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I bought my current car in 1999 for $4550. It was 3 years old, with 50,000 miles on it. I've had it for almost 14 years, and have driven it about 80,000 miles.
I'm looking for a new car. I thought that no matter which car I chose (excluding SUVs, pickup trucks, and big cars in general), that surely it would have better fuel economy than my current car. It's 14 years later, after all. Technology has advanced, and fuel economy has been a hot topic during that time.
Excluding hybrid and electric vehicles, the cars nowadays with the best mileage seem to get up to 28/35 (city/highway driving) miles per gallon. Many cars have much lower numbers.
I thought that one of those 28mpg cars would surely be an improvement over my current car.
But then I checked the fuel economy of my current vehicle. One website says 21/29 mpg. Okay... 28/35 mpg should be a noticeable improvement compared to that.
But another site says 24/31, and yet another says 25/32. Those numbers are better than the ones for many of the newer vehicles I've researched!
I decided to check my own documents to calculate how many miles per gallon I've been actually getting. I keep track of all my gas purchases, along with the per-gallon price of the gas. I also have notes on my car's total mileage at various points in time.
Using two separate time-frames within these first months of 2013, both calculations came out to 28.5 mpg!
Maybe that was just a fluke... maybe some of my numbers were wrong.
So I calculated it for a half-year time-frame between 2010 and 2011... 26.96 mpg. Hmm, still pretty good.
Then I calculated it for a whole-year time-frame between 2009 and 2010... 39 mpg!?? I figured this number had to be wrong. But even supposing I forgot to write down a few gas purchases (unlikely, as I almost always use a credit or debit card when buying gas), how could my numbers be that far off?
Then I checked the numbers for the 2 work-related trips I made to Florida in 2010. As I was getting compensated for expenses, I had detailed notes on my before & after odometer readings as well as my gas purchases. For the first trip, I seem to have gotten 34.8 mpg. On that trip, I drove back on slower roads, with more stop & go traffic.
On the 2nd trip, where I drove mostly on the interstates, I seem to have gotten about 39 mpg!
Whoa.
Maybe I should keep my current car after all. It has minor leaks, and I worry about it breaking down. But maybe even if it costs a lot to repair, it would still be worth it. It also avoids having to pay higher taxes and insurance premiums.
I don't know what to do. The cars I've been looking at are all selling for higher than what I was wanting to spend (actually for what I was wanting for Qiao to spend, as he has very kindly offered to buy me my new car).
How could it be worth it to spend over $10,000 on a newer car, when it doesn't even get significantly better mileage than my current one?
I'm looking for a new car. I thought that no matter which car I chose (excluding SUVs, pickup trucks, and big cars in general), that surely it would have better fuel economy than my current car. It's 14 years later, after all. Technology has advanced, and fuel economy has been a hot topic during that time.
Excluding hybrid and electric vehicles, the cars nowadays with the best mileage seem to get up to 28/35 (city/highway driving) miles per gallon. Many cars have much lower numbers.
I thought that one of those 28mpg cars would surely be an improvement over my current car.
But then I checked the fuel economy of my current vehicle. One website says 21/29 mpg. Okay... 28/35 mpg should be a noticeable improvement compared to that.
But another site says 24/31, and yet another says 25/32. Those numbers are better than the ones for many of the newer vehicles I've researched!
I decided to check my own documents to calculate how many miles per gallon I've been actually getting. I keep track of all my gas purchases, along with the per-gallon price of the gas. I also have notes on my car's total mileage at various points in time.
Using two separate time-frames within these first months of 2013, both calculations came out to 28.5 mpg!
Maybe that was just a fluke... maybe some of my numbers were wrong.
So I calculated it for a half-year time-frame between 2010 and 2011... 26.96 mpg. Hmm, still pretty good.
Then I calculated it for a whole-year time-frame between 2009 and 2010... 39 mpg!?? I figured this number had to be wrong. But even supposing I forgot to write down a few gas purchases (unlikely, as I almost always use a credit or debit card when buying gas), how could my numbers be that far off?
Then I checked the numbers for the 2 work-related trips I made to Florida in 2010. As I was getting compensated for expenses, I had detailed notes on my before & after odometer readings as well as my gas purchases. For the first trip, I seem to have gotten 34.8 mpg. On that trip, I drove back on slower roads, with more stop & go traffic.
On the 2nd trip, where I drove mostly on the interstates, I seem to have gotten about 39 mpg!
Whoa.
Maybe I should keep my current car after all. It has minor leaks, and I worry about it breaking down. But maybe even if it costs a lot to repair, it would still be worth it. It also avoids having to pay higher taxes and insurance premiums.
I don't know what to do. The cars I've been looking at are all selling for higher than what I was wanting to spend (actually for what I was wanting for Qiao to spend, as he has very kindly offered to buy me my new car).
How could it be worth it to spend over $10,000 on a newer car, when it doesn't even get significantly better mileage than my current one?