dennisw Posted April 24, 2012 Share Posted April 24, 2012 Waldo, How stupid do you think I am. This senario has never been brought up in any of the payback discussions. All talks and figures are based on normal usage. Anyone that drives the limited amount you are now trying to use would never need to purchase a car again in their lifetime they would only have 24,000 miles on their car after 20 years of ownership. I am pretty sure I have a much better understanding on this issue than you do, especially after this last post from you. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akirby Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 Forget it Waldo - you can't argue with people who can't do simple math. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mort Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 ... but if you only drive 100 miles a month, you will never enjoy the financial benefit of a hybrid ... Wow! Can you justify buying a new bicycle, let alone a new car on about 5 miles a day? (if you commute) Do the math! All you need is a pair of shoes. New shoes: about $100 a year. Lease on new car: about $2400 per year. And the shoes save gas too! -mort 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akirby Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 Why do hybrid buyers feel the need to justify their purchase to anyone else? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lolder Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 Look at the title of this thread. "Benefit" is a broad term and will be interpreted differently by people. There's really no need to argue to this degree in a normally very congenial forum. We hope most people who buy a hybrid "Benefit" by the experience. Hybrids do well on the highway and very well in the city. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drolds1 Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 I totally agree with that statment but I don't remember you ever saying that until now. And from the beginning that has been my whole point, they need to stop bashing the hybrid system with the one single argument that it will never return the premium. Doing this looses people that can truly benefit from all the savings. And I have said this many times, everyone is not going to get return on their investment, but they can easily many times over if they learn to drive wisely. You don't have to be the hold up on the road you just need to learn when and how to maximize. None of these savings can be accomplished if the hybrid driver continues to drive these cars like a normal car. It does have a learning curve and the driver to have a desire to conserve. This can never be more obvious than the woman in California who sued Honda because she did not realize she needed to change her driving style to get the advertized mileage out of her hybrid. A bad FFH hybrid driver probably would not get the advertized mileage, but I'm never going to experiment with that. Again from the start of this thread the answer to the original questions is YES ANYONE can benefit from the hybrid IF they want to save and put a little effort into their driving technique. And to the heart of the whole obstacle you need to keep the car long enough to reap the savings. It's not a car for the people that trade every two three years, at least not at today's gas prices. But I feel that is going to change sooner than people want to believe. The Honda lawsuit issue is not as simple as it might appear. It has nothing to do with the woman's driving style. In fact, she owned this car for some time and didn't change her driving style, yet the MPGs dropped into the 30s after Honda issued a software upgrade for 2003-2009 hybrids because of premature battery failure. The software "upgrade" caused the cars to run the ICE much more than previously. Honda was hoping to preserve the batteries' lives with this change and possibly avoid a flood of warranty claims. In some cases they reflashed the ECUs without informing the customers. What they got instead was a flood of complaints and a class-action lawsuit. The woman in California opted out of the class-action suit and sued in small claims court, where she won just under $10G. L.A. Times: Honda has acknowledged that the battery on 2006 through 2008 Civic hybrids “may deteriorate and eventually fail” earlier than expected. When the battery pack can’t be charged to full capacity, the car relies on the gas engine more and fuel economy suffers. Since Honda is on the hook for the battery warranty, it pushed out a software update to the car’s ECU that changed the system’s operating parameters to use the battery less often. With the electric drive marginalized, something has to give – and that means the gasoline engine has to pick up the slack. And that means that it will use more fuel than it would have in the original EPA tests. We’ll let Ms. Peters’ site, dontsettlewithhonda.com, pick it up from here: …last year Honda tricked Civic Hybrid owners into doing an irreversible software update. The letter said that the update would “help prevent early IMA battery deterioration”. This sounded great, but Honda didn’t tell us that it would do this by reprogramming the engine to use more gas and would drastically reduce MPG. Honda didn't take this seriously at first. Now they're scrambling to fight it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennisw Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 Hybrid buyers are not the ones that started this argument. It is people like Waldo that use rediculous logic and math that cause this discussion. Take Waldo's same math, when a person drives 100,000 miles a year, then the car will pay the premium off in less than a year, this is a pointless argument and totally misleading. It all boils down to how long a person plans to keep their car and if they value their money. A hybrid is not an investment persay but it will save and like any investment, returns don't always happen overnight. If you don't start a savings at some point it will never happen that is simple math that the hybrid bashers on this post don't understand. As far as Honda's suit yes there were many issues and the main one was the woman was not told about her style of driving and that she had to change. This was her argument going in and then as all court cases many other issues came up. There are many people with the same car she owned that get far greater mileage than she was getting. Her contention going in was the car never got the advertized mileage and then went down from there to the 30's after upgrades