praveensg.com

If you remember, when we started the Green Project^ in early November of last year, I had pledged that I was going to ‘drive a better car’. During that time, I had the 2005 Honda CRV and a 2000 Mitsubishi Montero. In May of 2008, when I bought the Montero, little did I know that it had the carbon footprint the size of an 800-pound gorilla. I felt helpless. I really wanted to get rid of it but I had just bought it and that too for a dirt-cheap price of $4800. And I must say, I’m not as green as I’m frugal. I continued to use the Montero sparingly, bringing out the CRV as much as I could. However, things turned a little ugly after a few months. The Montero, as old as it was, started giving up on me. At first, it was the minor stuff like the battery etc. Then, major breakage set in. I ended up spending a good $2000 on it within two months. I didn’t mind much about the extra expenses since I had bought it at such a bargain price.

While this was happening, I’d completely forgotten about something else that was playing a big role in my auto expenses every month. Even though I seldom used the Montero, my monthly auto expenses remained high. After a few hours of dissecting my expenses on auto, I realized the culprit was Gas aka Petrol (for my non-US readers). Without my knowledge, I had been spending close to $150/month on filling up this gas guzzler’s tummy. Yes, it was averaging about 16mpg, standing true to its name, an 800-pound gorilla, with a big appetite of course! This was inspite of me using the CRV more than the Montero. Maybe it was averaging even less than 16mpg, who knows! I still didn’t mind it. I thought maybe if I just stopped using this sucker completely, I will not have to worry about all this. I and Khushi started to co-ordinate our trips so that we used only the ‘better car’. We were not ready for a new car yet (check out my Money Experiment^).

Last April, however, things changed for the worse. One fine evening, when we were coming back from Sun Harvest, the damn thing refused to boot. After repeated attempts to revive it, the thing did not budge one bit. We had done a good bit of shopping and had to call a friend to pick us (and our groceries) up. We left the car that night in the parking lot and the next day, my insurance guys eventually towed it to a shop. The shop guy calls me the next day and says the alternator has gone bad. Usually, one would suspect the battery to go bad when a car doesn’t start. But I had replaced the battery only a few months before. Didn’t make sense! Well, it so happened that the bad alternator had caused the almost new battery to fail too (due to an overcharge). The estimate came out to be $650. That was the day when I decided enough was enough. It did not make any sense owning a 10 year old vehicle that I was spending top dollar on, month after month when I could get something nicer for the same amount (post coming up in the Money Experiment on this). In a year, I had spent about $2700 in repairs, about $1000 extra on fuel and another $2000 in depreciation totaling to $5700 for 13 months or about $440 per month.

Last week, we finally pulled the trigger on a new Prius. I traded in the Mitsubishi Monstero (happily so) and welcomed the green machine to our family. So far, I have been enjoying the 48mpg. Will report more and add pix shortly.