Is a Gas Vehicle Worth it?

Well, hello there. Have you noticed how many e-vehicles are on the road? I'm seeing more and more of them. Nissan Leaf. Tesla. All of them without tail pipes and sometimes without a front grill. After all, you don't need air supply if you don't have an internal combustion engine. They aren't cheap though... the average new e-vehicle will cost you about $40,000 even including the $8000 rebates from various levels of government.

But... with a 25 year old Toyota 4-Runner... we are beginning to think it might be time to retire Clifford (the Big Red Truck) and look at an e-vehicle. Or... do we even need to own a vehicle anymore?

I have a friend in Winnipeg who relies on a few different means of transportation: cycling, transit and the Peg City Car Co-op, a car sharing service. She lives a block away from a Safeway parking lot that serves as a base for Peg City cars. Given that Winnipeg has some harsh winters I kind of thought cycling was a summertime activity but, no... people in Winnipeg ride their bicycles during the winter too. Hard core Canadians they are.

But... given that car sharing isn't widely available in our city and transit is not well developed in our area... could we just get by with taking taxis everywhere?

All of which got me thinking... how much does all of this cost??

I have to admit, the more I worked on this, the more options started to pop out of the woodwork - like ride-hailing options and car rentals and...more. Here are some numbers.

Owning a 1996 Toyota 4-Runner

These are probably the most solid numbers. Depreciation is based on 25 years of owning the vehicle, for which I paid $30,000. Easy number crunching. Although, does it depreciate by $1000/year at this point? Or is it now considered vintage and a desirable vehicle? Hard to say. But let's just run with that depreciation for now.

Then we have insurance, another easy number. As for maintenance, we put away $200 every month into a vehicle maintenance fund and, so far, we have had enough (and more) to cover all of our maintenance costs including oil changes, engine gasket thingies, new winter tires, new bushings and goodness knows what else. As for gasoline... again... that is a pretty easy number as we track our expenses. With gas being less thanks to Covid, we're probably more like $150/month but I'm leaving it at pre-Covid numbers.

That gives a grand total of $7200/year. Which isn't ridiculous. I tried out the CAA True Car Costs Calculator as well. It only went down to 2010... so I tried a 2010 4-Runner. But then it had added expenses which we don't have, like car loan costs and the depreciation is steeper. But, for newer vehicles... it's a handy tool.

Car-Sharing

We don't live in Vancouver or Winnipeg, but in a small city (about 90,000 people) so... our car-sharing options are slim-pickings. Modo is in town and has six vehicles, most of which are in the downtown core. I could walk down there in 45 minutes... if we wanted a vehicle for a getaway weekend or a day trip or something... but it's not the same as having it a block away.

There is a monthly subscription fee as well as a fee per hour of use. It caps off at $52/day which is roughly the same as a car rental place (for a small compact car).

If they were closer to our neighbourhood... it might be worth it, but I don't really see this benefiting us anytime soon, unless they expand their network. Even if it was as 15 minute walk, it might be worth it.

The numbers above are based on roughly 3 hours of use per week - mostly for grocery shopping, appointments or other errands. It's kind of a fluff number because, honestly, I have no idea how much I use the vehicle. Never had to quantify that...

Car Rental

Which leads us to your standard rent-a-car. In this case, Budget, which rents out for about $55/day for a compact vehicle. I'm presuming that includes all the taxes and service fees but you never know with car rental places. They always want to sell you the extra comprehensive insurance policies.

I was thinking this might be something for a weekend getaway as well but... we run into the same problem as with the car-sharing option. There are no car rental places nearby... they are all downtown. Which leaves me with a 45 minute walk again... or a taxi fare. Which is doable but not desirable.

Although, apparently the commercials are true and Enterprise will pick you up for free and bring you back to their car-rental office. Cool!

Taxi

Ugh... taxis... a necessary evil I guess. But damn expensive.

Last week, due to us double booking appointments, and only having one vehicle, my partner had to take a taxi home from an appointment. It's 4 km and about 8 minutes from home. It cost $13 plus a $2 tip. Eesh!

I'm not a big fan of taxis, in case that isn't clear. Unless I'm on a business trip and the company is paying for them. In which case, they are super convenient, mostly.

But... for personal trips... not such a big fan. Which leads us to something similar... ride-hailing!

Ride-Hailing

Ride-hailing is a bit of a moot point for us since we don't have Uber or Lyft or anything else. But it is apparently coming... fingers crossed. This could be a game-changer... maybe.

I just did some number crunching using Uber's trip estimator app and trying a few sample trips in Vancouver.

Huh... it seems to be cheaper than taxis but... still ain't all that cheap. A 10 minute, 4 km trip is around $12... Which isn't that far off from the taxi price above - around the same distance and same time of travel. Sooo... maybe ride-hailing apps aren't all that they cracked up to be.

