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[SIZE=3]I own homes in the NY southern tier and in Palm BeachCounty FL. I would like to travel via air between the two multipe times during the year. Looking into my options, one consideration is to buy two cars – economy cars- and leave one at each home. (1) Howlong can I leave a car parked without running the engine and not have issueswhen I need to use it? (2) Is there a particular type of car better than othersin this situation? Hybrid? Electric? Or Regular gasoline run? (3) Isthere a particular company or vehicle that is best? (4) Any other considerations? [/SIZE]
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You'll need to do some research. You can leave a car parked for months with a battery tender which keeps the battery topped so that it's ready to start the vehicle as sitting for a long time without one will drain the battery. As far as good new vehicles go, there are a ton of them on the market from many makes. It's a good time to be a car buyer as there are relatively few awful cars on the market.
It sounds as though the OP is saying that he will be driving a normal amount, just split between two cars. Six months' worth of driving in Florida, six months' worth in New York.
If I have that right, renting probably doesn't make sense. They do have Zip Car at the airport in Palm Beach, so that might be an option.
I wouldn't recommend a hybrid. You might not do enough driving to make it worthwhile.
Do NOT buy Hybrids. They MUST be continuously turned on to keep traction battery charged. You can likely do full electrical, like Leaf. Which I'll caution against, not that it's a bad car. It's simply not wise financially.
If you have money, you can do Tesla.
As I read it, the time is more or less fifty fifty split, and OP isn't planning to spend a month in one town and 11 in the other.
I wouldn't worry so much about the car sitting for half the year, especially if its in a garage. By a jump starter pack for each home and if you have to jump it when you get back, you jump it. I also wouldn't want to leave it parked with a full tank of gas, but rather enough to get you to the station when you arrive to fill up. I don't know of any car that is better or worse for this, although I would imagine the more electronic gadgets on the car, the more likely it is not to start.
Thanks for the replies.
I plan on going to FL about every two months staying about 2 weeks.
The zip car costs $6 per month plus $8-10 per hour. So that is $192 to $240 per day which is much more than a rental.
Don't have that much money for a Tesla.
Thanks for the heads up on the hybrids/electric cars.
Is a battery tender and smart charger the same thing?
Get a 2 yearold vehicle with a 4 cylinder. We bought american for our travel car. We had been a strictly european car family, but a bad experience in rural Idaho where we had to essentially pay hundreds of dollars for a tow truck with a shop that could work on a Mercedes we decided to go with a Ford Edge SUV.
Look into a 2013/14 Chevy Cruze eco . We rented on last year in AZ and it was actually a really decent car.
You can have one car and have it driven for you from NY to FL. Lots of snow birds do that while they fly back and forth.
If you'll be going back and forth more frequently, you won't need to worry about car storage, just attach a battery tender to the car so it will always be ready to go.
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