and one of her other first claims was the batteries were already going bad causing this to happen. If you go to fueleconomy.gov the average for same car in the suit is two tenths higher than the advertized combined mileage which was 42 mpg after more than 60 samples with some samples being recent the mileage is on par with the combined average for this same car it is at 42.2 mpg. The whole thing started by the answer to her complaints to Honda about her mileage Honda told her it was her driving style not a problem with the car. All I tryied to do from the beginning of this post was give the person the answer he was looking for and then all the hybrid hate bashing started. Look in the mirror before blaming the hybrid owners most are just trying to enjoy their car and are faced with having to try to explain their purchase anytime economy discussions are brought up. As for myself I can't see why anyone that is going to keep the car for five or more years do not get a hybrid over the 4 cyl. And before Waldo jumps in on that statement as long as the person drives a resonable amount of mileage say like the norm which is 12k a year. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waldo Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 As for myself I can't see why anyone that is going to keep the car for five or more years do not get a hybrid over the 4 cyl. And before Waldo jumps in on that statement as long as the person drives a resonable amount of mileage say like the norm which is 12k a year. Good grief, you can't understand the concept of an exaggeration to prove a point? Why is 12K miles "reasonable"? Why not 11K? Why not 13k? All I'm trying to do is make the point that you have to drive a certain number of miles to make the cost of the hybrid pay off. Every person can do a calculation to figure out what that number should be in their particular circumstance. You made a blanket statement that ANYONE will benefit from a hybrid and this is just not true. My 10 year old Focus only has 68000 miles on it. Even though my commute to work is 40 miles of mostly city driving and I'd probably get 20mpg better with a hybrid, driving 7000 miles a year is not going to "payoff" for me. My wife has a 2007 Mariner and though her driving is 100% city, buying her the hybrid Mariner instead would have never paid off since she only drives about 5000 miles a year. This is not hybrid bashing. I quite like hybrids and will do the calculation carefully when it's time for my next replacement. It's just not fair to assume that everyone drives over 12K miles per year or whatever that magic payoff number actually is. Especially since the OP in his original statement only indicated he drove about 10K per year, though he later corrected that. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akirby Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 It is people like Waldo that use rediculous logic and math that cause this discussion. It's called exaggerating to make a point. Obviously you missed the point. The whole thing started by the answer to her complaints to Honda about her mileage Honda told her it was her driving style not a problem with the car. Doesn't matter how it started - she did not win based on "driving style" - that's pretty much covered in the window sticker disclaimer. She won because Honda altered the vehicle to reduce warranty claims and that reduced fuel economy no matter how you drive. most are just trying to enjoy their car and are faced with having to try to explain their purchase anytime economy discussions are brought up. Why do you have to explain it or justify it? Just say I bought it because I like the way it drives and I get 50 mpg and leave it at that. As for myself I can't see why anyone that is going to keep the car for five or more years do not get a hybrid over the 4 cyl. What's wrong with simply doing the math for each driver (like I did), presenting the facts and letting the buyer decide what's best for them? That's all we're proposing here. If overall cost savings isn't your goal then don't worry about it. If it is - you should have all the facts before you decide. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennisw Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 It's called exaggerating to make a point. Obviously you missed the point. Doesn't matter how it started - she did not win based on "driving style" - that's pretty much covered in the window sticker disclaimer. She won because Honda altered the vehicle to reduce warranty claims and that reduced fuel economy no matter how you drive. Why do you have to explain it or justify it? Just say I bought it because I like the way it drives and I get 50 mpg and leave it at that. What's wrong with simply doing the math for each driver (like I did), presenting the facts and letting the buyer decide what's best for them? That's all we're proposing here. If overall cost savings isn't your goal then don't worry about it. If it is - you should have all the facts before you decide. Exactly and well put. I to used a blanket statement or more than one for that matter, when I said ANYONE. I have also made it way more than clear to say it is not for everyone. But on the same note everyone could benefit if they wanted to. I know Waldo you were just being absurd in the 100 miles a year statement. The whole point is the negative hype, that you will never return the premium is totally false. And the pay off will be different for everyone and for some it will never happen. My total point from the first time this ever came up is, it's just another option that you have to pay for and if you like it get it. If you get a payback great, and this option is the only one at this time for that matter that will give you a payback on it's purchase. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigmccormick Posted April 28, 2012 Author Share Posted April 28, 2012 Seems like I started a flame war with this post. That was not my intention. To bring everyone up to date, last week I purchased a 2010 FFH with 150,000kms for $11,500 (not much of a price premium over non-hybrid). The point of my original query was whether the hybrid system would perform as intended outside of stop & go city driving. Based on my experience so far the answer is YES! Its working great here in rural Nova Scotia, averaging 6.2 l/100 overall. I am replacing a 2007 Impala which got 8.5 l/100 under the same conditions. Thanks to everyone who responded...Craig 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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