Cost to drive: Small cars, diesels, hybrids and plug-ins
Cheapest cost per mile?
Cost per mile is one helpful metric for car buyers
There are many factors consumers can use to help them decide what kind of vehicle to buy, such as vehicle price, ownership costs like insurance and maintenance, and costs to drive.
So, in terms of costs to drive per mile, how do small cars, diesel vehicles hybrids and plug-ins compare?
Obviously, the costs to drive per mile for one hybrid, for instance, aren’t necessarily the same for all hybrid vehicles. So, it’s easy to generalize in ways that aren’t necessarily accurate. Nonetheless, MotorTrend has a pretty neat chart today comparing the Chevy Volt, Chevy Cruze, VW Jetta TDI, Toyota Prius and Nissan Leaf.
According to MotorTrend, it costs 4 cents per mile to drive the Leaf, 6 cents for the Prius, 8 cents for the Volt, 10 cents for the Jetta and 11 cents for the Cruze.
However, it’s important to consider that the Volt, minimally, is being tested in cold weather. I’m not sure that all other vehicles on this chart were tested in cold weather. Consequently, as the weather warms, some of these numbers could improve.
I like the parking angle of small cars as well.
George – Cost to drive is just one metric. Obviously, there are other metrics.
I completely agree that for now, something like the Volt doesn’t make financial sense because of just basic vehicle costs. Still, in terms of comparing the driving efficiencies of different types of vehicles, cost to drive per mile is an interesting performance metric. It’s not the whole story, but it does demonstrate that maybe either pure EVs and hybrids are simply more efficient solutions thn plug-in hybrids or range extended vehicles.
I’m a big fan of small cars, not only for the fuel efficiency, but the ease of parking, maneuvering down windy roads and sharp turns, and the over aesthetic. Much better for the environment too!
This metric has a big flaw… the cost of the car itself. I think the cost of ownership metric is much more helpful when one needs to see money at the end of the line. If not, what’s the point to count only the cost per mile in energy spent ? If the goal is to analyze the impact of energy spent per mile, it would make much more sense to calculate the CO2 per mile.
There is somewhere around $22k difference between the Volt and the Cruze ($41k-$19k). At 3 cents per miles difference, you will need to drive the Volt for over 730 thousand miles to even the cost of ownership, and this does not include that you will need to replace the battery several times (at least 4+) to reach this amount of miles. So probably talk here in the millions of miles to come even in cost of ownership.