We lease a 2017 Honda Hybrid 4 door. The lease is almost up. We have to decide: purchase the existing car, buy a new car, buy a used one or lease a new one.
We are older and need the higher seats than the existing Hybrid. We want excellent gas mileage around town and on the road.
Some questions about comparative costs: What’s the expense, for example, of installing a home charging station? What about the hybrids that require a charging station for the battery? Pros & Cons please from your experiences!
Thanks
What kind of use do you need a car for? (Commuting? Traveling? Evacuating the path of a hurricane?)
Hybrids are great for people who drive a lot of miles, but gas is too cheap to justify the cost of a plug-in hybrid.
An electric car makes for a great short commute, or even a long commute if you have access to a charging station at work, but it won’t do for long trips without more rapid charging infrastructure.
Do the existing seats offer upward adjustment that you haven’t thought to exploit?
It’s going to depend on which charger you install (they have different power requirements) and the local electrician rates. For a Tesla home charger, generally figure around $2000 for equipment and labor, assuming your breaker box has enough capacity and doesn’t need to be upgraded.
I think it’s more nuanced than that. IF you get one of the longer-range (250+) Teslas and IF your trips are along routes with decent access to superchargers, they can absolutely be used for long trips.
In general at this point if you’re going from any big city to any other big city, you’re fine. Miami to LA? No problem.
If, however, you’re planning a trip off-interstate in flyover country (for instance, Minneapolis to Mt. Rushmore) then en-route charging will be much more of an issue and you will probably have to detour away from the quickest route in order to have charging available. You can still get there, but the trip will be a bit longer.
Also, current (see what I did there?) electric cars often have 200+ miles worth of range even if you don’t get a Tesla, so it’s no longer such a requirement for your office to have a charging station for commutes. Even the comparatively short-range Leaf now gets a minimum range of 150 miles (and there’s an option package to get that north of 200), and even dropping that by 1/3 or so for winter conditions will leave you with plenty of range to get to work and back, even with a trip to the store thrown in.
Less than 10 k per year. (Around town and some longer trips. )
AN item to be explored! Like an adjustable mattress for your bed–they need to offer a car with adjustments for short-legged people and longer-legged people!
Difference between a Hybrid and non-Hybrid has closed drastically. Most manufacturers the cost difference is about $1,500. The Accord Hybrid is cheaper then the Accord Sport, EX or EX-L. Only the base model Accord is cheaper then they Hybrid.
People usually buy Hybrids for the cost savings. By leasing you just threw away all that cost savings. If your 2017 Accord Hybrid is still running good (it should be), then that financially your best option. Next option would be to BUY a new/newer vehicle.
but given this, I’d say take a look at something like the Rav 4 Hybrid. It sits higher, but still boasts good gas mileage (the 2020s are 41 city/38 highway). I think I’d go with a hybrid vs an electric so you can take a long trip whenever you want and not have to worry about charging the car.
If your 2017 Accord runs and does not give you trouble, you might want to keep it.
My 2019 Accord gave me a load of troubles and exposed a potential wide-spread problem with the latest generation (2018+), which may be potentially related not only to hybrids:
