Or, let me explain. I bought my wife a Toyota Prius Prime PHEV. I thought this would be great for her because she mostly just drives around town. Then if she wants to go on a longer trip, say to go see her sister, she has a gas engine to get her there. This is why I rejected an EV for her. She might want to take my car on the longer trip! Eeek! Plus the 2024 Prius actually looks like a nice car. We got one in red.
I live in a unique area where, due to state laws, gasoline is expensive compared to most other states (California and Hawaii are the only states where it's higher). But the area I live in has some of the cheapest electricity in the country due to being 100% hydropower.
So, after I bought the car, I did the math. Here's what I learned:
She gets about 30 miles off of a full battery. I calculated that it takes $0.64 to charge the battery. So that's $0.021 per mile. Pretty dang cheap.
Assuming gas is $4 a gallon (which is about what regular runs in Washington State), and a Prius gets 52.3 miles per gallon (that's what a Google search came up with), that's $0.076 per mile. That's a savings of $0.0551 per mile. Yay!
But, the Prius Prime cost about $5,000 more than a Prius. So I divided $0.0551 into $5,000 and I get 90,744 miles (ignoring significant figures). So my wife has to drive about 91,000 miles on battery to pay back the extra expense of the PHEV. But it's a Toyota. She might do that. It'll just take years, though.
Now if gas goes up to $5 a gallon, its only 67,000 miles.
But if electricity goes up (and it will January 1st), the miles goes up.
Maybe I should have just bought her a Prius.
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