Nissan Leaf versus Subaru Forester

The cost per mile winner - Nissan Leaf.

Starting in 2015, I decided to do a 5 year experiment.  For this time, I had two cars.  The first car, the Nissan Leaf, was bought with the idea that having a relatively simple and new car would save money.  Being a 2013, it is still new enough that most parts have not worn out.  If they did break, they are under warranty.  At the bargain after tax price of $13,800 it was more than I had ever paid for a car.  However,  I anticipated the per-year cost should be lower than a gasoline car.  First, being electric, it lacks many of the things that are typically expensive repairs on regular cars.  For example, there is no muffler to rust, gas tank to leak and so on.  The engine and transmission are also very simple and have been cited as statistically being around 25 times as reliable as a gasoline car. Oh, and I would not need to buy any gasoline for the life of the car.  As for energy use, I found it used about as much electricity as a small window air conditioner.  That is, it has apparently added about $20 to my monthly electric bill.  It would eventually need a new battery pack, but if I junk it anytime after 6 years, I anticipate that I would be ahead of what I would have paid to drive a regular car over the same period of time..

The second car, my winter rat, was a used 2007 Subaru which I acquired at a slightly below market price of $5900.  I expected this car to have higher operating costs, but I thought it would still be overall cheaper due to the low acquisition cost.  At first, that was true.  During the winter of 2015-2016, I plowed through the snow with no problems other than adding a starting battery costing $130.  So far, so good.  Then, mid winter, the muffler needed to be replaced.  Also, I needed a new set of tires and oil needed to be changed.  Again, expected repairs.  Taken together, they were around $800.  As winter turned to Spring, the Subaru mostly sat in the driveway.  Due to driving the Leaf, the Subaru sat so much that I became concerned that I might need to put gasoline stabilizer in it's tank!  Also, staying in one place it was starting to cause four tiny tire indentations in my driveway!

Meanwhile, the Leaf continued to operate, requiring nothing more than a daily charge which was hardly noticeable on my utility bill. When I first got the leaf, I was concerned about the range.  So much so that I insisted the dealer deliver the car. However, I quickly realized my driving habits fit well within it's round-trip range.  Looking at my odometer, I found that I only drive around 20 miles a day to work (sometimes 30 on the weekend) and this is well within the Leaf's range even with heat or air conditioning operating.  I also noticed a nice surplus in my weekly budget due to not needing to buy gas.  It's only major repair was for a universal joint problem that created an occasional grinding noise but didn't disable the car. There was also a software upgrade for brakes, a defective seat heater and an air-conditioner pipe adjustment.  All replacements so far have been covered under the factory warranty. 

When I took the Subaru on it's first long trip, the real cost of maintaining an ICE car became apparent. During that drive, oil consumption suddenly became around a quart every 100 miles!  Once I got home, my mechanic traced the cause to a leaky oil pressure sensor gasket (one of three that this model car has). The gasket was cheap.  Replacing it was not - at close to $300 dollars.  Then, a few weeks later, the dreaded check-engine light appeared again and it started burning oil rather than leaking it!  Buying a car scanner $89 revealed a misfire in one of the cylinders.  A compression test, then removal of the heads, revealed the exhaust gasses had eroded some paths through the metal around the exhaust valves.  Fixing that required extensive and lengthy repairs, to the tune of two months of being off the road and a monetary cost of $3200!  

So far, the before-tax Forrester costs are...
Acquisition cost of Subaru(with tax) - $6500
Starting battery $130
Muffler & tire replacement ~ $800
Oil temperature gasket leak ~ $300
Bulk oil jug purchases to replace oil lost to leak ~$40
Scanner $89
Compression diagnosis $130
Engine head repair, including timing belt and serpentine belt replacement $3200
Total cost so far are approximately $11,189

if I had not had the leaf, I would have had  rental car costs in too.

Although the Forrester repair costs were abnormally high, the reviews for the 2007 model year show that I am hardly unique in having them.  Nor was I done with them.  Next,, my Forrester has developed a new power steering shudder and the struts developed a creaky sound.  As for insurance and registration savings,  the rates are comparable on either car.  Due to my bundling of insurance, it looks like I would gain around $500/yr savings if I gave up either one of the cars.  

As for miles driven, the Leaf clocked just over 10,000 miles that past year versus the Forrester at just under 2,000.  However, before concluding the Leaf was clearly the superior car on a cost-per-mile basis, consider that many of the Forrester's miles have been earned during very bad conditions.  The Forrester's winter performance has never been in doubt.   On several early mornings, when the temperatures were below zero and nary a snowplow was in sight, the Forester plowed through the cold snowy roads perfectly.

Unlike the Forrester, the Leaf's winter reliability depends heavily on snowplow clearing and a nightly opportunity to thaw in a warm garage.So, in my geographic area, it looks like the Nissan Leaf can fill a meaningful transportation niche for 3/4ths of the year. Unfortunately, my transportation choices are defined by peak performance demands.  That is, I still need a car that can go through deep morning snow (only 4 or 5 days a year) and survive roads covered with corrosive roadway salt.  Unfortunately, for now, that still requires a petrol car with AWD.

* Update: This April 2017, the Subaru had another large oil leak from a defective freeze plug.  That made my car briefly totally run out of oil. Fortunately, I had the common sense to stop the car before the engine seized and have it towed to the shop.  After a  $300 repair, the car is again mobile.  However, I found the rings are now shot and it's not cost effective for me to repair.  The car still worked but it needed to be topped up with oil every time I bought gasoline! I decided to sell it for $2300, ending the  experiment early.

