5,555.5 Cheap, Cheap
Thursday 5th April 2012
We’ve reached 5,555.5 miles in 2 months and 2 weeks. This week the ActiveE has become a chauffeur. Well I suppose it’s always a chauffeur as I’m forever taking the children here, there and everywhere. But I added Michael to the pick ups and drop offs this week so I really did feel like a chauffeur – In one week of driving the mile – o – metre reads 650 miles! I’d much rather be driving the ActiveE for chauffeuring though than a big old Bentley!
What happened to the Tesla, is it broken I hear you ask? Well not un-driveably broken as such but it kept making noises, so it was time to get it checked out by the Tesla experts in NYC. They came out and picked it up on a trailer and took it back to base – sad Michael. Turns out the Tesla had suffered the wrath of the NJ roads! If anything can ruin your shock absorbers it’s those roads!
74 miles per day, 3 car washes per week, 1 fresh waxing a month and all is well. Shush you at the back – we haven’t seen anymore drivetrain malfunctions or transmission failures since 2,400 miles. Could it have just been a case of the terrible two’s?
This week we decided to compare the cost of the ActiveE against a BMW 128i with surprising results.
To do a fair comparison we selected a 128i with similar features to the ActiveE.
Then, we looked at the lease cost estimator that BMW have on their site… to our horror, with $2,250 down and the average 15,000 miles per year, the lease payments would be $611 per month!
Lastly we factored in the additional costs after the deposit… you know, the stuff that only seems to come up in the conversation after you say ‘yes’. I’m thinking Sales Tax and Luxury Tax. To approximate all of that we figured that you’d be paying about $4,500 on pickup day.
Here are the finished numbers that we used:
| Lease terms | |
| Annual miles driven | 15000 |
| Term of lease (years) | 2 |
| Total miles driven | 30000 |
| ActiveE | |
| Down payment | $4,136.04 |
| Rebate | $0.00 |
| Monthly payment | $499.00 |
| Annual service costs | $0.00 |
| Power consumption (mile/kwh) | 4 |
| Electricity cost per KWh | $0.16 |
| Total cost of operation | $13,176.00 |
| BMW 128i | |
| Down payment | $4,500.00 |
| Monthly payment | $611.00 |
| Service cost | $0.00 |
| Service interval | 7500 |
| Fuel economy | 23 |
| Fuel price | $4.00 |
| Total cost of operation | $19,881.39 |
| Results | |
| Cost per mile of ActiveE | $0.44 |
| Cost per mile of BMW 128i | $0.66 |
So how does that look over 2 years?
Wow! The BMW 128i will cost over $7,000 more after 2 years!
But, okay, what if we completely take out the purchase price, what about just the fuel cost alone?
That’s still a $4,000 saving – $2,000 per year or $166 per month at $4 per gallon.
At the end of the day the ActiveE is a bargain – cheap cheap!
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