best case in point I have now is my '97 Porsche bought for $40K four years ago. Today, with about 18K miles more that I've put on, it would go instantly at $35K, and I could probably wait for a buyer at $40K. (My '93 is probably more of an anomaly in that I picked it up cheap three years ago at $18K, and it's probably worth about $25K now. So you can drive a car for "free". It's tough, but you can.)
Back to the question at hand. I always run the fleet numbers on cents per mile. So now that we've got $4.00+ 91 octane out here, and I seem to be getting just under 40 mpg, it's about 11 cents/mile. (Which was what my *&(#$%^ diesel truck cost when I bought it five years ago.) My delivery truck, by comparison, is about 45 cents/mile.
What we measure and how depends on what we consider the scarce resource, money or oil. Don't we want to stimulate the economy (spend money) and reduce our dependency on oil (save gas).
I like the idea of measuring gallons per personMonths. A Hummer that sits in the driveway while you ride your bike to work is using less oil than the smart driving to work regardless of the mpg. The bottom line is how much gas do you buy in a month (or year) not how efficiently you wasted it.
I am a bad example, my smart is so much fun to drive I use it for trips that I used to use my bike for. Hopefully, once the newness wears off, I will start using my bike again.
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