Vehicle Cost Comparison
business
Description
Visit the Department of Energy's; Vehicle Cost Calculator" and select the following vehicles for
comparison:
2012 Toyota Prius, v 4cyl 1.8L Automatic Hybrid
2012 Chevrolet Volt, 4cyl 1.4L Auto (AV) Plug-in Hybrid
2012 Honda Accord Gasoline, 4cyl 2.4L Automatic 5-spd Gasoline
Input your zip code so the website can estimate your local electricity prices to properly account
for the plug-in Volt's total cost, but leave the other fields (such as fuel prices and driving
assumptions) as default.
In a blog post, review your process and your metrics and then talk about your results. How
significant a difference is there between the total cost of ownership of these three vehicles?
Did anything surprise you about what you discovered?
After you's've answered these questions for the first scenario, re-run your experiment but
change the cost of gasoline to $10/gallon.
What surprised you about the results now? Even at this hugely elevated gas price, how long
would one have to wait for the Chevy Volt to become the cheapest option?
How many people do you think see tok out this kind of analysis prior to buying a car, and what
does this say about consumer choice?
