Three weeks with a smart ForTwo
Due to work considerations (such as actually getting there), I recently bought a 2008 smart ForTwo coupe. I've been driving it for almost three weeks and it's been a blast.
The main reason I got the smart was for its fuel efficiency. I have to drive almost 200 kilometers to get to work and back home, and I do this three times a week. I get about 5.1 L/100km, which has worked out to about 550 km per tank. Although it is highly recommended you use high octane fuel for the ForTwo (yes, the 2008 is not a diesel engine), it still doesn't cost as much to fill as a Toyota Yaris, for example, since the smart only holds about 33 liters (28 to fill, usually).
I'm very happy with the smart so far and I'll be posting some comparisons on its fuel efficiency to our other car in the near future. I'm a bit obsessed with reducing my energy usage, even though I'm stuck in the position of commuting a long distance right now, although I plan on reducing that distance in the near future.
Mini-report on our 2003 Toyota Echo
For those who don't know, Beata was recently in an accident. She is fine and, to our knowledge, no one was injured. Someone ran a stop sign and Beata couldn't avoid T-boning this person's car. Neither car was going very fast and Beata did steer away before hitting the other vehicle, so it wasn't an awful mess. (It was more like an V-bone than a T-bone).
However, the other person decided to drive away and no one got a good look at the car. We had two witnesses vouch for our side of the story, so there hasn't been an issue with insurance. That is to say, our premiums won't be going up and the claim will go through — we just might have to pay the deductible.
It's been a fair bit of a hassle, though, which was compounded Friday when the appraiser for the insurance company deemed the car a write-off, so it will not be repaired. Thus ends our time with our 2003 Toyota Echo.
I was going to wait with this mini-report until our lease was up (which was 4 months from now), but since there is no point, I'm going to get to it now, despite the fact I have other things I should be doing. As this is somewhat of a watershed moment and the holiday season is in full swing, I figured it won't hurt.
When we leased the car, we (well, I) decided to keep track of how much gas we put into the car, the money spent on it and the odometer reading at each gas purchase. We've got nearly 5 years worth of data and I thought it might be interesting (in my case, fun) to take a look at it.
We had the car for 4 years, 7 months and 11 days. That's 1686 days and 240 weeks (rounded down). In the records, there are 184 instances where we bought gas. Of these, 177 are fully reliable entires (that is, no data is missing). Since I know we missed a couple of times outside of that, any calculations using this data are going to be underestimates of the actual value.
I also kept all the receipts for maintenance, including mundane things like changing the oil filter and such. I'm only missing one receipt for some body work done in 2005, but I estimated the cost and I'm sure it's not far from the actual value.
Here are some of the more interesting summaries. Keep in mind that fuel and maintenance costs are approximate, but likely quite close to actual money spent.
- Cost of car when leased: $17700
- Total spent on car (lease, maintenance and fuel): $22810.21
- Total spent on fuel: $5341.81
- Total spent on maintenance: $3223.68
- Total kilometers traveled: 104800
- Litres of fuel purchased: 6141.746
And here are some calculated values of interest.
- Mean number of days between gas purchases: 9.1
- Mean number of kilometers driven per week/day: 437/62
- Overall fuel efficiency: 5.86 litres per 100 kilometers
- Cost of car per kilometer: $0.22
The fuel efficiency is probably closer to 6.0 L/100km, which is still pretty good (about 39 miles per gallon). I haven't done an analysis to see if the fuel efficiency got worse over time, but I don't think there will be a significant difference.
That kind of fuel efficiency is pretty good. Our rental car isn't too bad on gas, but it's not as good as the Echo — and we can tell. It's kind of annoying, actually. We're not used to spending so much on gas. We certainly will be considering fuel efficiency for our next car and want to keep it on par with the Echo.
Probably the most interesting point is the cost to drive the car per kilometer. Note that this says it cost us about 22 cents per kilometer we drove, but it doesn't say that any future kilometers would cost the same. If we had driven the car a lot less, each kilometer would have cost more, even ignoring fuel and maintenance costs. (If we hadn't driven the car at all, the cost per kilometer would be the money put into the lease divided by zero!)
All this tells us is that with a different car having similar fuel and maintenance costs (maybe with better fuel efficiency and higher gas prices), we can expect to pay about 20 cents per kilometer driven, which would be around $12 a day if we keep the same driving habits.
Overall, we really enjoyed the Echo. It was very reliable (most of the maintenance was regular maintenance) and could carry a lot of stuff. It was very comfortable and nice to drive. Plus, it was amazing on gas. When only driving on the highway, we got over 700 kilometers to a tank a couple of times (the tank claimed to hold 45 litres, but we never put more than 41 into it). It was a great car. Kudos to Toyota.
I expect our next car will be a 2008 Corolla. Stay tuned.