Tales from the elementary school parking lot...

Okay, there are no big stories to tell. My 2 younger kids are starting 2nd and 5th grade on Monday.

As we were leaving the parking lot following open house, we saw these cars.

(And there were 2 more, just on the way out, but alas, we could not grab the camera fast enough!)

Even more interesting is the fact that the parking lot there is relatively tiny. :)

I read a fascinating article last week...

Denise Gray, Battery Czar

I really do hope that GM comes through with the Chevy Volt. It would certainly help to vindicate them after the EV-1 debacle.

I think they're in it just to beat Toyota to the punch, but as long as it means cars that use less fuel, I'm all for a bit of free enterprise.

So anyway...

As I said down there (gestures toward the post below this one)...

Back when I started crunching numbers to trade my evil Jeep, I also started noticing a dramatic increase in the number of hybrids I saw on the streets every day.

I think the highest number I've counted in a single day of regular driving (to work, maybe stop at the store, come home that sort of thing) is 12.

I should note that one of my neighbors drives a Civic hybrid, and a coworker who sits just a few cubicles away from me owns a Prius, so I see those every day, pretty much.

I decided I'd start snapping pictures of them when I think of it. I might even try to sort out whether they are the same cars (by the plates) or different cars.

That'd be interesting. This is sort of like birdwatching, I suppose.

It keeps me amused, anyway.

I threw up a pic (on Twitter... see the sidebar over to the right if you want to follow me) of one my boyfriend and I saw yesterday at the grocery store, for starters. I just installed Twinkle on my iPhone, so I thought it'd be fun to tinker with it.

And it did not disappoint. LOL

This past spring, I was having a MAJOR dilema

I guess some people would think it wasn't really a big deal. But, it was a VERY big deal to me. See, I was having car trouble. Not the "my car won't start, and I have no money to pay a mechanic" sort of trouble (though in hindsight, that would've been preferable). Oh no... this was something entirely different.

(Pardon me while I do that thing where people go back in time so they can go forward)

I always had small cars. My very first car was a gently used, but quite old 1974 VW SuperBeetle. I loved that car! After its unfortunate demise a few years later, my new best friend was a 1981 VW Rabbit... diesel! I think I got about 50something mpg in that baby. This sort of pattern continued for me, and I think the biggest car I ever owned was an old Chrysler LeBaron (oh, how I hated that car) for a few months in 1996. I didn't have to drive that one too long, though... the fates were merciful. ;)

Fast forward to 2006. I was in a defiant phase (it's a long story), and I traded the 2003 Toyota Matrix I was driving for a 2006 Chevy Trailblazer. It was like playing grown up, because I'm short and I was up so high I could see the entire world in that thing!

I enjoyed it at first, being up high, seeing everyone down below me... having all that room to fill the thing up when I went shopping and such.

But I must confess: It bothered me. The thing got like 12-15 mpg. I paid more for it than I should've. I'd signed on for a less than favorable interest rate. It was a combination of things.

After about a year, I got this idea. What if I were to trade in my large SUV for a smaller, compact SUV? I mean, that'd be good. I'd still be up higher, I'd have some room to store things AND I wouldn't be burning up fossil fuels like mad, because I'd get better gas mileage.

Sooo... off to the dealership I went. To look. I didn't do any research. (This is a biggie, man, this is a biggie). I knew what I wanted (a Jeep Liberty). Seemed simple enough at the time. Ha! It was soooo....NOT simple.

The dealership saw me coming about 5 miles away. I was upside down on the Trailblazer (I'd only had it a year, and I paid too much for it anyway). I owed about 2k more than it was worth.

I didn't want to have a higher car payment than the one I had on the Trailblazer (It was 380 a month). I was willing to go to 400, but that was about all.

Long story short, I wound up with a Jeep Grand Cherokee, LEASED, with payments of 450 a month.

I hated that Jeep from the moment I drove it off the lot. I think I hated it before I even signed the paperwork. What I cannot tell you now is WHY I signed it in the first place. I already had a gas-guzzling, air-polluting SUV with payments of 380 per month. Why'd I go and get another one with higher payments, when I'd gone there looking to LOWER my payments, get a car with better gas mileage, and basically, burn LESS fuel? (thereby, creating less emissions).

My only defense is that I'd just bought a house and run through my savings, and I guess I was psychologically in a bad spot. Being upside down in a car was scary to me. It's silly now, looking back, because I could've just bought gap insurance until I could find a good deal on a reasonable vehicle. Ah well. *sigh*

Sooo... I drove the Jeep for a few months, and my dislike for it grew. My fear of it grew. My discomfort with leasing a car grew. It was a 39-month lease!

