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On the Path…Sneetches & Cars

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Last week I heard a report that a Prius in L.A. that has the carpool lane stickers on it was worth $4,000 more than ones without!

$4,000!

This reminded me of the Dr. Seuss book, “The Sneetches” which I loved as a kid. you know the line “the star bellied sneetches had stars upon thars, where the PLAIN bellied sneetches and none upon thars!

DISCLAIMER
I’m just saying that’s what came to mind. I’m sure all Prius owners with stickers are lovely people and excellent drivers witout any ’sneetchiness’.
I share the freeway with some of them everyday and they’re all fine people.

SO let’s explore how this came about. A couple of years ago as an incentive to buy a hybrid there was a tax rebate.
THEN, for the first 85,000 people who bought them in L.A. they would get stickers. The stickers meant you can drive in the carpool only lanes without a second person in the car. Pretty cool incentive eh?

NOW, their car is automatically worth an extra $4,000. That number comes from a study that someone paid to have done on the value of a used Prius. They wanted to find out how long you’d have to drive a Prius, to make up in gasoline the extra cost you paid up front. This stemming from the notion Prius are already a tad overpriced by about $3500. So they came up with that number, it was something like 5-7 years of driving.

In a nutshell, the study found out that the cost of driving a hybrid was inconsequential on saving gas compared to driving a suitable “gasoline only” equivalent. Like a Corolla. It came down to people were paying the extra cost to live a “greener” lifestyle; which I find very admirable.

It turns out, the Prius with the added carpool stickers will pay for themselves in 18 months! And it is because those cars are getting to GO somewhere; instead of, for example, sitting on the Southbound 405 staring at the Getty Center for three hours.

I found this study fascinating and disheartening at the same time because now the used Prius will be MORE EXPENSIVE than the new Prius.

Thought I’d let ya’ll know.

Thanks for checking in

Stephen A. Thomas

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 22nd, 2007 at 7:59 pm and is filed under on the path, posts & stories . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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