user 24513
Well-known member
Dmacarthur - my simple trick to higher efficiency in winter is to never use heat. My daughter does use it sometimes as we share the second car (wife has the SV+, and basically has the heat glued on from mid October).
With gas prices the way they are, and our electric rates what they are, we pay $.13 for a kWh which drives us 3.3 miles in the winter (pretty much the worst we have seen). That translates to 33 miles for a buck thirty or about the cost equivalent of 80 miles for the cost of a gallon of gas. Just my way of rationalizing not being quite such a cheapskate any more by not using heat (and my wife is REALLY done with that!). During the summer this number goes way up over 100 miles. Our particular electrical sources are about as green as they can be, with lots of Canadian hydro power and a fairly large portion coming from solar including our own approximately 9 kW systems. But this is all a rationalization- we should definitely be driving less and conserving the vehicle for many more years of service.....