Driving Economy

The average driver puts about 12,000 miles on their odometer every year¹. In the past year (Jan 13, 2009 to Jan 19 2010) I’ve put 16,244 miles on the tC. I know the exact number, because for the past year I’ve been using an iPhone app called Road Trip Lite to track my fuel economy and since this marks the roughly one year anniversary of very diligent tracking I thought I would celebrate by both purchasing the full version of the app (here) and disclosing some fun stats and extrapolations.

First off, some fun stats. In the past year, I’ve been pretty consistent on my fuel economy, which was the main purpose of this data gathering, as you can see from the graph below I sit right at about 25 MPG. For the sake of comparison the EPA rating of the ‘05 Scion tC was 23/30 (city/highway) so I’m smack where I expect to be. Its hard to tell from the graph, but a close inspection shows an increase in fuel economy when I moved downtown in September.

Putting some of that into real dollars and useless ratios; I’ve pumped 655.65 gallons of gas in the last year at an average price of $2.686 per gallon for a sum total of $1,761.04. A little more number crunching and it looks like I spend a little under five bucks a day on gas, or more precisely I burn a little under $0.11 per mile, at 65 miles per hour that’s $7.15 per hour.

As interesting as it is (or isn’t) those numbers doesn’t really paint a full picture of the cost of owning and operating a car, there’s also the considerations of loan payments, insurance, maintenance and repairs to consider. Thanks to the miracle that is Mint.com, I can get those costs, and even put them in a fancy pie chart for your eye balls:

The small discrepancy between what Mint has for my fuel spending and what I’ve tracked is due mostly to using cash for fill-ups, I’ll be using my actual cost from the previous section for number crunching. The number for Service & Parts is also misleading; I put new rubber on the tC in January 2008 and it was no small expense ($837 for all four ties, mounted and balanced). Since I’m replacing the tires again in the next few weeks, I can conveniently say that the tires are an additional $418 per year.

So total cost for the year period (actually, its 372 days) is roughly $7,600 to own and operate my car. Going back through some of the previous calculations that’s $20 per day, or $0.47 per mile I drive.

So what’s the point? Why take such a close look at spending on one item? Truth be told, I did it mostly because I like working the numbers, but it really does give me an insight into some of my spending and points out the areas that can be trimmed to help save money.

There is no responsible way to reduce my auto payment short of selling the car and my auto insurance has actually gone down recently. Fuel, as well, isn’t really in my control other than keeping my foot free of lead.

What I can control then, should be rather obvious. Parking in the garage downtown is convenient, but at $100 per month its just not worth it. I’ve found that with my typical work schedule I can easily find parking on the street and at worst spend a buck on a parking meter (but usually I’m home well after 6pm). I already do all my own maintenance so I save a bucket load of money, but this tire situation is way out of control. Stock tires would be at least half the cost per year, saving me about $200 per year.

The final word? Park on the street, and get back on stock wheels and I’ll save myself $1,400 per year on auto expenses. Just one more way to get where I want to be financially. Better yet, if I could find a way to ditch the car completely …

United by Individuality

The long awaited ad that was produced from the video taken of hundreds of Scion owners own cars (mine included) is finally out. Actually, I’m a little slow to the punch as it started airing on Comedy Central, MTV, MTV2, Spike and other lifestyle-oriented networks August 4th.

My car is in there, but not really in any place where you can pick it out. I know where it is, but only because I have pictures from the daytime of where the cars were at. Its a good commercial all the same though so without further adieu, here it is:

My Car Made The Shoot!

The Scion United website finally got updated with pictures from the event, including a couple pictures of the cars setup for the commercial. And guess who’s car was in the shoot (if you read the title of this post, you cheated, haha).

You can see the camera in the lower left of the picture, my car is inconspicuously noted.

So it isn’t front-row-center, but I can’t complain. So when the commercials start showing up, look for my tC, second level about middle. Its the one with the silver grill.

Scion United Homebound

Our last day at the Scion United event was fairly un-eventful and felt really long. I stayed up late the night before putting the pictures and post up about the event so Kerry woke up before me at around 8am. We got dressed and headed back down to the cafe for another breakfast of sausage egg sandwiches and coffee.

