ownership costs

There's no getting around it: Hybrids cost more than gasoline models, and plug-in electric cars cost a lot more than gas vehicles. Each type of green car cuts operating costs, either by raising gas mileage substantially or replacing gas costs with grid electricity that generally cuts the...

We love data, and articles that analyze data. We love them a little less when their opening lines sneer at sites like this one by calling them the "sunshine, lollipops and rainbows electric car press." Still, there are far more interesting problems with a recent analysis on Seeking Alpha entitled...

On March 28, 2011, I took delivery of a European-specification 2011 Nissan Leaf. Yesterday, a few days short of our 1-year anniversary with the car, its odometer passed the 15,000 mile mark. But what have we learned about Nissan’s first electric car after living with it daily for a year?...

The 2012 Chevrolet Volt might cost nearly $5,000 cheaper more than the 2012 Nissan Leaf, but over the next five years, it might cost you less to run. At least, that’s the verdict of Kelley Blue Book (KBB) which crowned the 2012 Chevy Volt the electric choice in its inaugral Total Cost of...

For a few years now, hybrid sales have been stalled at 2 to 3 percent of the U.S. market. But for the first seven months of this year, the total is at the low end of the scale: Hybrids represented 2.06 percent of sales from January through August, and just 1.98 percent of sales in August alone. The...

Over six days of driving—limited to around-town trips—we put about 103 miles on a fleet-test Toyota Prius Plug-In, averaging 90.8 miles per gallon. In that time, we gave the Prius Plug-In five full charges and two partial ones, and according to the trip computer, we covered 77.7 miles...

With all the talk of purchase price, charging costs, tax incentives, congestion charging exemptions and maintenance costs for EVs, there's one financial area which often gets overlooked - insuring them. With so few EVs on the road it's been difficult to gauge whether they'll cost more or less than...

Thanks to the limited availability of electric cars on the market thus far and lack of parity between EV models and their gasoline or diesel counterparts, comparing the relative costs of the three isn't the easiest of tasks. The human race wouldn't have got very far if we'd only ever done what was...

We already knew that the quintessential hybrid car, the Toyota Prius, costs a little more to repair than non-hybrid cars. Now, the news gets worse: Insurance rates for hybrids are going to rise, probably at a faster rate than auto insurance premiums overall, according to Mitchell International's...