We will have to wait and see how they shake out across the Lower Mainland and the Island. The thing is... in Vancouver, if you've got the time... you can always take the bus, which is super convenient and usually comes fairly quickly...

Transit

OK, this is a super easy calculation... a monthly bus pass costs $65. Boom, done. And... I do believe they are a tax deduction too, so that's a perk as well.

The only thing in our city, and particularly in our location in the city, is that bus service is not all that convenient. We have one bus that comes by every hour... and the connections to other routes aren't that convenient.

But... to be honest, I've never taken the bus in our city... despite living here for seven years. So, what do I know??!! We would have to actually try it and experiment with it for a while. Something as simple as getting to the ferry terminal, which is a 15 minute drive (more or less) would require two buses and 63 minutes. Not the most efficient mode of transportation but I guess it could be done... I could practically walk there in that time! Wait for it... it only takes 71 minutes to walk there. Sigh. And if I cycled, I could be there in 22 minutes... not that far off from the car trip.

Bicycle

Which leads me to ped-power... in this case an old fashioned bicycle that depends on leg power.

Here... we only have ongoing maintenance costs which aren't ridiculous. I bought my current bike in 1993. It's 27 years old and still going strong. So far.

But even if I bought a new bike for a few hundred bucks, it's not going to break the bank.

The only problem with biking is the hills. Goodness, everything seems to be uphill in our city, it's all humpety-bumpety... which, if you're just oozing out for a bike ride in March, is deadly. Jello winter legs and cycling do not agree.

e-Bike

But then... we have the lovely e-bikes! Buy one for around $2500, keep it for a decade or so and only pay pennies per charge. What's not to like? Oh... and it goes up any hills like nobody's business.

There are other costs obviously... the batteries only last through around 1000 charging cycles... and the batteries are not cheap to replace ($500) but... still. For the sheer comfort of zipping up hills with no effort... it might be worth it.

We don't have an e-bike but a friend of ours bought one and she raves about it. Soo... maybe one day... Once the pandemic is over and I can actually go somewhere just for fun... like Starbucks. Sigh.

Instacart

This isn't technically a mode of transportation but... if it saves me from having to drive 30 km round trip to visit Superstore and Costo and Walmart... well... it could count as an option.

Because, let's face it, with the pandemic and naked-faced people running around... shopping ain't no fun anymore. Particularly big places like Superstore and Costco. So... why not avail ourselves of Instacart where someone does the shopping AND delivers straight to our door!

I have used PC Express for Superstore, but I still have to drive all the way over there and then sit and wait a good 15 to 20 minutes for them to bring the groceries out to me. Not the most efficient use of my time.

We have yet to use Instacart but our behind-neighbour has signed up and loves it. Sooo.... something to consider.

Conclusions

 Soooo... where does this leave us? Well... our venerable 4-Runner costs about $600 a month to run. If I were to dove-tail ALL of the other options into our life, instead of the 4-Runner, we'd be looking at $800/month. But there is obviously some overlap in some of them... like Modo vs Car Rental and Taxi vs Ride-Hailing... not to mention Bicycle vs e-Bike. If I cut out Car-Rental, Taxi and Bike... we are left with $400/month, which is definitely cheaper than running a vehicle.

The real trade-off I guess is in convenience. If I need to grab a carton of soy milk from the local grocery store (30 minute walk, 10 minute bike ride, 4 minute drive)... it is obviously quicker and more convenient to just jump into the truck and go. Owning a vehicle is just so darn convenient... Getting rid of the vehicle and stitching in a diverse set of different options would require military-style planning and execution... as well as patience.

And... in case you're wondering... an e-vehicle would cost about the same (or even more) as our 4-Runner. Mostly because of the high purchase price which results in ridiculous depreciation costs. The Government of Canada did some number crunching of EVs vs ICEs (Internal Combustion Engines) and... considered all sorts of factors like how far you drive in year. For us, with about 15,000 km/year... an EV isn't going to offer great savings. If we drove 40,000 km/year... that would be much better. But, as EV costs come down... it becomes more realistic. It all depends on how far and how often you drive...

Which leads me to this... I really have no idea on our vehicle usage. How many trips do I make in a week? How far do I go? Given I am writing this on November 2... perhaps it's time to start tracking things for a month or so... just to get a sense of it?

Apparently it is. I just downloaded an app called TripLog to my phone and... we'll see what November reveals!

Going on a Gasoline Diet

I love my 4-Runner. His name is Clifford (Big Red Truck) and we've been together for 26+ years. I bought Clifford new in 1996 and he and I have had many adventures together. He's still a great truck, very useful for hauling all sorts of things around.

I've been good to Clifford, keeping him maintained, and in return, Clifford has been a very reliable truck.

