A Free Calculator For Economy, Hybrid And Electric Cars

Find out which fuel efficient car utilizes you

Bothered by high gasoline prices? If you're considering a fuel-efficient car, what about a hybrid or perhaps an electric vehicle, you will need to see our FREE economy, hybrid and electric car spreadsheet. This example spreadsheet is founded on models easily obtainable in 2012, but sometimes still point you from the right direction.

We have got six fuel efficient cars from different categories, incorporated all the costs a person might experience over an eight-year duration of ownership, and provided adjustments for fuel and electricity costs, purchase and loan costs, miles driven and driving style.

A Free Calculator For Economy, Hybrid And Electric Cars

The cars compared undoubtedly are a Nissan Leaf (full electric), Chevy Volt (extended range electric), Toyota Prius (hybrid), VW Jetta TDI (diesel), Honda Civic (fuel efficient gasoline), as well as a used Honda Civic (purchased at several years old, sold at 13 years.)

You are able to make your own adjustments for the driving style, and discover how the tariff of driving each car changes for ones particular circumstances.

All on the cars in this particular comparison can save you money over larger, more conventional vehicles, that may have total costs of ownership approximately twice as high versus the cars in this particular study. (Proof - consider the AAA ownership cost studies within the Resources section in this article.)

First, Get the Spreadsheet

How the New Car Calculator Works

The top (blue) section has details about the cars: cost, expected resale value after 8 years, mileages on gas and electricity, repairs and maintenance, insurance and registration costs.

A handful of these numbers need to be broad estimates, and a few (like insurance and registration costs) can differ from state to state. For the most part, however, we've worked to be as accurate as you can.

Feel liberated to make adjustments out of your own research, or message me in comments with suggested changes. The spreadsheet will help you change any figures you'll want, and pay attention to the results inside bottom line.

The middle (yellow) section with the spreadsheet is the place you adapt the calculator for a circumstances. It has numbers it is best to experiment with to see or watch how modifications in financing, fuel prices and driving habits get a new final costs of ownership for your cars.

Play with all the gasoline and diesel prices, to find out which autos save the most money as the prices increase (diesel is often a little higher priced than gas, so adjust it concurrently you adjust for gasoline.)

Financing may make a big difference inside cost of driving. Expensive cars (such as Chevy Volt) will require a bigger cost hit within our simulation unless loan rates are reasonable.

But particularly, think about the mileage entries many different lengths of driving trips you are taking. Think first in regards to the number of miles you drive in the typical year - then divide those miles up into short, medium and long trips, and place those numbers in the three yellow mileage boxes. This can be an important factor to find the car that produces the biggest difference to suit your needs.

And finally, the underside (red) area of our car calculator is definitely the output, what sort of costs of operation for the six example cars stock up against one another. Here's what each numbered line means.

Total Miles Driven: The sum from the miles you spend each in the yellow miles boxes above. This should total the miles you drive within a year.

Second car for >100 mile trips (Leaf): In order to fairly compare the Nissan Leaf, which cannot drive trips over 100 miles, with cars that could drive these longer trips, we incorporate some cost (and gasoline) how the Leaf owner might need to incur to get miles onto another gas car he might own, or onto a rental car. You can avoid having one of these handicap to the Leaf by only entering short and medium trips - to put it differently, put a zero to the "Trips > 100" yellow box.

EV kilowatt hours used a year: For the Volt and Leaf only, the quantity of kilowatt-hours of electricity these cars use a year.

Gallons of gas / diesel used annually: For the non-EV cars, what number of gallons of gasoline used inside a year.

Combined KWH energy used a month: just for this measurement we convert the action in gasoline to a kilowatt-hours equivalent. This allows us to directly understand the difference in energy usage between electric and gasoline powered cars.

Fuel cost monthly: What your monthly fuel cost, both electricity and gasoline, is made for each car.

Fuel cost per annum: What fuel adds up to inside a year of driving, both electricity and gasoline.

Monthly payment: This takes into consideration price, interest cost, downpayment, and loan term, providing you a number for which the payment amount on your car could well be.

Total interest cost: Over the full term in the loan, what are the loan costs you simply in interest.

Fuel cost savings each year vs. 20MPG car. How much money you happen to be saving in fueling cost, over one year, in comparison to a conventional car that gets 20 miles for the gallon.

