cigvibe wrote: ↑Tue Mar 15, 2022 12:59 am
So the question is, are the savings in cash worth the loss of MPG?
I'm guessing no. Taken as a single data point neither cost per gallon or miles per gallon tell the full story. To determine if there is actual cost savings, you need to combine the two to get cost per mile. You are going to drive some distance per day, per week, per year, etc. . How much does fuel cost to go that distance?
In your data from last month, you said a 10% cost savings but a 50 mile decrease in range. In order for there to be a cost savings, your normal range would have to be over 500 miles for the decrease to be less than 10%. You also said $65 @ $5.59 /gallon, so that's ~11.6 gallons. If you were getting 500+ miles out of 11.6 gallons (43.1` mpg) do not mess with it, its the best Vibe ever.
When I bought my first 03 Vibe, I went way out of my way to buy a base 5 speed manual, because at the time the 5 speed was rated 36 mpg hwy while the base auto was only 34. And I was actually able to average almost 300K miles over 35 mpg. Sounds worth it, except to go those miles I also had to pay to replace the tranny, and then the clutch, and those costs exceeded the money saved by driving the one that got 2 extra mpgs
There could be other factors that make it worth it, depending on the science of emissions chemistry, or the politics of fossil fuels, which I dare not go in to.