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12,000 miles per year is < 33 miles per day. That's certainly doable when the range of the car is ~80 miles per day. For the car to be 'free' you would certainly need to be driving it that many miles per day. Say I drive a pickup that gets 15 MPG. If I drive 1,000 miles per month (I don't, but that's the amount generally allowed for a leased vehicle -- 12,000 miles per year), and if those 1,000 miles can be driven in the Spark, then I'm buying ~67 less gallons of gas per month. At $3/gallon, I'm saving $200 per month in gas, and at $4/gallon I'm saving $268 per month in gas. The money I'm saving on gas for my pickup pays for the Spark. We shouldn't forget the $999 down payment, but over three years that's just under $28/month. And then there's the cost of electricity. There's an annual fuel cost of $400, or $33 per month (based on $.12 per kW-hr and 12,000 miles--however, where I live that's going to be about $10 cheaper per month, but I'll use the $33 for these calculations). My cost: $199 + $28 + $33 = $260/month My savings: $268/month (at $4/gallon of gas). I only drive my pickup around 8,000 miles per year, which is ~45 gallons of gas per month. So my savings are only $180/month at $4/gallon of gas, making the cost of the Spark ~$80/month, or $2880 for the 3 year lease. At this point I can work over the numbers even further so that car is even cheaper saying that over half of my miles can be deducted for business, saving me over $800/year in federal income tax. That brings me down to around $14/month, or $504 for the 3 year lease. |
Otherwise the commute I have in mind is 90 miles per day x 5 days per week. So the mileage limits wouldn't work.