Gas guzzling hog vs. Chevy Volt

I recently read a USA Today article talking about the Chevy Volt.  In this article, they mentioned 230 mpg which sounds awesome.  Later in the article, I read that the Chevy Volt would cost about $0.03/mile to operate.  I have a neighbor that wanted to sell both of his cars and buy hybrid vehicles to save money.  I really wish people used their brain before they made ridiculous statements like that.  If you want to buy a Chevy Volt to cut down on our national dependence on Oil, fine.  If you want to buy it to cut down the green house gases, ok.  But don’t buy a Chevy Volt thinking you are going to save money. Buying a new car can never be justified by the finances alone.  It is better to buy used than to buy new in terms of bottom line dollars.  We will take my used 1999 Dodge Durango for worst case comparison purposes.  It is a gas hog but it will tow a boat quite nicely thank you.  Let’s do the math…

Gasoline

MPG seems to be the only thing that these articles focus on so let’s start there.  The VOLT is expected to get 230MPG.  The actual MPG is typically 15%-20% less than the reported MPG.  So that 230MPG is actually 195MPG (still awesome).  According to the EPA, the average passenger vehicle is driven about 12,000 miles per year.  So the cost per year of gasoline for the Volt will be (12,000 miles / 195 MPG) * (2.50$ per gallon of gas) = $153/year in gasoline.  Wow.

Like I said, my Dodge Durango is a gas HOG.  I’ve calculated the gas mileage ad I can’t get it above 12MPG.  The cost of gasoline is (12,000 miles / 12 MPG) * ($2.50 per gallon of gas) = $2,500/year in gasoline.  This means over the course of 6 years I will spend $15,000.  Ouch.

Note: I put closer to 8,000miles/year on my Durango,  so it really doesn’t cost me that much in fuel.

New vs. Used

According to J.D. Power, the average length of time a consumer owns a vehicle is 6 years. In order to compare these vehicles to see which one is cheaper, we will assume we sell this vehicle at the end of 6 years. According to consumer reports, the depreciation on a car for the first 6 years is roughly 70%. This means six years later, your new car will be worth 30% of what you paid for it.

The cost of a new Chevy Volt will be $40,000. 6 years later, it will be worth $12,000. That is a decrease in net worth of $28,000. Used Dodge Durango with 120,000 miles = $4,280. For this comparison, we will just assume you have to pay someone $50 to haul it away after 6 years. Not really fair since I’m still driving a 1994 Pontiac Grand Am and it has some value.

This right here is the real issue with the ownership costs of the Chevy Volt.  It isn’t specific to the Volt.  Really, this article boils down to new vs. used.  This right here is why if you are trying to save money, you should go out and buy a cheap gas gusling clunker instead of that shiny new hybrid.

Maintenance

Cars break down.  Older cars break down more often than newer cars.  I have no idea how to even quantify this.  My Durango doesn’t really go into the shop very often.  My 15 year old Grand Am goes in more regularly so I will use it to estimate my future Durango costs.  My Grand Am seems to break down a few times a year now and cost me $300-500 each time.  I am just going to use $1,000/year as a guess.

According to Consumer reports, repairs cost about 4% of the total cost of ownership in new cars for the first five years so I’m just going to use 4% of the depreciation of the vehicle. This works out to be about $1,120 over the course of six years. The actual repair costs will probably be higher since consumer reports only measured a five year period.

Sales Tax

Consumer Reports used national average of 4.9% to determine the sales tax in their evaluation of total cost of ownership.  I’ll do the same.  Chevy Volt sales tax is $1,932.  Sales tax on a used Durango is $206.

Interest on loan

I don’t think it’s a good idea to borrow money for a car, but that is a different post.  Since most Americans have car payments, I will factor it into this discussion.

According to J.D. Power, the average length of loan for a car is 5 years. Consumer reports used a 15% down payment and 6.8% interest rate to determine interest on the loan.  Using these numbers, the interest for a $40,000 Chevy Volt is $6,200.  Interest on the Durango would be $660.

Government subsities

The government will give you some of my money to buy yourself a new Volt.  They will give you $7,500 in fact.

Insurance, Registration Fees

All these would be higher for a new car. I’m feeling lazy so I’ll be generous and assume they are equal. Just keep in mind that insurance alone would be quite a bit more for a $40,000 car vs. a $4,000 car.

Adding it all up

Conclusion
Don’t buy a brand new hybrid expecting to save money in the long run. The math does not work. If you want to buy a hybrid for enviornmental concerns, then by all means. But don’t try to justify your purchase as a cheaper alternative. I used one of the worst possible vehicle to compare. I gave the hybrid every benefit and made assumptions in it’s favor. I used the government subsidy. I did all these things and the Durango still beat the Volt by $1,000. If I used a 1999 Pontiac Grand Am for comparison, it would be $15,000 cheaper than the Volt over 6 years.

Just to be clear, I’m not against hybrid vehicles and I want our country to be cleaner and free from dependence on foreign oil. I just don’t appreciate articles that distort the financial picture of these vehicles like the USA Today did claiming $0.03/mile. The total cost of the Volt is much much higher. Of course, if they factored in the actual cost to secure foreign oil, this would be a different article.

Windows Mobile 6 Signed Cab displaying “Program is from an unknown publisher”

UPDATE:  Apparently, there is a different technology than Authenticode that I should be using for Windows Mobile.

After signing the EXE and the CAB file, this worked just fine on Windows Mobile 5.  When testing on Windows Mobile 6, I got the following error: “program is from an unknown publisher”.  Not only must the EXE and CAB file be signed, but all the DLLs inside the CAB must be signed too.  There are two ways to accomplish this.

The first method is to simply add the signtool commands mentioned in my previous post to sign the DLLs.  Aftter the DLLs are signed, you cab up all the files using CabWiz.exe. Then you sign the cab file itself.

The second method is to use the utility CabSignTool.exe from Microsoft.  This handy utility explodes a CAB file, signs every executable and DLL file inside, then recabs it and signs the CAB file.  In order to use it, you will need to download and install the Windows Mobile 6 SDK.  The tool is located in <WindowsMobile6SDK>/Tools/Security/CabSignTool.  Make sure this is in your path.  The cabsigntool takes most of the same arguments as the signtool.  The only differences are that the first two parameters are the input and output cab names and the “sign” command is not necessary.  So to accomplish signing the cab, do something like the following:

c:> cabsigntool.exe cabinput.cab caboutput.cab /f [yourcert.pfx] /p [yourpassword] /t [yourtimeserver]

When you execute this command, it will extract the contents of your cab file.  It will sign each file inside.  It will then recab the files and sign the cab file.  So you can accomplish with one command what it took multiple lines to do with signtool.exe alone.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa924367.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb278115.aspx