Turds Day Rap Up

[howeird]

Busybusy at work today. Bad busy. Three customers are installing various things which connect to our servers, which I've never dealt with before, and neither have any of the other support guys. So I've had two engineers playing tag team at my desk showing me how it works, and discovering that it doesn't always, because there has been no QA outside of the engineers who wrote the code.

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After work, went to Toyota of Sunnyvale's presentation on hybrid cars. Interesting stuff once the two marketing dweebs sat down and let the techie do his presentation. Tech guy really knew his stuff, was articulate, a very good presenter. Only gripe is they had the screen too low, so those of us in the back had to stand to see his slides.

There were sandwiches and water/pop and cookies. It was a full house, maybe 100 people. After the talk we got to look up close at the various hybrid models - Camry, Highlander and Prius. No mileage stickers and no price tags. I went out in the lot afterwards and saw why - $30k for a Prius, more for the other models. Compared to $17k for a Corolla. Let's do the math. The Prius on a good day gets 45mpg, my Corolla 30 mpg. At $3.50/gal, 20,000 miles per year, that's $2,300 a year on the Corolla, $1,555 on the Prius. A whopping savings of $745/year. My Corolla is paid off, which makes this a no brainer financially.

But for the sake of argument, say I was driving a $17k Corolla vs the basic $30k Prius. $13,000 diff would take me 17.4 years to make up in fuel costs.

I don't think so.

Comments

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

I do drive the car around the city for real short runs, and actually that is what drives down my mileage. I don't drive the car long enough for the engine to heat up, so I don't get as much use of the electric engine bit. *sigh*

The people getting the Great Mileage have commutes of about 20 miles. That is long enough for the car to really get into its electric/gas what is best for the situation mode.

But I adore that when I'm stuck in traffic, the car shuts down, creeps in electric mode and doesn't pollute the galaxy.

We figure on a sorta full tank of gas, we could have made it out of Houston or New Orleans in the evacuations with the A/C running and never run out of gas. Just crept along on electric with the gas engine charging the electric, getting 50-70 mpg until we got free of the zoo. And the air behind us would be breathable! We know a bunch of gas only cars weren't able to do that, we saw them on tv.

But the article you picked is one of the ones that makes Prius Owners blood boil. They have So Many Facts Wrong, that it is truly Maddening.

First, the Price of the Car. My Prius is closer to the Camry than the smaller cars. And the price difference is actually just a few $K. In that article you quoted. They compare the Price of a Civic to a Prius, not a Civic to a Civic Hybrid. There is only about $4K difference between the two Civic Models. They love comparing the Prius to a cheap car and then saying, See how expensive it is? OK, Lets compare a Mercedes to Civic. Gee the MB doesn't make sense does it? May be we should all get Civics, MBs are way over priced. The Camry Hybrid will be about $4k more than a similarly equipped Camry Gas engine, last I heard. But bet you they'll tell you how the Camry Hybrid compares to the Corolla. Amazing how you can make things look Real Bad.

So lets see - Car costs $4K more. I get $2500 savings in Gas. Higher Resale Value, like I'm ever going to sell it. After ten years, it will be worth it. So Cost is Not the Issue.

And Toyota has already made it very plain that their interest in Hybrids is not a Fly by Night, we won't really do anything with the Technology, to be abandon real soon now interest either. Synergy Engine IV (Yes, there have already been 3 hybrid engines, America has only seen two of them, the first was only sold in Japan), is even better with Lithium Ion Batteries (Mine in Engine III are NiMH) and so a more powerful Electric Motor. Able to keep the car in all electric mode at a higher speed and for a longer distance.

And they now have 4 models with Hybrid Engines. Three models are hybrid engines in standard body styles. And they will have more when they can get the engine parts.

And so far, I know of 3 battery pack failures (all in 2000 and 2001 cars with NiCad batteries) and they were replaced for FREE. Toyota takes them back to Engineering who tears them apart to figure out why they failed so that the next round of batteries will last even longer. They are really supporting the Engine Design.

The article is really not very factual. Probably written by a hack from Detroit, who thinks anything other than a sherman tank getting 10 mpg (read suv) is just a fad. They wish. "Pay no attention to the Japanese who are actually making good high mileage engines in affordable cars now. Those aren't the gas guzzlers you're looking for. Move along..."

[howeird]

Wow. I didn't think I was starting a religious war. :-)

I don't drive the car long enough for the engine to heat up, so I don't get as much use of the electric engine bit.
I think you have that backwards. The less you drive the more you should be on electric. It's the gas engine which needs to heat up to run efficiently.

They have So Many Facts Wrong, that it is truly Maddening
The article's technical points are almost exactly what I heard from the Toyota techie.

And Toyota has already made it very plain that their interest in Hybrids is not a Fly by Night
Then why have they increased the gasoline engine size each successive model year? And why not hybridize the Corolla, their largest selling model?

Your last line tells me you did not actually read the article.