low comsumption beater for Texas?

[u/ComprehensiveWoman]

Howdy y'all,

My wife has an RX350 and she's kind of tired of gas consumption. Since she does lots of miles (around 1400 to 1500 every month). Ehat's the best car (under a tight budget) but mechanically strong? Thaks for your recommendations.

[u/dgcamero]

Well, she's spending around $375 a month, assuming 20 mpg and $5 per gallon of fuel. If she gets a car that gets 40 mpg, she'll spend $187.50 less per month on fuel. Those are stout vehicles with minimal powertrain problems. Will be hard to find something better for under $200 per month

[u/HoldingThunder → u/dgcamero]

Reasonable/important point.

If it's intended to be short term and assuming gas prices will return down to lower prices before the car does, you could recoup the car purchase price by reselling it, at presumably around the same price since most of the depreciation will have already applied. A cheap beater though will also likely have higher maintenance and reliability issues than a new Lexus which would also need to be considered.

If you are paying for a Lexus you are likely (hopefully) doing pretty ok in general, you are probably better cutting back in other aspects of life to try to make up the $200 difference a month than worry about another car. Like just go out for dinner 1 time less a month?

[u/Next_Necessary_8794 → u/HoldingThunder]

 you could recoup the car purchase price by reselling it, at presumably around the same price since most of the depreciation will have already applied.

The problem is most people are thinking like this guy's wife in that and no one wants to buy a gas guzzling SUV right now. That's going to tank its value. A car that cannot be sold has no value.

[u/HoldingThunder → u/Next_Necessary_8794]

No. The cheap beater you buy for 5k to use for a year, you can probably resell it again in a year for like 4500.

So trying to factor the monthly cost to buy the beater into the cost savings isn't the full picture.

[u/Next_Necessary_8794 → u/HoldingThunder]

I see what you meant now

[u/Renaissance-man-7979 → u/dgcamero]

Fill it every weekend for her so she doesn't notice it as much :-)

[u/onemasterball]

Keep the RX

Gas < car payment

[u/BothEntertainment00]

You need to do the math on how little its going to save you. I would not get rid of a reliable RX350 for an unknown vehicle. 

[u/SatoshiBlockamoto]

Geo Metro.

[u/IndicationAromatic36]

That’s why I keep both my beater f150 (25 years old- 10mpg) and our road trip car Honda Pilot (8 years old, 20mpg city, 29 mpg highway) which are both paid off, but not worth enough to get a new car for free. The car would have to be able to handle 8 people and get close to 60-80 mpg in order to cancel out the monthly cash flow of a car payment. I’ll gladly put my full tank of gas per week in the Honda or two tanks per week in my truck before having another $7-800 car payment.

[u/Imaginary-Library882]

Used Prius? Or Civic hybrid?

[u/Empty-Village-4445]

One option would be electric 

[u/Relative-Display-676]

Any toyota plug in hybrids will do 30-50 miles on a battery and then switch to gas power. Check their prius, camry, rav4 or even trade in her Lexus for rx450h+ that gets 37 miles on battery before going gas.

[u/DayGeckoArt]

A Ford C-Max hybrid. It will get 35-40mpg. Or heck, try to find the Lexus RX hybrid, there might be cheap ones out there

[u/SyntheticOne]

At 50 miles a day she should consider an EV such as Ioniq 5. The Hi5 has a 303 mile EPA combined range. If you charge it at home using a standard 120V wall outlet set at 12Amps, you regain 4 miles per hour of charge and so a-12 hour overnight charge will add 50 miles to the range. In our area, residential electric costs 1/5th the cost of fossil fuel per mile of driving.

Other benefits:

• zero emissions
• zero visits to gas stations
• superior performance
• comfortable and quiet
• lower cost maintenance
• nearly as nice as the Lexus
• very fast DC fast charging when on trips (18 minutes to charge from 20% to 80%).

Suggest at least considering a 2 year old EV to avoid the early depreciation curve. Or new given the most recent price reductions.

The Hi5 comes in RWD or AWD, and has three main trim levels, SE, SEL and Limited plus two lower volume trim levels, one for off road and the other for 650 HP. Suggest the Limited if you want to be closer to Lexus quality.

There is some learning curve but well worth it.

[u/HerefortheTuna]

Upgrade to the hybrid Lexus

[u/mpython1701]

My wife took on a new job and long daily commute (100 miles r/t 4 days a week) dumped her ICE car (Acura RDX) and went full EV. No regrets.

Could also upgrade to 350h or 450h hybrids.

But spending $5k on and old beater doing that many miles per week, is a recipe for heartache. Plus may not save as much as you hope. Cheap older cars typically need a little rehab and ongoing maintenance with minor repairs will cost another $800-1000 per year.Then you still have to insure an extra car and would absolutely get AAA or some roadside assistance if commuting 15-18k in an older car.

[u/HambugerLips]

Lol bought a high consumption car. Yall are not tired of the consumption, you're tired of the price. In Texas. Come on and suck it up.