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 Re: New Trident
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Joined: Jun 2007
Posts: 3,402 Likes: 7
Loquacious
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Loquacious
Joined: Jun 2007
Posts: 3,402 Likes: 7 |
Quote:
Quote:
Like it or not, alternative fuels - electric in particular - appears to be the way things are going. I had a plug in hybrid for nearly a year. It cost virtually nothing to run using the electric ... though to be fair, I did go to it from a 5.7 litre Ram 1500 so pretty much anything was going to be cheaper based on our fuel prices 
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How did the hybrid affect your electric utilities cost in the year you owned it ?
Not very much actually, certainly cheaper than our petrol prices !! The car was a Kia Optima sedan and the battery was (I think) around 9.6 kilowatt hours. My electricity rate then was 16 pence (approx 11 cents) per kilowatt hour. A full charge got me about 30 miles on electric alone. Doesn't sound much but if the average commute is 5 miles each way (distances are a lot less over here!) so one charge of £1.54 gets someone to work and home again 1/2 of the week. When you add the fact it's a hybrid, it constantly alternates between electric, petrol or combined electric & petrol in normal use. When I sent my quarterly accounts for my VAT, my petrol dropped from £120-£150 per week (Ram) to £58 per quarter for the hybrid. Economy was in the 75+mpg region without even trying. Manufacturer's unrealistic lab conditions rate is 170+mpg. Other benefits of electric/hybrid are free road tax (our annual fee that ranges from free to more than £550 per year), free congestion charges in such as London etc. I actually know of one service station on a motorway services near to me that had an electric charger for the Optima that was actually free to use too.
Funny how some people think electric cars are a new thing. In the US at the turn of the 20th century, 40% of cars were steam powered, 38% were electric and 22% were gasoline and 33,842 electric cars were registered in the US (thank you Google )
I currently drive a Chrysler 300c (my third one) and I'm getting mid 30s mpg on the 3 litre diesel. Our current diesel price locally is £1.35 per litre and at 3.785 litres per US gallon, we're paying approx equivalent $7.15 per gallon.
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"You can't believe everything you read on the internet" : William Shakespeare
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