Fuel Economy

I have driven several models of the hybrid car. The Honda Insight, and several different years of Prius. They are quite expensive to buy and maintain, but you do save considerably at the pump. A friend of mine purchased a Prius a year or so ago. He did the studies of cost versus gas savings. He said he would have to keep it a long time for the savings to equal the additional cost of the hybrid over a standard vehicle. I purchased a 70,000 mile Prius. I noticed some warning lights that were on and that it didn't operate quite right. Even though I employ 5 mechanics and have access to lots of repair information about many vehicles, we had to sent this to Toyota for repair. The problem was a bad computer. The computer in this car was listed at close to $4,000. The computer in the average car is several hundred. I wonder what other expensive things lie waiting to break in this car.

Gasoline prices are at an all time high. Gasoline is taking a bigger bite out of your wallet. The most logical solution for this problem is to drive less. Combining errands and going out once rather than 3 or 4 times. There is also the old rule I learned in drivers ed many years ago. If you accelerate as if you had an egg between the pedal and your foot, you accelerate more slowly and smoothly thus getting better mileage. When I am driving a car that is equipped with the instant MPG feature, I try to get it to read as high as possible. This corresponds with teh slower and smoother acceleration.