I've been researching cheap car options. Toyota is still the most reliable brand, according to http://ift.tt/2im74ZH. The Prius has the reliability of the Camry but saves $750 a year in gas (at 12k miles/year with $3/gal gas). Prius won Consumer Reports 5 year cost-per-mile study at $0.43/mile.
Figuring out the sweet spot on the price/year/mileage spectrum was the real trick. I scraped data from all used car listings withing 100 miles of LA (it's a cheaper Prius market than my hometown of Seattle). I factored in all the expenses I'd incur in purchasing the car, driving it until it hit 200,000 miles and then selling it. I chose 200,000 miles as a fairly conservative number. I saw many owner reports of driving Prius over 200k with no major problems. Consumer Reports tested a Prius with 200k miles and found basically no difference in fuel economy or acceleration.
So down to the numbers. There's only a $1000 difference in the average annual cost between buying a newer/lower-mileage Prius for over 20k versus an older/higher-mileage Prius for 5k. UNLESS you factor in opportunity cost. The opportunity cost here means how much you would have made if you invested the money in the stock market instead of buying the car and then sold the investment when you would have sold the car. Lost opportunity cost on a 9k/110,00 mile car is about 9k while a 18k/30,000 mile car is 45k. That's figuring an 11% stock market return which is the 50 year average.
TL;DR: I calculated that 2005-2007 Prius's with ~110K miles are the cheapest cars to own/drive to 200k. The cost-per-mile is about $0.18, including opportunity cost from not investing the money instead.
Graph of lifetime average annual costs and source spreadsheet here: http://ift.tt/2laVIWu
Submitted February 05, 2017 at 02:45AM by rulzahl http://ift.tt/2kBpGp9
