I’ve been car shopping lately and thinking about what mileage I need in the new vehicle. The cars that I like and are more fun to drive hover just under 30mpg while the 35+ models tend to be a bit mushy on the gas (or tiny)

Today I came across this: http://www.comcast.net/articles/finance/20090811/US.GM.Volt.Mileage/

GM is unveiling a car that get 230MPG in the city!  I thought that was awesome until I came across 3 facts

  1. That mileage is in City driving
  2. The car is not shipping yet (and all my projects are ‘bug free’ until they ship also)
  3. The car is $40k

I wrote up a quick app to let me calculate how many miles I have to drive in order to recoup the $40k price tag.  Even comparing it against a $20k hybrid that gets 50 MPG I still have to drive almost 320,000 miles to break even! (at $4/gal)