Blessed by the Potato

“Gas prices go up at midnight” is something I’ve been hearing a lot on 680 News when I’m in Toronto. I find it a little hard to understand since the gas stations never had any kind of schedule before — sometimes changing prices several times during the day. Lately however, all the stations over a very large region seem to have exactly the same price, and, apparently, timing of price increases. On PEI, that makes sense since they have regulated prices with pre-announced weekly price changes, but there’s no such thing in Toronto…

Well, my Nokian WRs were fantastic this winter, with a huge improvement in traction over the all-seasons I was using before. I only had my wheels spin even a little just twice through the whole winter, whereas before wheelspin was at least a weekly occurrence (if only a minor split-second loss of traction at an icy stop) when the weather was particularly nasty. As spring is setting in and the warmer weather returns I’m not finding any issues with the tires being too soft or sloppy, though the real hot weather hasn’t hit yet. As I first reported, they are a bit noisier on the turns, but it doesn’t bother me at all.

In addition to recommending the tire, I’d also recommend Kal Tire, the store that I got them from. Just a few days ago, I hit a bump or pothole or something, and heard a strange bouncing ball type ringing noise from the back of the car. It didn’t happen again, so I didn’t pay it much heed… until today when I found out I had a bulge in my sidewall. Their warranty is going to take care of it, and the experience in dealing with them has been pretty good so far. They didn’t have another Nokian WR in stock in my size, and I said I had to drive to Toronto tomorrow. Rather than let me risk driving on a tire that has a compromised sidewall, they put on a used tire (which is worn down, but still legal and in good shape otherwise) free of charge to get me around until my new Nokian arrives next week. At that point, I’ll have to pay a bit for the replacement since the warranty is pro-rated and I’ve got about 6000 km on the tire now, but it should only be about $10 or so, and they’ll do the mounting for free (I believe — we’ll see for sure next week!).

The heater control in my car broke last week. I was turning the heat up, and there was a loud “thunk” and then the heater knob didn’t have any resistance to it any more. Fortunately it was stuck on just a few notches up from full cold — cold enough that with the A/C on the car is livable in the sun, but warm enough that it’s not a completely ice box for these spring nights (though it is a little too chilly for good defogging). I hoped at first that the plastic knob just broke; this has happened twice before, and is a $5 part to replace. Unfortunately, that was not the case this time, and a mechanic told me that the cable that connects the control knob to the actual baffle/damper thing that controls the airflow broke. It’s a cheap part to replace, but would require 3 hours of labour to take apart the dashboard to actually get at it. He actually sent me away because he didn’t have the time to fix it, which is a bad sign.

My dad said to think about whether I want to keep the car before going out and spending more money on repairing it. (He also joked — I think it was a joke — about how convenient it was that my heater was broken, so I’d need a new car as soon as the weather started getting cooler around, say, October)

So Wayfare and I did exactly that yesterday, going through the pros and cons of replacing the car. Our target replacement vehicle would almost certainly be a new Prius for a number of reasons (including that I want one, that I want a new car at least once in my life and that my next car might be the last car I ever get as I anticipate the revival of public transit and the end of cheap oil, and finally that used Priuses are just not depreciated enough to bother with anything that isn’t new).

On the one hand, after this heater repair I’ll be closing in on $2000 of repairs done or planned for this year, and the car is only worth about $2000 — and that’s one rule-of-thumb about when to replace a car. Of course, after these repairs we hope that we’ll get another year or two of trouble-free operations. Plus all the repairs have been for relatively minor things: heater, muffler, new tires, brakes, radiator; the engine looks to still be in great shape and the transmission is holding in there. For all the issues and trouble lights, the car has never stranded us somewhere, so it still meets the bare definition of “reliable transportation” — and my fuel consumption average is around 8.5 L/100 km which is not too shabby.

Factors that would also lead us to buy sooner rather than later include the $2000 federal rebate that is, sadly (damn you, Flaherty/Harper!) going away after the 2008 model year. Two grand is nothing to sneeze at, and in fact provides a very good reason for buying now rather than trying to squeeze the last bit of value out of a $2000 car with unknown repair bills or summer roasting in store (air conditioning don’t fail me now!). We’d also save about $600/year in gas due to the lower fuel consumption of the hybrid. Interest rates are low right now, but should go lower in the next month or two as the bank/Toyota rates catch up with the Bank of Canada rates — this is still a factor that favours early switching, just for next month rather than next week. If the plan is to buy a house in 2-3 years, then it might also be beneficial to have 2-3 years of good payment history on a car (though the extra loan may work against us there… credit ratings can be so confusing).

