Money? Markets? Autoregressive heteroskedasticity? Ask me about it.
Another math day today. Today we'll see what gasoline has to cost for a hybrid (modern technology) to be an economically viable solution.
Let's take a rough estimate of how much hybrid technology costs - $6000 is a reasonable figure (from a slightly biased source)
Consumer reports suggests a real world MPG of 44 (let's take 45 for the heck of it).
The average MPG for new vehicles is 24.7 (Source: 2005 Highway Statistics from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Division). Let's take 25.
EIA suggests that the average vehicle is driven about 12000 miles a year.
Let's do some math. Taking an average gas price of $3.613/gallon as of 5/5/2008, that is $770.13 saved per year. Disregarding amortization, this is under 8 years (7.79 years) to pay off the "hybrid cost". Of course we disregarded a whole bunch of stuff (maintenance, individual vehicle costs, the fact that SUVs and trucks are included, etc).
Of course, someone will come up with completely different figures, so this figure is not necessarily relevant. Anyways.
