Prius
It looks like the startup company will probably be located in Gibsonia, which is either 18 mi / 38 minutes from me on Route 8 or 30 mi/ 36 minutes if I backtrack to Monroeville and take the Turnpike. Neither way is particularly subject to rush-hour traffic, but Route 8 can be stop-and-go simply due to the traffic lights, and I don't relish the idea of paying a toll each direction.
I've been kicking around the idea of getting a new car, because the manual transmission on the Forester is not a huge amount a fun on slow roads, and its gas mileage (21 city / 30 highway) is not awesome. On the other hand, I do own it, which counts for something. To try and make some sense of the different options I made a spreadsheet comparing the 3-year monthly operating cost (car loan+gas+mainentance) of the Forester, a Corolla, a Prius, and a Mazda3.
Conclusions? Keeping the Forester is still the cheapest option, at about $256/mo operating cost. The Corolla is a close second at $311, followed by the Mazda3 at $344, and then the Prius at $444. These number are assuming 15K of mileage per year, and gas at $3/gallon.
Of course, this is not really an apples-to-apples comparison, even if you throw out the touchy-feely "doing a good thing" aspect of the Prius. The Prius is actually a really nice car from a fit-and-finish perspective. A great deal of the standard options on it are either expensive (side curtain airbags on the Corolla) or simply not available at all (proximity sensing locks/ignition) on other compact cars. It's also not really a "compact" car - the EPA rates it as midsize - which would tend to make the relative peer-group cost of a Prius appear lower.
Anyways, I test drove a Prius today. Impressions? I really liked it. The salesman was 6' 3" and with the front seat adjusted for him after he pulled it up I could sit behind the driver's seat with about 6" of knee clearance. That's very nearly a first for any non-minivan I've ridden in. The electrically controlled power steering took a few seconds to get used to, and the general sense of the engine basically doing its own thing (turning on, off, tweaking the gear ratio, etc.) was highly odd. That said, the powertrain is very smooth, and performance from 0-40 mph is pretty impressive due to the electric assist during initial acceleration.
Beyond legroom, overall interior space is unexpectedly... huge. With the back seats folded down, there's nearly as much cargo space as my Forester, though I suspect (without measuring) that the Forester has a slight width advantage. Incidentally, the back seat would be hard pressed to handle 3 adults; the legroom would be fine, but the middle seat is narrow.
Now I have to decide how the intangibles trade off... is it worth $60/month to have a new automatic Corolla vs. an aging manual Forester - almost certainly. Is it worth $200/month to have a Prius... I dunno. I'm not sure that a Corolla really meets my needs though, because its interior space is not overly generous. I haven't test driven the Mazda yet, and it's gotten excellent reviews, particularly in regards to cargo space.
I don't really like any of the options from the financial POV. Keeping the Forester means throwing away money on maintenance. Buying a new car means throwing away money on depreciation. I'll have to ponder further... I predict much agonizing.
I've been kicking around the idea of getting a new car, because the manual transmission on the Forester is not a huge amount a fun on slow roads, and its gas mileage (21 city / 30 highway) is not awesome. On the other hand, I do own it, which counts for something. To try and make some sense of the different options I made a spreadsheet comparing the 3-year monthly operating cost (car loan+gas+mainentance) of the Forester, a Corolla, a Prius, and a Mazda3.
Conclusions? Keeping the Forester is still the cheapest option, at about $256/mo operating cost. The Corolla is a close second at $311, followed by the Mazda3 at $344, and then the Prius at $444. These number are assuming 15K of mileage per year, and gas at $3/gallon.
Of course, this is not really an apples-to-apples comparison, even if you throw out the touchy-feely "doing a good thing" aspect of the Prius. The Prius is actually a really nice car from a fit-and-finish perspective. A great deal of the standard options on it are either expensive (side curtain airbags on the Corolla) or simply not available at all (proximity sensing locks/ignition) on other compact cars. It's also not really a "compact" car - the EPA rates it as midsize - which would tend to make the relative peer-group cost of a Prius appear lower.
Anyways, I test drove a Prius today. Impressions? I really liked it. The salesman was 6' 3" and with the front seat adjusted for him after he pulled it up I could sit behind the driver's seat with about 6" of knee clearance. That's very nearly a first for any non-minivan I've ridden in. The electrically controlled power steering took a few seconds to get used to, and the general sense of the engine basically doing its own thing (turning on, off, tweaking the gear ratio, etc.) was highly odd. That said, the powertrain is very smooth, and performance from 0-40 mph is pretty impressive due to the electric assist during initial acceleration.
Beyond legroom, overall interior space is unexpectedly... huge. With the back seats folded down, there's nearly as much cargo space as my Forester, though I suspect (without measuring) that the Forester has a slight width advantage. Incidentally, the back seat would be hard pressed to handle 3 adults; the legroom would be fine, but the middle seat is narrow.
Now I have to decide how the intangibles trade off... is it worth $60/month to have a new automatic Corolla vs. an aging manual Forester - almost certainly. Is it worth $200/month to have a Prius... I dunno. I'm not sure that a Corolla really meets my needs though, because its interior space is not overly generous. I haven't test driven the Mazda yet, and it's gotten excellent reviews, particularly in regards to cargo space.
I don't really like any of the options from the financial POV. Keeping the Forester means throwing away money on maintenance. Buying a new car means throwing away money on depreciation. I'll have to ponder further... I predict much agonizing.