Because I live in suburbia, having a car is a necessity. In fact, my husband and I are a two-vehicle household because even though we both work from home, our kids often need to get to different places at the same time.
For years, we made things work with my minivan and my husband’s aging Prius. But when that car started giving us trouble after 17 years, we made the decision to sell it and replace it with a newly leased vehicle.
Initially, we were going to replace our Prius with another traditional hybrid, but my husband talked me into giving a plug-in hybrid a chance. Now that I’ve had that plug-in hybrid for almost a year, here are some of the pros and cons I’ve come across.
1. My lease is more expensive than it would be for a gas-powered car
Unfortunately, my husband and I got our plug-in hybrid at one of the worst times to buy or lease a new car. Our hands were tied because our old car had become unreliable and we weren’t willing to sink thousands of dollars into fixing a vehicle that was 17 years old.
I’m not going to share what we pay for our lease each month, but let’s just say that we did the research and found that we’re easily paying a good $200 to $300 more per month for our plug-in hybrid than we’d be paying for a lease on a traditional gas vehicle. So that’s one obvious downside, and we’ve had to make changes to our budget to account for the high cost of our lease.
2. My insurance costs are higher, too
Lemonade says that the insurance costs for a hybrid car can be 7% to 11% higher than a standard car because hybrids tend to cost more in the first place. And since our plug-in hybrid costs more than a regular hybrid, we saw our auto insurance costs rise a good 25% once we replaced our aging Prius with our newly leased vehicle.
However, that sort of makes sense. I don’t love paying more for car insurance, but our plug-in hybrid’s value well exceeds that of an old hybrid, so the fact that our costs went up wasn’t a shock.
3. I’m saving a lot of money on gas
The U.S. Department of Energy says that the annual cost to fuel a plug-in hybrid is $1,000 to $2,000, compared to $2,000 to $7,000 for traditional gas-powered vehicles. Because our car has about a 40-mile range, we usually don’t have to fill the tank more than once a month.
By contrast, I have to refill my minivan’s tank every week, and sometimes multiple times a week, depending on how far away from home our kids’ sporting events are. So remember how earlier I said we’re paying a good $200 to $300 more per month for this car compared to a regular gas-powered car? Well, the way I see it, we’re basically breaking even on that extra cost by rarely buying gas.
4. I’m saving myself a lot of time
Filling up a gas tank can be a pain. Sure, it sometimes works out to fill up in conjunction with doing my Costco shopping (and that way, I get to save on gas, since Costco’s pumps are cheaper than the typical gas station in my area). But often, I have to go out of my way to fill up my minivan, which is frankly an annoying thing to do during a busy week.
The nice thing about the plug-in hybrid is that I largely don’t have to make the time for that errand. As long as we remember to plug the car in overnight, we’re usually good to go for all of our driving the next day. It’s only when we’re taking the plug-in hybrid on a longer trip that we start to deplete its tank.
A good solution when you’re not ready for a full-fledged electric vehicle (EV)
All told, a plug-in hybrid could be a good solution if you want the convenience of an electric car but aren’t ready for an EV. That’s the situation I’m in.
I don’t think the infrastructure is there yet for an EV to make sense for me. I have friends with EVs who have told me horror stories of having to wait hours for a charging station when they were far from home, and I’m not willing to subject myself to that. I’d rather have a car that gives me the option to revert to using gas should I need it. And in that regard, my plug-in hybrid totally fits the bill.
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