We took a small walking tour around the hotel. They have a botanical garden, beach and doc that we hadn’t seen yet (Kerry took pictures, but I don’t have those pictures yet). So after the short tour, we headed back up to the room to finish our packing, checked out of the hotel and headed down to where our last bus ride was going to take us to our cars. We waited for a short time for our bus to get up front, boarded the bus and … waited.

30 miniutes past, an hour, finally 2 hours of waiting on the bus and we are told we are finally going to go. Turns out, the computer system that the marketing company uses to track everything (including who’s cars are where) was down and it made for a serious mess at the event site. Our bus was held at the hotel because at least there we could use the bathroom in the hotel, get food and drinks from the cafe etc. Some people weren’t happy about it, one pair of guys called a cab to take them to the event site (which was funny, because they only got their car one or two people ahead of me).

My car was parked up in the same area that we had the event in and if rumor has it, my car was in the group that actually got filmed/photographed for the ad campaign. It was covered in a nice healthy coat of dust, but otherwise unscathed. I heard a lot of horror stories about people with massive scratches, dents, dings and general damage but to be honest I didn’t see any of it, so I’m not sure what to believe and what to pass as over-reactions.

I was however, out of gas. I droped the car off with about 240 miles on the odo and a quarter tank of gas. When I picked it up, I still had around 240 miles but was completely out of fuel. I’m still not really sure why they had it idle through a couple gallons of gas. I heard some speculation that they had headlights on or something to that effect for shots, but my drivers side low beam is out so you’d think that puts my car out of the running, or perhaps they just used the high beams.

I was able to make a stop and take some better pictures of the Scion xD “Hot Lava” RS1. I also spent some more time talking to the couple from Pennsylvania. They both have Scion’s, and both scions got picked to attend the event, but they only drove their BSP tC (represent!) because of the prices of gas.

The wheel in the last picture is not the wheel that will come on the RS1 off the lot though. The RS1 will have plastic wheel covers instead which is really lame. Kerry really liked the xD so I think I’m going to have to give Damon (of Elk Grove Scion) a call to see what we’d be into if we traded her aging Passat in on something (probably a used xD if any exist).

On the way out of the event they gave each owner a numbered badge (to be stick on the car I assume). I ended up number 243 out of 500 (I’d be interested to hear from #1 and #500). We left the event site and stopped at the first gas station to fill up on fuel (for both the car and us). I wasn’t paying attention to the pump I drove up to, and it wasn’t until I went to put my card in that I realized this was not an average pump. There must be a race track or drag strip in Boulder, because the gas station had 100 octane gas (for $5.999 per gallon).

After that the trip was fairly un-eventful. It was almost 2:30 by the time we got on the road so we knew we were going to be getting back late. We stopped and had lunch in Primm (a town on the Nevada side of the border with a casino, fashion outlet and some fast food places.

For a while along the way home I trained with a couple of other Scions but eventually they all pulled off onto other highways. We had dinner in Fresno, and finally arrived home a little after midnight.

In all it was an awesome trip and I’m glad that I was invited. I’m still waiting to see the event pictures posted up on Scion’s website. And I’m looking forward to seeing the commercials pop up. So keep your eye’s open for my car on TV in a few months!

Scion United Event

Today was the day. The Scion United Event. Its been a long day, but I’ll do my best to recap completely without rambling. It was pretty awesome.

Kerry and I started the day with a nice and easy breakfast from the coffee shop in the hotel and took a short shuttle ride into the main village here. Its basically an outdoor mall with lots of little shops, kind touristy but at the same time appealing to the people who actually live here. There is also a casino here. Nothing large, but it has all the usual slot machines and tables. We spent a short amount of time making our donation to the Nevada gaming commission before wrapping up the rest of our free time in an Irish pub.

Once we got to the event, the fun and swag started rolling. They had a few extremely unique cars parked right in front, it looked like at least some of them were corporately owned, but one or two of them may have been other peoples cars. Everything was in tents to at least provide some shade, and there were carts all around with free water, chips, pretzels, ice creams etc to keep everybody cool.

I straight away went to the tent where they were giving out free stuff to the owners. I got a shift knob, and the Scion carbon fiber B-pillar inserts along with some stickers and whatnot. Kerry and I also made a round in the tent where all the 3rd party companies were. More awesome corporate scions and free swag (pens, lanyards etc). There were a few items worth noting though. Alpine had a decibel booth setup where you could go into a small room, and they’d crank up the sound system to reach nearly 145dB. (thats roughly 10x louder than a jet engine BTW). TRD had a booth in this tent as well, and they had THE BEST swag to offer, a set of wheels were to be raffled off at 6:30 (or so the sign said, and the people at the booth told me, but more on that later). They were also doing a live installation of a TRD supercharger in an xD xB right there in the tent.

