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I'm talking about equivalents. Same size, same age, similar options, etc...

For instance, I had a Prius and put 120K miles on it in 5 years. If I recall correctly, compared to a similarly outfitted Camry, I saved thousands in TCO in 5 years.

This is in the economy car class, which means people are usually looking for economy. If it were a sports car, we'd maximize for performance.

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I calculated that a Leaf should break even with a Prius at about 120k miles as well. Of course, that was the 2012 Leaf, which was $4,000 more than it is now, and less efficient. Now you can get a 2013 Leaf S for $21k after government rebate, which is less than you can get a Prius II for, so you break even immediately.

Anyway, it's true that it would take me ~20 years to break even with the 2012 Leaf, but I wasn't optimizing for economy. I was optimizing for the environment.

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