Goodbye, Prius!
It's been a good run! As you may have remembered, my 2006 Prius recently crossed the 1/3rd millionth kilometre. I decided that I will let another lucky guy enjoy its great fuel economy and awesome reliability. The real reason for selling it was that I felt the car was about to require some major repair. For example, the engine has been burning oil and the ride has become very harsh. If anything broke, I wasn't going to sink anymore money into it. If it were to break down, it'd probably go directly to the junkyard, and I'd get maybe $500 if not less for it. So, I thought I'd try my luck selling it and see if I can get a decent sum for it, especially since it has a newish (2.5 year) hybrid battery.
So, last month, I finally cleaned the car after something like 5 years! See the pics below. I thought I did a fairly decent job! Finally, after some hours of negotiation with a potential buyer, I was able to strike a deal for $1900. Initially, I was hoping for $2000,but after the deal was done, I reflected on it and realized that I got a pretty darn good deal.... $1900 for a 12-year old car with 345K km on it!
I know there are some who are still skeptical about the economics of hybrids, nevermind EVs. So, here, I will compare the total cost of ownership between my 2006 Prius and a hypothetical 2006 Matrix, bought in 2010 and sold in 2018.
The calculations as as below and are fairly straightforward. Let me explain a few things.
- When I bought the car back in 2010, Ontario had a PST rebate for hybrid cars and at that time, when you bought a used car through a private sale, you only had to pay the PST, and not the GST. With my purchase, I got the 8% PST back in the form of a rebate.
- Maintenance, repair, and parts costs racked up to $9780, with almost half of it being a rebuild of the hybrid battery at $1130 and then a replacement of the battery at $3400. In hindsight, I should have just replaced the battery the first time it failed...could have saved $1130.
- I assumed the maintenance and repair costs of the Matrix to be the same as my Prius minus the hybrid battery repairs.
- As you can see, gas savings for my kind of driving came in at around $7900 over the 8 years I had the car. This is no small feat! I saved the environment 15130 kg of carbon dioxide in the process. Fuel savings, $7900...clear conscience, priceless! :)
In the end, the total savings weren't astronomical. I saved around $2323. If I had not had the battery rebuilt, the savings would have been $3453. That would have been a 7% savings in the total cost of ownership. Not great, but still better than $0 savings! And again, helping the environment is a definite benefit, that has not been factored into this purely monetary analysis.
I'm sure if the comparison was done against a Yaris, the Prius would probably have been more expensive to own/operate, but that would not be an apples-to-oranges comparison.
Goodbye, Prius...Welcome CT!
You might be wondering what I'm driving now...here she is! 2012 Lexus CT200h. It's pretty much a Prius with a Lexus flavour. Bought it for $11700 + tax...it's definitely not a new car with 145K km on it, but it's in decent condition. After owning it for a few weeks, it's really growing on me. The interior is 5 times better than the Prius, and it's just a cooler car. Only down side is it's a smaller car, but since it's my commuter, I'm usually not subjecting anyone to the smaller interior. It's still a very comfortable car, just not as roomy and practical as the Prius.
The previous owner was a smoker...so it still has some smoke smell. Airing it under the sun for a few hours has definitely helped, but the smell still lingers. Any suggestions?
