Th myth of trading a "Gas Guzzling" car on a Fuel Efficent car

To continue with my rant on the energy crisis, I am going to focus this post on the myth of people being better off trading in gas guzzling cars in on a new fuel efficient car such as a hybrid. I am going to look at the nuts and bolts of the change. First, what motivates most people...money. Let's say you bought a new car 3-4 years ago and the purchase price of said car is $25K and the value of the car is $10k. Not unreasonable. So you are now entering in the golden years of your car. The time when the car is actually worth more than you owe and you are still not ashamed of it. Now a dealer will only give you $9k and a new "fuel efficient" car will cost you $25-$30K of which you will be paying on for ANOTHER 5 YEARS or more if you choose the bank geared 6 or 7 year loan. (Yeah, that was a smart idea. How about get a second mortgage and you can pay for the car for 30 years!) Now lets say the new fuel efficient car will get 28 MPG vs the one you traded in (Lets say and Large SUV) got 17 MPG. That is a difference of 11 MPG. Now let say you drive 20K miles per year. So doing the simple math, the fuel efficient car will use 714.28 gallons per year and the large SUV will use 1176.47 gallons of gas. Using the average price of $3.75 per gallon (Let assume, for goodness sake.) The SUV will cost you $4411.76 and the fuel efficient car will cost you $2678.55 per year. That is a estimated yearly savings of $1733.21 PER YEAR. Although that is a large number lets not forget the loss in depreciation you are going to take on the new car, higher insurance, higher repair costs (becasue the high tech gear requires specialized service equipment) etc. Now how cheap is it to save a few gallons of gas?

I know you can easily argue both sides of this but I see from a "green" perspective...that is I like my green and I like to keep it. Now don't get me wrong, if your car has more duct tape than paint and the seats remind you of a couch that your new puppy ate, you may need to consider a new car. Then you can weigh the options vs cost of a hybrid or other new technology. But I would not run out and trade in that gas guzzling car just yet, I might actually save some "Green" Until next time, do your part for the environment and save your green!