The Tahoe, week 1
First week of the new truck. It still has that new-truck-full-of-nasty-chemicals smell. Which ironically, is nice. Probably a mental “money” thing, or a brain check.
/brain voice on.
“Is this ours?” “Yes? Ok, we like it.”
/brain voice off.
The ride is still “truckish”. It bounces along the road, swallows most bumps without too much trouble. It’s got a lot of sprung weight moving around. Probably one of the most pleasing things is the road noise, or specifically, the lack there of.  By far the noisiest parts are the tires (low rolling resistance = higher noise?), and the stupid DVD player spooling for the nav.
Averaging 21.1 mpg right now, which is damn nice for a truck that size. We had 2 adults and 6 kids in it yesterday, and it was easy. That’s maximizing baby. 8 people and 21 mpg is pretty awesome. So how long is it going to take for the fuel economy to pay off….
Assuming $2.00 gas stays the same for a while.  12,000 miles driven per year, 21 mpg for the Tahoe, 15 mpg for the Silverado it replaced, and the hybrid option was 2k.
(12,000/21)*2.00 = $1142 in gas for the Tahoe, $1627 for the Silverado. Estimated fuel savings of 242 gallons (30%!!), or $484 per year. That’s roughly 4.25 years to pay off with fuel savings. If gas creeps back up to $2.50 it’ll take 3 years, or if it jumps back up to $4.00 it’ll take 2 years. If I can feather the throttle to 22 mpg, I can shave off 0.4 years off the payback.
Kids haven’t watched a DVD yet. I’ll be saving that surprise for a nice long road trip somewhere. That’s like money in the bank.
March 30, 2009
Posted in: Hybrid
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