Monthly payment offset by savings: A useful approach to consider your monthly car payment, taking your fuel savings under consideration.

Fuel cost benefits over an 8 year period: All the savings on gasoline costs within the full 8-year time period of this study added together.

Total valuation on ownership, 8 years: This is underneath line. Here is what it costs to obtain a car for eight years. It's a fortune!

Average price of ownership, annually: This will be the same cost from above, divided up in order to see what the tariff of car ownership is per annum.

Average valuation on energy, per mile: This is what spent in gasoline or electricity drive an automobile one mile inside your car.

Average expense of ownership, per mile: Another solution to see the lower line - what are the total cost is to operate a vehicle your car for each and every mile, including both energy along with other ownership costs.

Some Examples

The initial thing you will notice - looking at the underside line, cost per mile - is that every one of the fuel efficient cars being compared have roughly similar ownership costs, once all driving factors are viewed.

This might be no accident, as car manufacturers need to be doing similar studies to ours when setting the sales prices for cars.

However, each automobile type has it's strengths, so differences in miles, fuel costs, and trip lengths have cars shine over others.

Example 1: Mostly Long Trips

First, here is a scenario the location where the Honda Civic posts the best important thing.

What should it: 15,000 miles, mostly long trips. 9,000 of the miles are spent driving trips over 100 miles long.

Fuel-efficient gas burning wins the afternoon under these circumstances. The result can be an ownership cost-per-mile of 32 cents. The used version with the Civic can be purchased in second at 33 cents per mile.

Example 2: Short and Medium Trips

Here's our second scenario, the location where the Nissan Leaf wins: 15,000 miles, all on trips under 100 miles.

What will it: The short and medium length trips. If your evryday driving seems as if this, the Leaf can be a winner.

Driving on electricity uses only a couple of cents per mile importance of electricity, making this where a pure EV much like the Leaf shines. Looking at underneath line, we percieve a cost-of-ownership amount of just 29 cents. The Prius was in second place.

Example 3: Lots of Miles

In the 3rd scenario, this is the Chevy Volt ahead.

What should it: plenty of miles. 35,000 miles each year total, split between short, medium and long trips.

The fact the Volt is efficient and flexible both with electricity and gasoline provides an advantage when many miles are increasingly being driven within variety of circumstances. Cost-of-ownership per mile here inside the Volt is 18 cents, with all the Prius in second with 19 cents.

Example 4: Half short, Half Long Trips

Here's a fourth scenario that favors the Toyota Prius.

What can it: 25,000 miles annually split between both short and long trips.

Lots of miles are increasingly being driven on gasoline, and also the Toyota Prius has the top gasoline mileage of the many vehicles. Ownership cost per mile is 23 cents, with all the Chevy Volt in second place.

Example 5: Low and High Gasoline Prices

Next, let's try changing the price tag on gasoline include cars cope best with rising gasoline prices.

With gasoline down around $3.50 per gallon, here is a scenario won with the Toyota Prius.

We possess a mixture of miles driven at short, medium, and long distances on affordable gasoline. The Prius performance is 26 cents per mile, with all the Honda Civic in second place.

Now, we'll up gasoline and diesel prices to just about $6.00 per gallon, while changing hardly anything else. What happens?

GM's Volt is in first instance, at 29 cents per mile, and 31 cents per mile to the Prius.

This shows value of electric propulsion in the future where gasoline prices may rise over $5 per gallon, whilst heading up.

The Leaf also comes in second instead from the Prius, should the long trip mileage is reduced. This shows the rest of the problem with electric propulsion (somewhat addressed from the extended-range electric vehicle, the Volt), improved fast charging to allow long trips on electricity.

How concerning the used car on our spreadsheet? When should it make sense to obtain used? Try improving the number inside the yellow rate of interest box. Somewhere around 8 percent-plus loan interest you'll start to see the used Civic begin to compete for the cost comparisons, due for the lower purchase price in the car. If credit is costly, and also you can't buy outright or make large downpayments, used cars may help you save money. Otherwise, there's little reason not to purchase new vehicles.

Buy or Lease?

This page is all regarding the total valuation on ownership when choosing a fuel-efficient car. But will there be any time leasing should you choose?

We have purposely used an acceptable loan interest rate inside our examples, to get a pure check out how changing driving variables interact with all the technology and variety of each car.

However, while you play using the car calculator so as to loan terms and interest levels can use a large an effect on the lower line, especially to the more expensive vehicles.

The Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf merit special mention for having inexpensive leasing options - $350 monthly with a $2500 trade-in or downpayment. In general, you could consider leasing as opposed to buying one of those two vehicles folks who wants get a decent interest rate in your auto loan (5% or better.)

Leasing electric vehicles has side benefits - it keeps you in state-of-the-art vehicles because the technology evolves - and it also removes the possible future valuation on a depleted battery power from the equation.

Summary

How if you ever interpret the outcomes of our hybrid car - economy car - electric car calculator?

Few people scanning this are likely to base their purchasing entirely around the numbers they read here, as wll as they shouldn't.

Go sit in a few cars, and drive them around. In addition to ownership costs, you will have other reasons that particular car that appeals to you over another.

An EV just like the Nissan Leaf may appeal to your interest, as an example, because you such as idea of fueling in the home, or you much like the idea of not feeding the fundamental oil machine.

An inexpensive Honda Civic might be your cup of tea as you don't want to have a big auto loan around.

The Chevy Volt might even be that which you like, because from the high-tech drivetrain, gadgetry, along with the overall fuel versatility it gives you.

The Toyota Prius landed in second invest most individuals comparisons, thus it may a great choice if you will be managing changing driving situations.

And the diesel-powered VW Jetta TDI, without winning any with the fuel-efficiency comparisons, held its efficient head up well for an auto with much more engine power compared to other petroleum-fueled cars inside the running.

Remember, our spreadsheet study - in the majority of scenarios - shows the expense of ownership for all these cars as pretty close to 1 another. And if the valuation on ownership numbers offer a similar experience, it will make perfect sense drive an automobile what makes you happiest.

Notes on Study Methodology

This is undoubtedly an informal spreadsheet car comparison, but I have nonetheless striven for that best, most valid numbers possible. Figures were produced from a volume of sources, and averaged together to smooth any differences found within the datasets. Some of those references can be found within the resources section in this posting.

For a have a look at how we developed the numbers used inside the upper (blue) section on the spreadsheet, we now have prepared a PDF document that explains our process, as well as the range of possible numbers you could possibly substitute. Click here to show off (it is going to open with your Adobe Reader and other PDF reader.)

The two electric vehicles on our calculator, the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, present particular challenges within this regard, while there is not enough historical info on either car to confidently predict future expenses like depreciation and repairs.

Our way of these two vehicles has been to use depreciation numbers comparable to other fuel efficient vehicles. However, think about the risk the numbers here for that EVs could find yourself very different - either in direction - once these cars have been about the road to get a few years.

In the case from the only pure electric car here, the Nissan Leaf, we have now used particularly low repair figures similar towards the very few pure EVs who have driven on American roads in past decades. Historically, EVs also have very low maintenance and repair costs for the reason that electric motor requires no maintenance whatsoever.

Our study develops over an 8-year quantity of ownership, which ensures you keep it in the warranty period for both the Volt and Leaf EV batteries. This allows us to stop the (important) question of battery replacement costs with the electric cars. This position is justified with the observation that hybrid cars just like the Prius have had not many problems with failing batteries, and little impact on resale values, even on early used vehicles. Prius owners also have found a fantastic workaround for the high expense of replacement batteries by robbing far cheaper (but nevertheless good) batteries from junkyard hybrids. EV owners can be able to employ a similar strategy, especially once these cars are available at mainstream rates.

The battery replacement problem is also more relevant for the pure EV just like the Leaf, and much less so with the Volt, ever since the Volt is halfway from a full-time EV and also a standard hybrid such as the Prius. In the Leaf, every one of the miles driven go on a toll around the battery, because there's no other method of obtaining energy available. In the Volt, however, some miles are on the odometer on gasoline, that will not, for most circumstances, take many miles away from the battery. This should potentially encourage the Volt's battery a lot longer effective lifetime, based on driving style.

This is often a work in progress, and in all likelihood always is going to be. As data on EV battery lifetimes and replacement costs appears, these costs are going to be better built into our depreciation numbers. Likewise, data about the other vehicles here is going to be updated periodically when model years change.

Useful Reading

once you choose an automobile, you will notice "ownership costs" inside a menu around the left side on the screen.

If you'd rather not download a workplace suite to view the auto calculator spreadsheet, Open Office can be obtained on disc inexpensively here:

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