I’ve done the math on this several times for my dad and others based on the over 50,000 miles I have put on my 2 Ram 1500 trucks with hemi’s. I can tell you that it costs me on average $.20 per mile in gas using the recommended 89 octane. Overall diesel fuel is about the same cost as the 89 octane.
Oil changes cost 2x what it costs me and then the fuel filter costs ever 20,000 miles, maintenance cost is 1.3 cents (.013) more than my ram with changing full synthetic every 5,000 miles.
We can guess that combined mileage the diesel will get about 10mpg better than a similar gas Hemi. Given the additional maintenance, we can assume that the EcoDiesel will save between $0.045 - $0.075 cents per mile. We know the diesel costs 3,000 a 4,000 more. The best case is the break even point on the EcoDiesel is 40,000 miles and worst case is 88,000 miles. The actual break even point probably lies somewhere in between. I would estimate that the breakeven point to be 65,000 miles for the purpose of making the decision in buying a new truck.
That’s also assuming there won’t be any issues with the diesel system over the gas..
Also, it doesn’t take into account resale value, there’s no evidence that the 1500 diesels are maintaining the awesome resale value that the 2500-3500 Cummins hold. I would suspect that they won’t have the level of resale value that the others have.
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