Fuel mileage
Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2019 8:14 am
I see people talking about fuel mileage here and on the Facebook group all the time and saying how bad these are. First, I'm wondering what kind of mileage would people consider acceptable for a moving house?
I understand the concern if you're going to be driving it a lot, but most RVs sit most of the time - I saw an interview with an RV repair shop manager who said the highest mileage motorhome he's ever seen had 155,000 miles. My 28 year old B190 only has 120,000 miles, and we see plenty up for sale with fewer miles than that.
I think we're conditioned to think low mileage = expensive, but I think people are missing the bigger picture. If you are taking a vacation and drive, say, 500 miles at 8 mpg (the lower end of what everyone reports), that's 62.5 gallons of gas, which is $161.94 using AAA's current fuel prices ($2.591 - https://gasprices.aaa.com/). Campground fees start around $35, though this can vary a lot based on the area. Driving our Accord would cost about $47.98, at 27 mpg, but even the worst hotel I've stayed in in the last few years was almost $100/night (more for a city or vacation area), plus meals - there's no kitchen in the Accord, and I would happily pay more for a better hotel than that place. Assuming you're staying more than a night or two, you still come out ahead with the motorhome.
Let's say the motorhome gets 20 mpg, which those diesel Sprinters can. That's $75.18 in fuel (using $3.007 as the current average for diesel, because no one is getting that mileage with gasoline in a motorhome), which is just under half as much as our B190. But how much more does that diesel Sprinter cost? The cheapest one I see on eBay right now is $51,100. Even a $25,000 B190, which is near the upper range for them, allows you to buy over 10,000 gallons of fuel before you'd break even...which would mean you would have driven it 80,000 miles, and few of us are going to put that many miles on one.
Any way you slice it, a B190, despite it's poor fuel efficiency, is still one of the cheapest ways to travel.
I understand the concern if you're going to be driving it a lot, but most RVs sit most of the time - I saw an interview with an RV repair shop manager who said the highest mileage motorhome he's ever seen had 155,000 miles. My 28 year old B190 only has 120,000 miles, and we see plenty up for sale with fewer miles than that.
I think we're conditioned to think low mileage = expensive, but I think people are missing the bigger picture. If you are taking a vacation and drive, say, 500 miles at 8 mpg (the lower end of what everyone reports), that's 62.5 gallons of gas, which is $161.94 using AAA's current fuel prices ($2.591 - https://gasprices.aaa.com/). Campground fees start around $35, though this can vary a lot based on the area. Driving our Accord would cost about $47.98, at 27 mpg, but even the worst hotel I've stayed in in the last few years was almost $100/night (more for a city or vacation area), plus meals - there's no kitchen in the Accord, and I would happily pay more for a better hotel than that place. Assuming you're staying more than a night or two, you still come out ahead with the motorhome.
Let's say the motorhome gets 20 mpg, which those diesel Sprinters can. That's $75.18 in fuel (using $3.007 as the current average for diesel, because no one is getting that mileage with gasoline in a motorhome), which is just under half as much as our B190. But how much more does that diesel Sprinter cost? The cheapest one I see on eBay right now is $51,100. Even a $25,000 B190, which is near the upper range for them, allows you to buy over 10,000 gallons of fuel before you'd break even...which would mean you would have driven it 80,000 miles, and few of us are going to put that many miles on one.
Any way you slice it, a B190, despite it's poor fuel efficiency, is still one of the cheapest ways to travel.