We toured more of the cars on display, merchandise etc. I stopped by one booth and meet Chris Rado and Ken Gushi. I ventured into the “Paint a Scion” tent, mostly because I was boggled as to what this meant when I read it on the list of things to do. It turned out that they had ceramic xB’s and paint so you could create your own custom xB. Mine came out looking like a 2 year old made it, so I don’t have any pictures of it.

Pioneer had a cool tent as well, they had a live DJ spinning sounds, and video that was projected in 360° on the domed ceiling. I tried to take pictures, but the tent was lit to look cool to a human eye, and my camera couldn’t make sense of it. We also got t-shirts custom made for us (we chose the colors and designs and they silk screened the shirts right there).

After spending a few hours touring everything we got off our feet at the hospitality tent (which was air-conditioned) and drank some water and munched on some snacks for about half an hour. When about 6:25 rolled around, I walked over to the TRD booth for the raffle and was completely disappointed. Turns out, whoever was running the event asked TRD to move the raffle up to 6:15, but forgot to tell anyone. So the winners were chosen, but you had to be present to win, so a ton of people were likely skipped and a few people got quite upset at the debacle.

Dinner was served around 7:30. We had salad, green beans, potatoes au gratin, turkey & roast beef. I was pretty famished, and I think Kerry was too, because both of us polished off our plates. Scion gave out more raffle items during dinner (non of which I won) and after a cake desert, herded us onto the main stage, where the mysterious secret event was to hold place.

The secret was threefold as it turns out. The major item (and something I somewhat expected) was the unveiling of the Scion xD RS1. I was in a horrible spot for taking pictures of it, so I apologies, but I was told I would get a chance to see it up close tomorrow, so I’ll get better pictures then. The other two events weren’t really my style, but it was fun all the same. They had Redman and then Flow Rider perform on stage (both are rappers for those that don’t know).

So after a very long day, and a bus ride back to the hotel I spent some time here going through the pictures (you can see all of them from the day here) and writing this entry. So I’m going to log off for the night, and get some rest. I have a long drive home tomorrow.

Scion United Registration

For those that don’t know already, a quick recap. Scion is hosting a massive party in the Las Vegas desert. Its part ad campaign, part owner rewards. Scion selected 500 owners from pictures submitted back in early March to be part of the event. I was lucky enough to be selected.

Today was the first day of the event, and for Kerry and I it was mostly just driving and registering. We woke up this morning at 4:30am, took our showers finished some packing and got on the road headed towards Vegas. We made pretty good time and got in around 3pm.

I had the car washed the night before, but it collected a pretty good deal of bugs on the way, so I stopped by a car wash and did some final pampering to the tC, headed to the drop off/registration location and … waited.

It was hot, but not bad for Vegas (low 90’s) so I spent some of the time waiting chatted with some other owners (one couple came all the way from Pitsburg, they left two days ago!). There is every kind of Scion represented, from the stock looking tC, to a bunch of crazy flamboyant xBs. You can check out all of the pictures from today in my flickr photostream.

After getting registered (and likely, sun burnt) I turned the car over to Scion (they are doing photo and video shoots with the cars while we enjoy the party) we headed to the hotel. Kerry and I are staying at the Lowes Las Vegas Lake Resort. This place is ridiculous, in every good way possible.

We did a little exploring of the hotel, and sat down for dinner at Ricks Cafe (its straight out of Casablanca). I had probably one of the best Beef Tenderloins I’ve had and Kerry had a new york steak. The bad part was that our bill came to about $100. So we’ve pretty much eaten through most of the food money that Scion gave us for the trip ($70 each in the from of a Visa gift card).

When we got back to the room, we found a nice little surprise waiting for us. Swag! The bags themselves are made from “recycled scion billboards” and filled with things like plush versions of their current model line (tC, xB, xD), an aluminum water bottle, sun screen and some other nick-knack items.

In all, its been a pretty good day. A lot of driving and standing around in the sun, but I quite enjoyed it. It doesn’t hurt that I’m sitting on our balcony, overlooking the lake listening to the quiet sounds of crickets and toads as I write this.