About 5 months after I leased it, I read an article on the Internet that listed my Jeep Grand Cherokee as one of the 10 worst cars for the environment. It was at that very moment that this sort of light switched on for me. I knew what I had to do. I HAD to get rid of that SUV.

I had spent the better part of March hoping someone would crash into it while it was parked (no injuries to anyone, or anything like that, I'd tell myself). I wanted it gone. I hated that I was driving it. I disgusted myself.

After it became clear that fate was not going to intervene and magically erase that car from my life, I got serious about getting rid of it. I put an ad up on Auto Trader, to sell it for what Edmunds listed as the proper private sale value (the car was in FLAWLESS shape... it even SMELLED new). In 2 weeks listed, not ONE single phone call.

It was around this time that people were panicky about the price of gas. Now, the price of gas was a concern of mine, but not nearly the concern that I felt over the horrible emissions ratings OR the lease that I felt trapped in.

I actually think the rising cost of gasoline is a good thing. It will encourage people to force our government to come up with alternative sources of power. I know it hurts in the interim, but in the long run? Alternative energy is SOOO overdue.

Where was I? Oh... yes, waiting for the phone to ring. And it did. But, it was some agency offering to sell my Jeep if I paid them 3k. Um... no.

All the while, I was researching. And researching. What car should I buy? What makes sense? What can I afford? How will I manage to sell the Jeep, pay off the lease? (I owed about 24k to get out of that lease... the car was 30k when I leased it 6 1/2 months before I finally got rid of it.)

I made spreadsheets, I calculated. I really liked the look of the Honda Fit, and it had a hatchback, and seemed roomy for a small car, and it was inexpensive, got good mileage, low emissions... but... everyone else liked it too! All of the local dealerships were sold out, and taking orders... and sadly, my spreadsheet told me that it wouldn't be worth enough at the end of 3 years (when my lease would have ended) to keep me in the positive and not make me lose money (I was going to have to trade in my Jeep and lose about 10k on the deal). I wanted that Fit, but it just wasn't the economical choice.

I ran the numbers on some other cars also, including the Nissan Versa and the Honda Civic.

I didn't like the Civic, it was a car. I was used to hatchbacks, since I'd had a Toyota Matrix before I'd had the SUVs. I hadn't driven a sedan since 2002.

No matter how often I ran the numbers, nothing worked. Not even the hybrids, unfortunately. Even though I really like them, I couldn't justify the extra expense. Not after having to spend so much to get out of that lease. The irony is that I would only have had to spend 2k to get out of that Trailblazer about 6 months before, and I could've done sooo much with the 8k, like, say, lowered my car payments? Oy.

I shouldn't say nothing worked. Something did work. The Civic.

Not the nice EX-L with leather, mind you. Just an LX with cloth seats.

Cool thing was, I could trade my Jeep, pay it off, pay a wee bit down on the Civic, and at the end of 3 years, my Civic will have a (projected) worth that will have saved me 2k over the 3 years. After another 2 years, I'll own it outright, and it'll keep running for a very long time, as Civics are known for that sort of thing. I am saving gas, and I am spending less on gas... those savings are an additional 2k saved over 3 years, maybe more, depending on the price of gas over time. Yanno what else? I love that car. Whodathunk? I drove it a couple of times before I bought one, and I basically had my pick of colors, as I bought it just before the sales totally blew up on the Civic (due to gas hitting 4 bucks a gallon). Did I mention that I love that car? I do. :)

I've done so much reading since I bought it, and I know that once it is paid off (and by then, I'll have 2 kids that both will need a car to drive, and the Civic should run for quite a good number of years), when I need another car... I will wait for the right time, and invest in a plug-in hybrid. By then, those will be cost effective, I think.

So what got me started watching hybrids?

My horrible judgment in leasing an SUV I never wanted, my agony trying to figure out how to turn things around (I'm getting about 40mpg now, and most of my driving is stop and go... I got 15mpg with the Jeep), and how this all corresponded with many of the people who live and work near me either a) becoming more aware of the damage they were doing by driving gas guzzlers or b) being freaked out over gas hovering near 4 dollars a gallon. (I'm going to guess that many of them were most highly motivated by "b", but who cares? At least they're not running through tank after tank of nonrenewable fossil fuels, and for that, I thank them.)

I see more and more hybrids every single day. Most of them are the Toyota Prius, but I do see a fair amount of Civic hybrids (I thought of buying one of them, but it was about 5k more than my Civic, and didn't promise a dramatic difference in fuel conservation... I couldn't justify buying one.), and now and then I see a Honda Insight or a Camry or Altima hybrid.

My kids have gotten involved, and they notice hybrids, too. It's sort of like playing Punch Bug like we did when I was a kid and we saw a VW on the road.

Which brings me full circle, since my first car was one of those.

I've learned so much since then.