Wayfare and I actually took a quick trip down to Competition Toyota today to have a look at one in the flesh as it were. We didn’t take one out on a test drive, and they didn’t offer, though there were a half dozen on the lot (putting to lie the reports about the supply problems right now due to the gas price spike). The salesman said just yesterday he had someone turn in my exact car as a trade-in, and that the wholesale price was $500 if I was lucky, which was a little disappointing (I know that if it comes to it we’d have to negotiate, but I thought it would start higher than that). He spent a while telling us about the difference between buying and leasing (I wanted to stop him, but just found I was too polite to butt in, and it was a slow day over there anyway), and then finished off by saying that he’d “love to sell [us] a car today, but honestly the interest rates will probably be better later in the summer.”

While we could afford it, it would not be a completely painless purchase — cars are expensive. And of course the fiscally prudent thing would be to just buy a quality used car that’s already had most of its depreciation taken off, kind of like I did 8 years ago. While that’s not quite what I desire, it is a better idea. And if we go that route, there really is no time pressure on when to do it except for when operating the current Accord becomes uneconomical. So we decided to hold off for now, which is probably the right decision. Especially since we don’t really know what the future holds: if my PhD goes poorly and I lose my scholarship funding and have to live off next-to-nothing starting 2 years from now, or if I graduate and then can’t find work then the burden of a new (or newer) car could be even more painful. Plus the Rogers contest isn’t over yet, so I might win one anyway :)

This will likely be a multipart post since I’m probably going to want to cover a lot of ground and dig up a lot of figures, but just don’t have time right now. For now, a quick point to make:

“Switching to ethanol [to fuel cars] was a big thing, until they realized they are starving people.”

[clarification for context mine]

This is just one representative quote (from an off-hand comment on Preet’s site) of a sentiment that I’ve been seeing a lot lately. There is some sort of food crisis happening right now, and it’s snowballing astonishingly quickly. There are food riots in poorer countries, and even in the States there are the beginnings of rationing on rice.

I’ve got my doubts about the ultimate utility of ethanol production, but I also think that it’s far too easy to blame biofuel production for the current food price spike. From what I can find, about 20% of the US corn crop went into biofuels last year, and it’s pretty much the only food crop that gets diverted to that stream. 20% of the crop looks to be within the normal range of crop yield variances, and last year was a record crop to boot. It may be a factor, but I have to say that something else is leading to food price inflation and starving the world…

Rogers is having a contest for a Prius. If you’re a Rogers customer, all you have to do is switch your billing method over to ebilling to be entered in the draw. Since I’m a little Prius-happy of late I really wanted to enter the contest… except I already get my bills electronically. (Also: since I’m a little Prius-happy, I was tempted to not include a link above in order to improve my odds, but I hope that if any loyal BbtP readers out there did happen to win, they’d share :). Fortunately, the good laws of this country forbid a company like Rogers from running a lottery, so they cannot require a purchase for entry into their draw (and, if selected, the answering of a skill-testing question). This is the first time that I’ve actually taken advantage of those rules and I sent in a letter with a 100-word essay on why ebilling is “good for the environment.” Of course, that still costs me something (postage), so to me it is a bit like entering into a lottery. I figure my odds are 1 in 500,000 or better (how many of the ~10 million Rogers customers will really switch to ebilling or send in a letter?), so ~50 cents to enter is not too bad, as far as lotteries go.

I find this whole thing deliciously ironic, and really hope that I win for that value alone (…ok, not for that value alone, I really want to win for the new car!). First off, I’m entering by a mailed-in paper submission for a contest that is all about the merits of ebilling. And this whole charade in saving paper is being put on by Rogers, who first off have ridiculously long bills (4 pages on 2 sheets just for one service!) simply so that they can throw in ads for the Jays or their magazines in your bill, and who secondly are one of the most egregious users of dead tree admail there is (at least in the London market). I get, minimum, 4 pieces of full-colour junk mail from Rogers a month. Most of it is for their phone service, which they’re pimping lately like the dirty little bitch it is, so maybe that’ll settle down in the next decade when every household in Canada has received their quota of 480 Rogers Home Phone ads and someone in management asks just how effective the 481st unaddressed bulk admailer is really going to be. But even for their long-term developed products like TV, wireless, and internet I get an ad every other month (at least one of them each month), which also makes me wonder: how many people don’t know that Rogers is an option for their TV-viewing habits? Or that the internet now comes in “high speed” (wait, there’s something faster than dial-up AOL? Gasp!).

This contest somewhat reminds me of all the annoying promotions Rogers puts out for new customers, such as 3 free months if you buy a computer, but which just screws over (ignores) the current customer. There was no kick-back money from the computer manufacturer for the current customers? At least with this contest, even though I already get electronic bills and can’t enter the conventional way, I can still find some way to participate. But stuff like this makes me wonder if I should ever upgrade anything with Rogers, since at some point down the road they’ll very likely have a promotion or contest that I won’t be able to take advantage of if I, heaven forbid, happen to actually want what they’re offering.