After two years of living in Europe, my wife and I have returned to the US—specifically to Oakland, California. Although there are some public transit options (and I bike a lot), we’ve decided that we want to get a car to share between the two of us. So, I turned to where most of us turn these days to buy pretty much anything: Craigslist.

But Craigslist is starting to show its own wear and tear. After all, its basic design hasn’t changed since 1996! That means comparing car options involves lots of browser tabs and lots of patience. Each post isn’t formatted in the same way. It’s hard to do an obvious comparison between similar vehicles, or to know if the asking price is a good value or not. (I’ve spent a lot of time toggling over to Kelley Blue Book.) Plus, there are way too many sketchy "salvage title" sales. There had to be an easier way. So I put out a call on Facebook and the Internet did not disappoint.

Thanks to a friendly tip, I discovered Carsabi. It’s a new Silicon Valley startup which describes itself as being, "in the process of indexing every automotive vehicle known to man." The Mountain View-based company recently received an undisclosed amount of seed money after demoing at Y Combinator, the "boot camp for startups." (For better or worse, Carsabi apparently will also be featured on the new Bravo show, Silicon Valley.)

The site scrapes listing and image data from Craigslist (and other sites, like eBay Motors), adding "approximately 17,971 new listings per day." That translates to about 1.5TB of crawled data every 24 hours. The site aims to do for used car sales what’s been happening for years on AirBnB, Padmapper, and other sites that take online data and apply it to real-world, high-value objects and services. In just a few months of service, Carsabi seems poised to upend used car sales. (And, you can filter for only clean titles!)

As its co-founder, Dwight Crow, wrote in a March 2012 article for The Atlantic, "because most dealerships and classifieds are now online, Carsabi can crawl them directly and automatically, resulting in more than 1.8 million vehicles per month from the effort of two engineers and a few computers."

The site then compiles that data into a slickly-packaged format, resizes the images properly, adds information that I probably could look up on my own (factory-listed mileage for example), and then automatically performs a scatterplot distribution of how this price compares to other, live prices across the site. Crow says that the Amazon cloud services alone (he and his co-founder are unpaid as of yet) run about $4,000 per month.

Carsabi makes looking for used cars foolproof, with a clear "poor deal," "fair deal," or "good deal" across the top. That’s great for someone like me who has struggled to know what is or isn’t a good price in the past. Buying a used car becomes much more user-friendly.





What to buy

The first questions, obviously, are what kind of used car to buy, how much do we want to spend, and how long do we want to own it? I’ve owned two Toyota Corollas previously, and I have a trusted, independent, local garage that only does Toyotas and Volvos where I’d like to continue going. I have no less than three family members that own Priuses (two of those were bought new), and have driven those before, so those are worth a look. My wife and I (the only drivers) aren’t going to be doing all that much driving—I work at home (thanks, Ars!). So we’re looking primarily at Toyotas, but are open to other used car options under $15,000 with less than 100,000 miles. Hopefully, we’ll drive it for several years.

I previously thought the essential shorthand deciding factor in buying a car was its fuel efficiency (those gas prices aren’t getting cheaper anytime soon). Here in eco-conscious northern California, the Prius is one of the top hybrids. A 2005 Prius is listed at 48 mpg city and 45 mpg highway, while a 2005 Corolla is 28 and 37, respectively. So the Prius should obviously be better, right?

But after talking with Crow, what I’m now actually interested in is the "total cost of ownership." Those of you that are gearheads, economics nerds, or the super car-buying savvy probably already knew this. I didn’t. Turns out, that’s a tough figure to actually calculate (and it’s a feature that may come in a future upgrade on Carsabi, Crow says).

So I spent some time creating a big online spreadsheet (Google doc), using data from Carsabi, including average mileage per year (the government estimates 15,000 miles annually for my demographic—in reality it will probably be much less for us). I also assumed that gas will be $4.50 a gallon (right now, it’s closer to $4.25 here). When it comes to gas prices I’m a bit pessimistic.

What have I learned? That when it comes down to it, the premium paid for a used, high-mileage Prius is essentially lost when compared to a used, cheaper Corolla. I know I’m not the first one to figure this out, but it was surprising when I actually sat down and did the math.

Personal preference

"Generally, a Prius owner only needs to add gas, service the car regularly, and buy tires," says Model Garage’s website. I called them up to ask them to get a few more specifics, and checked in with one of their mechanics, Robert Perkins.

"The Prius shines in the short drives,” he said. “Maintenance over the life of it could possibly be less because it doesn't need brakes as much. The Corolla will need brake replacement."

That’s largely due to the Prius’ regenerative braking system, which is more cost efficient than a conventional braking system. In other words, a combined rear and front brake job, which a Corolla would need somewhere after 50,000 miles, would run about $700 at this particular garage. However, the Prius has a battery, which the Corolla doesn’t have. After all, as a hybrid car with a battery, it needs to be replaced at some point—and that ain’t cheap at around $3,000. In California, hybrid batteries are guaranteed for 10 years and 150,000 miles, but some people have reported that they last to 200,000 miles or longer.

"I would pick the one you like driving the best," Perkins concluded. "That's the bottom line. The one you can see out of, where the buttons and controls are. Sometimes the Prius is like a giant video game to drive with the screens and such. The Corolla just has a radio. The more simple the car, the less is going to happen to it, and the Corolla is simpler. The Prius is a driving computer. Bottom line: both those cars are good choices. Personally I lean towards the Corolla, but then again, I'm kind of old-fashioned."

The bottom line

So, which will we buy yet, and how will we buy it? I’m not quite sure.

I’m leaning towards the Prius, but the fact is that there just aren’t that many available. I’ve got Carsabi set to email me as soon as new nearby Priuses and Corollas under $15,000 and under 100,000 miles become available.

But, once I find one that I like, Dwight Crow gave me a few good tips to being ready to pull the trigger on buying a car.

1) Plot out a buying radius and locate "the most OCD garage you can find," one that you know and trust, and/or one that has lots and lots of good Yelp reviews.

2) Before meeting the seller, run the VIN on Carfax and find another if there are any red flags.

3) Once you find a listing that passes the smell test, call within 30 minutes if you can. Good deals will go fast.

4) Meet the seller, and drive around with them in the car for 15 minutes, and "gun it on the freeway." Make sure the car sounds right at all speeds.

5) Take it to the garage with the seller and get a 100-point inspection, and have the garage call both parties when done. You (buyer) should pay for the inspection.

6) Meet back at the garage and negotiate if the car is going to need service in a relatively short amount of time.

7) Close the deal. Everyone drives home happy!

Possible Carsabi upgrades?

Ultimately, I feel like I’ve been pointed towards the future of used car buying.

What Carsabi has done right, is make it easier for us normal folks to more easily understand larger data sets in a digestible, dataviz-friendly format. Sure, lots of that data was out there already; hardcore number geeks and auto nerds will have figured this out, but I think a lot of people will find Carsabi’s services useful.

I also found that once I had a better handle on real-world sales data, that I was hungry for more data. I created that spreadsheet and did my best to put in estimates to get a better sense of what these cars will cost over the longer term. And in my case, it yielded surprising results—the premium paid for Priuses is not a clear advantage. Crow himself even pointed me to his friends at Leaky.com, which gives real-time car insurance estimates. I’d love to see Carsabi integrate what I’ve done in spreadsheet form in a simpler and much better designed format. It would be great to take cars that I’ve saved from my search profiles and automatically populate estimated maintenance and insurance costs to get a more complete picture of the "true cost of ownership."

But of course, your mileage with Carsabi, as they say, will vary.