Outback owner?
By the way, Toyota just announced to raise the price of 2023 RAV 4 by 45K NTD.
No, just a fan. Think they look excellent, and the H4 boxer engine sounds famously good due to the exhausts from both banks being equal length.
Headgaskets are a problem on those engines, and there’s two of them at each end of the block, so twice the upset.
Also the floors can rust in countries that use salt. Japanese Imports are always perfect though.
So, basically if you want a very nice looking paperweight…
I am most interested in full time 4WD. I was even considering Benz GLE as would be a bigger vehicle (which is good for me) but at over NT$4,000,000 I really hesitate to go that route as even maintenance costs are higher…and I heard the overall quality is not so good.
My brother drove his last Subaru Forester of 260,000 miles with very little problems. That is amazing since my brother is lazy to take care of his car…he understands car maintenance but is just damn lazy. He traded in for another Forester.
We went with a Mazda Cx-5. Should arrive in December. Interior was as good as the Lexus Nx250 I wanted. Wife wasn’t thrilled by the sales at Lexus and the car itself was just ok by her. Volkswagen Group cars were a No from the moment we walked in the dealer.
The only car that we both said yes to was the Mazda. I’m hoping the wife ordered white so I can call it panda. But I think she would have gone silver or red.
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I got my RAV4 by the way. I thought about the extra fuel tax, however, since I drive everyday, and before the pandemic, I drove to central Taiwan at least once a month, the fuel saving on the hybrid should more than makes up for the 5000 annual fuel tax. I included my calculation at the end.
It would be great if the government changes the taxing rule to tax based on fuel economy and not just engine size. It would seem like if it’s the fuel they are taxing, and cutting back the consumption of fuel to decrease pollution, then taxing hybrids seems counter productive.
My commute is pretty hilly. There are lots of uphill sections and there are lot of traffic, so it often is a stop and go crawl. On the weekends I need to do some shopping and I would drive a bit of the highway. In my old tiny Tiida, I have to fuel up every week. My gas ‘kilometer-age’ usually was under 11 KM/L.
I’ve been driving ny RAV4 E4 hybrid for almost a month. My gas kilometer-age right now is 19 KM/L. That’s pretty close to the advertised kilometer-age. I can pretty much drive over 800KM if I fill up my tank.
If we compare with the advertised CRV kilometer-rage, 14.6 KM/L, and assuming gas is at the cheapest price in the past couple of years, 17.6 dollars per liter, then I would need to drive 1250KM a year to make up for the extra 5000 dollar fuel tax. Even without my trips to central Taiwan, I drive over 9125KM every year, so I’ve more than make up for the fuel tax, especially when gas is over 30 dollars per liter right now.
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Reminds me of a funny story. When I got my first job out of university at a small CBA branch in Australia… an old classmate of mine bought a new SUV and was telling me how it would get better fuel economy than my 12 year old sedan.
So every couple of days I made sure it did! I had a jerry can in my back seat and would top up his new SUV every morning without him knowing. (He parked really and I mean really close to his office that the car unlocked with his key!) This allowed me to push open the gas tank.
After a month or 2 of this I stopped… And low and behold he didn’t come to work with the car! He took it back to the dealership and there was back and forth for months because he claimed the fuel economy changed all of a sudden. The dealership thought he was crazy as the fuel economy he was bragging about and had photos of was impossible…
Everyone in the office was in on it and he eventually found out… He told me that this was by far the best prank ever played on him.
Are you sure 1250km would make up for 5,000NTD?
That’s only 760 KM a month… are you sure? How would that make up for 5,000NTD fuel tax?
14.6 km/L @ $30/L = 18,749.92
@hansioux
19 km/L @ $30/L = $14,407.83
Only 4,342.09 in savings and that is negative when you minus the $5,000 in fuel tax AND the premium you needed to pay to get a hybrid car! You my mate have been scammed by both Toyota and the greedy government!
Oh and don’t forget… My friends spent 30,000 NTD to replace their hybrid car battery after 5 years…
I guess we’ll see. From the US hybrid forums it seems like first and second generation prius lacked a fan filter to keep the batteries from overheating due to dust collected around the batteries. As a result, most of those batteries died within 5 years. However, after Toyoto put in the filter, as long as it is maintained and cleaned, new batteries should last at least 10 if not over 15 years.
Maybe so in the US, I’m not sure. However, CRVs here in Taiwan aren’t cheap either. If you get a basic RAV4 hybrid without 4WD and other fancy non-safety related electronics, it would be around be around 990K NTD back in 2022 before negotiations. Basic 2022 CRV would be 979K NTD before negotiations.