Economics of 3-D printing in a post-peak oil world

This is a plastic part to a table that allows a network cable to go through a conference table.  At the moment, we only need one.  Take a guess on how much it is.  I'll give you some hints.   From the image you can see it's a relatively small size. It's made of relatively inexpensive plastic - HIPS to be precise but being made of ABS or other forms of plastic or even rubber wouldn't impact it's mostly aesthetic function. I'll give you the most important clue.  The real cost of this item isn't in material cost of the plastic (If you were to buy this material in quantity, the per-pound raw material cost is still under $0.10).  Rather, the bulk of the cost depends on proximity of the item to the place of need.  My proximity to the conference table is insignificant - only a room away.  However, my proximity to a supply of these things is where the real cost becomes apparent.

If I was hypothetically standing next to a barrel of these things at a factory, I could grab one and probably pay pretty close to the material cost of this item.  Assuming that factory did retail, and was expecting me to buy many more of these, I would say it's price would be around $0.15 ea.

If was at a local big box store such an item would probably be on a pegboard hook, wrapped in a plastic package with a description and a bar code.  The retail price with all package, processing, delivery and sales tax would drive the price up to just above a dollar.

All of the above prices don't take into consideration the searching time and true delivery cost of the item. The most direct way to see the delivery cost of an item is to order an item online and then have it delivered to your door.   Given postal rates, an individual can be expected to pay a minimum of around $8 for shipping  all but the smallest of items to their nearest postal box.  So, in the example above, that can increases the cut rate price of $0.15 to be around $8.15.

Even that expensive ordering option is not how we typically buy such items.  Instead, many of us get in our expensive car to drive to the nearest hardware store which is usually at least 15 minutes away.   Then spend half an hour looking through all the wall baggies, then find a retail clerk who is faster at searching baggies. Maybe they have one, maybe not. Assuming the item exists and is in-stock, we then expend more time driving back.  As can be seen in this example, the whole process can take a large amount of time even if no excessive traffic is encountered on the roadway.  If we were to pay ourselves even the new minimum wage of $15 an hour and split the miles driven over the life of the car, well, you know where I'm going with that. 

If we need the part at work, cost can still be high.  We need to count hourly time for searching for a part from an approved vendor.  Then print and submit the appropriate purchase order to the appropriate person. Even if the purchase order process is only asking a boss for approval, their time at their hourly rate is being used too.  Then, a small slice of time from accounting to process the order, then send a check.  Meanwhile, on the other side, someone needs to maintain a whole business infrastructure so their employee can pick the part, pack the part, then ship it to you.   The only bright side to this is that delivery costs may be shared if more than one of the same item is being ordered from that same vendor.

Contrast that to on-site manufacturing.  Just measure the diameter of the hole.  Start a CAD program (commercial or open source).  Then measure the part, draw the piece and export to a printer.  Assuming the printer is in working order and has a supply of plastic, there is no additional transport cost, reporting cost and relatively small wait time!  Plus, if another is needed at a later time, the cost is even lower!  The per-part price from a 3-D printer is still pretty high.  However, printers are getting more reliable and less expensive all the time.  Due to this, it is now possible to get saving from small batches of multiple items.  Just like multi-item orders make per-part costs lower, printers are now reliable enough to print multiples of parts unsupervised. The economics rarely make sense for hundreds of parts.  However, when only two or three relatively simple parts are needed, printing rather than ordering may someday become a less expensive option. 

Surviving outside the financial system

Unfortunately, when it comes to living in the U.S. there is sometimes no alternative to cash....or is there? Depending on who you pay tax to, it may be possible to either pay taxes with items or at worst sell items for cash. So, it may be possible to survive with very little cash (assuming one doesn't get trapped into the medical or  prison industrial systems). The principle is based on this article which showed how one individual turned one red paperclip into a house. Now, the article is not to show that you simply need a drawer full of paperclips to solve your financial needs. Rather, it's to show how it is possible to show how to barter profitably.

Bartering isn't about living without working. Rather, it is a way of directly participating in the economy. With the exception of transport costs and perhaps a bit of marketing cost, bartering can be remarkably efficient when compared to the regular economy. The unconventional economy or black and gray markets tend to be able to avoid some if not all of the following business costs:

• Income tax
• Credit card transaction fees
• Bank fees (just for having a "business account" at the bank)
• Business license or permits
• Cost increases for various services due to having "business rates" rather than consumer rates for utilities such as electric/phone/internet.
• higher rents in "commercial zones" rather than "residential" zones.
• frivolous lawsuits
  
• fancy packaging
• global transport costs (if not manufactured locally)
• Shoplifting
  
• Cost of accounting in terms of time/money spent maintaining compliance for the tax authorities.  Eg. Within the state sales tax.  (When all costs are counted, this cost of compliance can exceed the actual taxes owed for a start up business.)
  

Only the first category of cost is illegal to try to avoid.  It is perfectly sensible to try to avoid the other ones.  Each cost may be small, but there are so many of them!  No wonder the regular economy is dying! There's only so much that can be taken out of  transactions before products don't have enough profit to be worth selling! However, as yesterday's retail industry dies, other solutions that avoid at least some of these rapidly rising financial costs are taking their place. Craigslist, Ebay, pawn shops, roadside produce stands and even people selling items out of the trunk of their car may be able to remain out of the reach of at least some of these financial leaches.

Is it possible to make a living this way? Perhaps. Some T.V. shows such as "pawn kings" show it may be possible to avoid some costs. However, like any business, the money making activity is not always obvious. It may just be that the participants make more money selling the TV show than on everyday selling activities. So, it may not yet be economical for many to exist in this way. However, each year, more people try.