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How much does gas need to cost for hybrids to pay off?


Louder North
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I sold a set of Grill Covers to CMAX Owner Alaska,LOL. :) Going I-20 - I-10 across Texas is about 850 miles, one day of driving. ;)

 

 

Paul

827.4 from Beaumont (LA border) to El Paso. A looong ways, especially once you get past San Antonio. West Texas is a bit boring over the long haul.

 

That is going via I-10. It might be closer (but far longer) to try a more direct route.

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The other issue I have seen - especially in quickly growing areas - is untimed traffic lights. More effort by local governments to sync their traffic signals would result in a meaningful improvement. Ideally you would have a 45 mph speed limit and by actually proceeding at 40-45, you would only catch a red light once in every several signals.

 

I don't see much of that around here anymore.   More automated signals seem to want to make you stop for every light.   I think they do that to bunch up the cars more and to keep traffic speed down.  Just a guess on my part.  They are also very hard to time sometimes.   I go to work early and very light traffic at that time.  Some lights will stay green for only 5 or 10 seconds if no one is going through the intersection.   I swear that some traffic lights are just staying green long enough to get you close to the intersection and then change to red just in time for you to make a quick stop.   :drop:

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  • 1 month later...

The comparisons that they used in the article are not very good in the case of the C Max.

 

Firstly the C Max was not in the comparison, maybe because there is not a ICE only model.

 

Therefore I took the closest Ford product an Escape and priced it on Fords Website as close as I could to my C Max  SEL and it was a SE  FWD fully optioned.  The Escape cost $400 less than the C Max. If I had taken the Escape Titanium it would have had 4WD and all the options available on the C Max SEL, so I defaulted the SE model to have the FWD. Now this means that for me the payback would have been about 6 months for a comparable vehicle in size and options with similar performance. 

 

As my previous vehicle was a 2013 Focus the difference in fuel costs for the C Max is approx. $40. per month  less with the C Max than the Focus; or 10 months payback.

 

If they compared the Ford vehicles of similar size or model and optioned as close to each other as possible instead of a base model compared to a mid-line model hybrid the paybacks would have been much shorter.

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Going by TrueCar.com, which I've found is decent, a base model cheapest possible Ford Escape (new), but add aluminum wheels like the Cmax has, is about identical in price to a CMax.  Like within $200 or so, negligible diff.  

This market really hates Cmax hybrids, man.

About zero hybrid premium.  Both vehicles about $21k.

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