Enslaved At The Pump: How Many Years Until You Will Go Free?

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

There are automakers that treat you like a moron. They sell you a fuel saving package that costs so much and/or saves so little that you won’t see the savings until you and the car are ancient. As some comments will surely prove, there are people who like to be treated as morons. For those, some alleged fuel saving packages serve a purpose. Some like to be insulted, whipped and charged $800 by a dominatrix, others prefer the same treatment from a dealer. Nothing wrong with it amongst consenting adults.

TrueCar released a study that shows that depending in the car and the greed of its maker, the hundreds of extra dollars paid for the premium fuel-boosting option could make immediate financial sense or could be pouring money down the drain. In some cases, your car, even you will be long retired before the initial investment is paid back.

The worst offender on TrueCar’s list is the 2012 Chevrolet Cruze ECO. It costs $853 more than the comparably equipped model. At annual savings of $18 (assuming $3.90 and 15,000 miles per year, YMMV) it would take 48 years before the $853 are paid back.

Second worst offender on the list is the 2012 Ford Fiesta SE with SFE package. According to Torquenews “SFE stands for Super Fuel Economy, which seems like a bit of a joke because the fuel economy difference between the Fiesta SE with SFE and the Fiesta SE is three-tenths of a mile per gallon. It’s going to take you 36 years to pay off the higher price of the SFE model.”

The best investment would be the Mazda3 Touring with SkyActiv. It will have saved you before it is driven off the dealer’s lot, simply because it is cheaper than its counterpart. It also provides the highest savings of all cars studied by TrueCar.

A car only brings you true savings at the pump if those savings don’t have to be bought with inordinate surcharges. But again, some people love to be insulted for a fee.

Mr. Obvious speaks: For the calculation, TrueCar used $3.90 for a gallon of gas and 15,000 miles driven annually. They paybacks will come faster if gas goes higher and you drive more. The reverse is also the case. A table detailing the math behind the model can be found here.

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

More by Bertel Schmitt

Comments
Join the conversation
4 of 79 comments
  • Otaku Otaku on Apr 13, 2012

    "The best investment would be the Mazda3 Touring with SkyActiv. It will have saved you before it is driven off the dealer’s lot, simply because it is cheaper than its counterpart." What about comparing the base 2.0L Mazda3 sedan against the 2.0L SkyActiv sedan equivalent (if Mazda even sells them that way)? Wouldn't that make the SkyActive version significantly more expensive? If so, how long would it take to recover the extra cost? As long as we're on the subject of Mazda's SkyActiv, shouldn't there also be a chart that demonstrates how much worse its fuel economy would be if a customer ever decided to drive it somewhere cold, possibly in the winter, with snow tires? According to a couple of the reviews on this site, under such conditions, one should expect gas mileage to drop below the optimistic EPA estimates. How much longer in terms of years/miles/whatever would customers in colder climates then require to recover the added expense of their original purchase? Maybe there should be some type of bar graph comparing new fuel efficient vehicles versus slightly used and less expensive equivalent models. Never mind...

    • Redav Redav on Apr 14, 2012

      It is reasonable to expect the non-SkyActiv to perform equally poorly with snow tires, etc. Also, the 2.0L non-SkyActiv does not come on any comparable trims as the SkyActiv, so the price difference includes fewer bells & whistles. You could use TrueDelta to normalize the price, though.

  • Chicagoland Chicagoland on Apr 14, 2012

    Who pays full MSRP? Who still drives only 15,000 a year? I'd rather read a true story about cost of ownership, instead of biased propaganda.

    • Otaku Otaku on Apr 14, 2012

      Sounds like you probably came to the wrong place.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
Next