Q Will gas savings pay for the cost of a hybrid car?
A Yes. How long it will take depends on several factors, such as the price of gas, how much you drive and the kind of car you're driving.
Let's say you buy a hybrid that gets 45 miles per gallon. You drive it 15,000 miles a year and gas costs $4 a gallon. Your yearly fuel cost is $1,333, or $6,665 over five years.
If this car replaces a car that you drive just as much, but gets 20 mpg -- which would cost $3,000 a year to fuel or $15,000 over five years -- the savings on gas with the hybrid would be $1,667 a year or $8,335 over five years.
A hybrid can cost about $22,000, so it would take just over 13 years for the car to pay for itself in gas savings.
But if gas went up to $5 a gallon and you drove 20,000 miles a year, for example, the car would pay for itself in just eight years, because you would save $22,224 in gas in that time.
The U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sponser a nifty calculator for figuring these costs and comparing them with your present car. Go to www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/savemoney.shtml.
Send your questions to Fixit in care of the Star Tribune, 425 Portland Av. S., Minneapolis, MN 55488, or call 612-673-7032, or e-mail fixit@startribune.com. Past columns are available at www.startribune.com/fixit. Sorry, Fixit cannot supply individual replies.
