At what mileage would you consider a tdi cost of ownership will exceed a tsfi?

If your offered a great trade in offer out of the scandal how many miles would your car need to have on it for you to consider the cost of operating a new tsfi cheaper long term?

party_wagon said:

If your offered a great trade in offer out of the scandal how many miles would your car need to have on it for you to consider the cost of operating a new tsfi cheaper long term?

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I would throw the offer in the trash. With my driving around 1000 miles/week, gassers are not an option and aren't on my radar at all.

It's still cheaper to keep the TDI long term and keep driving it and maintain it than to throw perfectly good cars away by trading them in every 2 years. That's the only sure way to beat the system. The scandal has caught the habitual traders aka the "new every 2" crowd off guard. 120k miles represents about 2 years of driving for me.

Good luck.

party_wagon said:

If your offered a great trade in offer out of the scandal how many miles would your car need to have on it for you to consider the cost of operating a new tsfi cheaper long term?

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For under 20K per year, you are pretty much there, except there are no current-year TDIs to buy or model costs for comparison.

When I bought my TDI in 2010, the situation was different, gas cost much more, the non-diesel alternative at VW wasn't very attractive (GTI excepted, maybe) and I calculated break-even at somewhere around 100K, including the extra cost of the TDI engine. That was then. With the little turbo gas engine and the low cost overall of fuel (and smaller spread between premium and diesel) I would think you will be driving much longer to break-even, if you ever get there.

If I had 550K on my TDI, I might consider it. But I'm about 397K away from that.

Assuming both have the same tranny I would expect the non-fuel ownership cost to be similar, long term (I always have a car for at least 100k, I look to my TDI Golf going 200K or more).

For me, my fuel cost/mile is on the order of half of what my old vehicle was ('07 subaru outback).

Literally, my old Outback it was running around $0.19USD per mile (7 year average), and according to my Fuelly data (running since spring '13) my TDI is running under $0.10USD per mile. The EPA highway rating on my Outback was 29 mpg and the best I ever got was about 25. The EPA rating for a '16 Golf TSI is 36 MPG ... so maybe 25% better than my Outback was ... maybe I'd cap-out at around 31 MPG? Getting there but NOT comparable to my TDI, particularly since I'd not be able to use the cheap gas like I was on my Outback.

So, like others, there is no comparing the gassers to the TDI.

ps. I run around 20-25k annually on my vehicle. Not a low mileage consumer.

{shrug}

turboBear said:

So, like others, there is no comparing the gassers to the TDI.

ps. I run around 20-25k annually on my vehicle. Not a low mileage consumer.

{shrug}

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What turboBear said.

I log around 55k miles/year so gassers aren't a desirable option for me at all.

n1das said:

I would throw the offer in the trash. With my driving around 1000 miles/week, gassers are not an option and aren't on my radar at all.

It's still cheaper to keep the TDI long term and keep driving it and maintain it than to throw perfectly good cars away by trading them in every 2 years. That's the only sure way to beat the system. The scandal has caught the habitual traders aka the "new every 2" crowd off guard. 120k miles represents about 2 years of driving for me.

Good luck.

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You have me beat David - I put on about 30-40K annually on mine. Some weeks, I might only put a few hundred miles on, and other weeks, I might put on 2500 miles!

With average fuel prices right now, the comparative fuel cost per mile using an average city/highway mileage mix and using EPA figures (which may be realistic with AdBlue Gen3) makes a diesel effectively not worthwhile to operate if purchased at a premium (which is roughly $1500 if you compare 2015 4-door fully-equipped Golf TSI with TDI pricing). The distance you would have to drive to recover the investment cost would exceed the expected lifetime of the car.

Part of what made the calculations favor TDI in the past was the significantly higher resale value TDI cars enjoyed, which made it possible to factor out some of the price premium in the operating cost comparison and which made the costs comparison relate much more directly to the fuel price spread and the relatively much higher mileage of TDI cars compared to the available VW gas engine, a non-forced-induction 5 cyl. inline which was neither a good performer nor particularly fuel efficient.

I would not consider owning one of VAG's turbo DI gas engines. I drive too much, and they just have too many problems as they age.

The 1.4L may yet have to prove itself, so I might give it a chance. But I just see too many 2006-2010 cars coming in our shop to let me sleep easy on the 1.8L or 2.0L engines.

When they run right, they run great. Gobs of power, decent economy. But when they don't.... ugh...

oilhammer said:

I would not consider owning one of VAG's turbo DI gas engines. I drive too much, and they just have too many problems as they age.

The 1.4L may yet have to prove itself, so I might give it a chance. But I just see too many 2006-2010 cars coming in our shop to let me sleep easy on the 1.8L or 2.0L engines.

When they run right, they run great. Gobs of power, decent economy. But when they don't.... ugh...

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What are your thoughts regarding 3.6 gasser vs 3.0 TDI- the same?

truman said:

What are your thoughts regarding 3.6 gasser vs 3.0 TDI- the same?

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I would say those are about the same for the most part, so I'd probably go with the more frugal TDI.

Tough to say. Accounting only for fuel, I'm still ahead of most of VW's other engines:



Drive the hybrid with regular unleaded and things change. But maintenance is where the TDI loses its advantage. Then again, it seems nearly any car can be expensive to maintain for the long haul these days.

Scott

We drove a Jetta TSI as a rental when we were out in CO last Summer. Nice car, but, that said, if we can't get another TDI when we're ready to trade (and the jury is still out on that), then we will move away from VW. That's kind of a shame, since we enjoy the driving experience, but the whole cost of ownership just isn't very attractive. The initials 'TDI' are more important to us than 'VW.'

I'd still drive a Volkswagen. I have owned, and do own, several gasoline powered ones. Given the choice I'd prefer the diesel, though.

My latest fixer upper is a 2003 Jetta sedan, the AVH 2.0L engine bolted to the 01M slushbox. It is a GL trim car, nothing fancy. And it is (was) a filthy mess, I had to do a bunch of stuff to it to get it driveable, and have slowly been working through its many years of neglect. I have been driving it to and from the shop most every day for the last two weeks. But I have to say, that despite being 13 years old, and having covered 136k miles, it is still tight, smooth, quiet, and pleasant to drive. It feels like a much more expensive car.

And I am in and out of all kinds of cars every day. I was just doing a bunch of work to a 2008 Tribeca last week that hadn't even passed 100k miles yet, and this thing was a squeaky, rattling, poor handling, pile of crap. Not to mention that its 1-quart-per-500-mile oil appetite will assure it will likely be blown up before too long anyways. And those were frightfully expensive vehicles. Pretty sad when a poor 2.slo Jetta I saved for $200 drives nicer than a top-of-the-range Subaru that the owner still owes thousands on.

I just ran the numbers. Compared on fueleconomy.gov, the fuel cost of a new Jetta 1.4T would be $850 per year. The don't list any TDI Jettas after the 2015 model year, but those also cost $850 per year. The Cost to Drive 25 Miles computation does show a difference: three cents in favor of the gas 1.4T.

So, given that the TDI's resale value advantage is no more, is that the answer to the hypothetical question posed is : one mile.