The other Clifford - Big Red Dog

But Clifford's not getting any younger... we just ticked over the 360,000 km mark a few weeks back. That's a pretty impressive milestone but then 4-Runners are kind of like the energizer bunny... they just keep going and going. Clifford is "only" a 4-cylinder which means he's not as big a gas guzzler as some other SUVs. Still... Clifford is a gas-powered vehicle and I am beginning to really question how long we are can justify keeping him around.

Clifford would be easy to sell at this point. I've had guys approach me in the parking lot asking "Do you want to sell that?" Because the 4-Runner, particularly of that era (1990s) are very, very reliable and, apparently, desirable.

I am clear that our next vehicle is not going to be gas-powered... Clifford's days with us are numbered. For the moment, however, we are staying together.

In the meantime... I am trying to think of ways in which we can reduce our gasoline footprint. I try to maximize my errand trips. If I know I'm going to be in a certain area of town because of an appointment, I will try to rejig schedules so that I can accomplish several other errands in the same area.

Right now, the most hard-to-justify trips that I take with Clifford are my early morning visits to Starbucks. Yep... I drive to Starbucks most mornings, whether I have an errand to run or not. I get there early, get some work done, and then drive home and pick up the threads of the rest of the day. It's not a long drive... 3-4 km at most, one way.

Walk

I could walk that in about an hour... but I'm not up for a 2 hour round trip walk in the mornings. So, walking is out. Unless... I were to choose a different hang-out spot. There is a local coffee shop a 30 minute walk away... Or I could go hang out at the university library, also a 30 minute walk... or the aquatic centre... I'd need to shift my routine and habit though... ugh!

Our WalkScore number... not good... not good at all.

Transit
As for public transit... we don't live in Vancouver where that would be a really good option. Here, not so much. Our public transit system is not the most reliable nor the most convenient for timing or routes, so that is out.

Or is that just my own sense of transit snobbery? Nope... I looked up our address on WalkScore and... it's bad.

Kitsilano, Vancouver - WalkScore

Type in your address and they give you a Walk/Transit/Bike score. Our city overall has a poor walk score (35) and is labeled car dependent with a poor transit system. But our address is even worse... a Walk Score of 10! Eesh... And they didn't even give it a Transit or Bike Score... My sister, on the other hand, lives in Kitsilano in Vancouver and... well... her Walk/Transit/Bike score looks verrryyyyy different.

Bike
Soooo... what about my bicycle? If I jump on my bike, I can be at Starbucks in 10-15 minutes (it's mostly downhill). I know this because I've done it before. For a few years, particularly in the spring/summer/fall, I was pretty good with biking to Starbucks but then my life got hectic and... it took too long.

Riding my bike would have several benefits and tick a number of boxes:

• good exercise for me
• good cardiovascular workout for me
• good for the environment
• good for our gas budget
• good for society - setting a good example, less traffic

Bike Seat Butt
So, what stops me? Honestly... it's the first few bike rides of the season after the winter. I haven't been on my bike for months and... my butt is not used to the bicycle seat. So the first ride is usually good... but then, the next day, I have sore butt bones and sitting on the bike is pure agony. So then I try to give my butt a rest for a day... or two... or three... and then a week goes by and... voila... no bike riding routine.

Maybe I need a new bike saddle? Or to adjust my handlebars and seat post? Or maybe I just need to power through the sore butt phase. I KNOW that I always feel better once I'm in the bike riding habit. But there's a huge inertia mountain between my tender butt (now) and my saddle hardened butt (2 weeks from now).

I guess the real question is... how committed am I to making a difference for myself, for the planet, for our budget? I can come up with all sorts of excuses as to why biking is too hard, too much work, etc.

• I need to get the tires pumped up and that means I'd have to take it down the hill to the gas station (2 minute walk) and pay $1.50 to pump up the tires.
• It needs a tune-up and that costs $$ and I'd have to make an appointment and get it there and...
• The chain is rusty and needs oil and I don't know if we have any oil
• I'll just have a sore butt after this.
• What if it rains?
• I'm going to be a wheezing slug on it for the first few days/weeks. I hate feeling like an out-of-shape slug.

But there many benefits too...

• I could bike farther afield.
• Go to a different Starbucks or coffee shop.
• Bike to appointments once I'm up and running.
• Try some further afield trails once I'm past the slug state.
• It opens up a lot of possibilities for me.

The pros really do outweigh the cons but the inertia... oh the inertia... it feels insurmountable at this point. Or... is it time to bite the bullet and buy an e-bike ($1500+)? A friend of ours is buying one and I've seen these bikes zipping up our hill with the greatest of ease. It would handle the "slug" business for sure. And maybe even the sore butt bones. Still... before we make that big of an investment into an e-bike, I want to see if I can't give the old-fashion me-bike another chance. One small step at a time.