'09 Prius - 94mpg?

[wikked]

:wow

http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/daily-news/080429-2009-Prius-May-Reach-94-MPG/

[84hurst]

holy sh*t! If it's true, they'll sell a ton of 'em!

[Flicktitty]

why do they have to make them so fuggin ugly?

[slickwilly]

They've been saying stuff like that for years. I'll believe it when it actually gets released and somebody tests it.

[Car Guy]

Well if that's ends up being an accurate estimate I'm seriously impressed...!!!

I get people asking me all the time if hybrids are the way to go. I'll respond with "not really" at this point in time because of a few factors. One more thing I'll mention is to wait a few years until they get close to 100 miles a gallon, then they'd be worth it.....

Looks like that will be here sooner rather than later, and I wasn't expecting it this soon to be honest. Toyota FTW...!!!






:3gears: :3gears: :3gears:

[Al]

94 MPG when you charge the over-sized battery at home. This is reduced as you return to a normal charge level.

[pOrk]

94 mpg and 4000 dollar electric bill

[HY35F2T]

94 mpg and 4000 dollar electric bill

plug into the neibhors outlet lol.

[Smokey1226]

plug into the neibhors outlet lol.

WINNAR!

[That_Guy]

nothing says save the earth like a couple 100lbs of nickel cadmium batteries.

[Prince Valiant]

why do they have to make them so fuggin ugly?
Form following function with no compromises.

94 mpg and 4000 dollar electric bill
electricity is a much less expensive way to power a car on a per mile basis...your electric bill would probably go up only about 1-2 dollars a day if you drive ~ 40 miles/day.

I would still think the best thing would be to offer a non-hybrid version of this car...with say a fairly decently strong 2.0 and a manumatic or CVT type transmission. The battery alone runs 5-6G, not counting the generator/motor. With the aerodynamic and relatively light weight, it could probably pull down mid 40's-50mpg and come in for under 22G total cost.

94mpg is only 2 mpg less than my 17 mile city PR of 96mpg while hypermiling.

[BAD LS1]

Sounds like an "almost" EV1... remember how that went?

[Smokey1226]

nothing says save the earth like a couple 100lbs of nickel cadmium batteries.

ROFL, the irony of that statment is amazing!:banana1:

[Al]

nothing says save the earth like a couple 100lbs of nickel cadmium batteries.

Modern production of NiCd batteries is a very clean process. You are probably thinking about that report from Canada which is about 30 years old.


94 mpg and 4000 dollar electric bill

Yeah, but it probably saved you 16000 dollars in fuel.

[Windsors 03 Cobra]

Sounds like an "almost" EV1... remember how that went?

No, do tell ?

As far as batteries being bad for the environment, Who cares and whats not bad for the enviroment ?
Batteries are easily recycled, let the pollution free one cast the first stone. :rolf

[BAD LS1]

No, do tell ?

As far as batteries being bad for the environment, Who cares and whats not bad for the enviroment ?
Batteries are easily recycled, let the pollution free one cast the first stone. :rolf

Check out the movie "who killed the electric car" sometime.

It's pretty much the life story on that Gm "saturn" EV1

That went from these little all electric things u might remember from the mid 90's. They actually were a sucess and worked great so the story goes, too good ifact lol.
http://www.carsareevil.com/images/gm_ev1.jpg

To this. All but like 4.

http://i.treehugger.com/files/th_images/crushed-ev1-01.jpg

Pretty much california (C.A.R.B.) and automakers agreed to ban any electric vehicle made by a large mfgr and used on the street. These things were all leases, GM collected them all, EV S10's and others and crushed them.

[Windsors 03 Cobra]

AH AH Ok I thought you were going to say they were a huge failure.
I need to see that movie, but from what I have read on the internets most were very happy with those cars and like you said "they were too good".

[pw_cc_runner]

there is still one in the Peterson Automotive Museum in L.A. I was just there but didn't take a picture of it. But I got a picture of Mator!

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/pw_cc_runner/DSC05383.jpg

[BAD LS1]

AH AH Ok I thought you were going to say they were a huge failure.
I need to see that movie, but from what I have read on the internets most were very happy with those cars and like you said "they were too good".

yeah people owned them up till like 05'-06' GM practically had to pry them out of their hands and threaten legal bullshit etc.. Thats nearly 10 years those things were on the road and no real issues to speak of. Apparently they had good ranges, half way decent performance for what it was and CA built a bunch of charging stations all around the state for any EV.

The movie blames alot of different things for the idea dying...

[Windsors 03 Cobra]

HaHa GM lightly deconstructed some EV1's and donated them (some claim 40 cars) to schools and other institutions where people where able to get their hands on them and made EV1's work again, against GM's wishes, even UW-Madison has one.

Videos all over youtube of survivor EV1's. :rolf

[Prince Valiant]

ah, c'mon guys...that movie is mad in the same vane as any of micheal moore's movies...get MY point across, facts be damned.



1. Rumor: There were 5,000 people who wanted an EV1, but GM wouldn't let them buy it.

Fact: There were 5,000 people who expressed interest in an EV1, but when GM called them back and explained that the car cost $299-524 plus a month to lease, went between 60 and 80 miles on a full charge, and took between 45 minutes and 15 hours to re-charge, very few would commit to leasing one (not too surprising, is it?). The film likes to quote a figure of 29 miles as the average American's daily driving needs, but that is a national figure and the EV1 was only sold in California and Arizona, primarily in Los Angeles. Anyone wanna guess what the average L.A. resident's daily driving need is? I'm betting it's higher than that national average.

As a comparison I actually ran the numbers on a 1997 EV1 against a 1997 Volkswagen Jetta Turbodiesel based on electricity and fuel charges at the time. Between lease charges and fuel/electricity charges, the EV1 cost at least $500 more a year to operate than the Jetta, and the Jetta could hold over twice as many people (five versus two), 50 percent more cargo (15 cubic feet versus 10) and would go almost 600 miles on a tank of fuel versus 60 miles on a charge. And when the Jetta did need filled it took 10 minutes -- not 45 minutes for a partial re-charge and 15 hours for a full re-charge. Ask me again why the electric car died.

2. Rumor: The California Air Resources Board (CARB) originally required automakers to produce electric vehicles, but political pressure from the automakers and oil companies forced them to abandon this law.

Fact: Actually, CARB simply wanted the automakers to produce zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) and, in 1990, the only way to accomplish that was with electric vehicles. But in the past 15 years computer processing and fuel injection technology has allowed internal combustion engines to burn so cleanly that they are the equivelant of ZEVs (such as the Toyota Prius). Actually, some might argue gasoline-powered ZEV's are better than electric vehicles because they don't have to be charged by an electric power station, most of which have coal stacks that spew far more pollution than ZEV exhaust pipes. As an example, the average 1965 automobile emitted 2,000 pounds of hydrocarbons over 100,000 miles. Modern ZEVs (that still run on gasoline!) emit two pounds of hydrocarbons over 100,000 miles. Read more about ZEVs here. If you need further proof that the modern internal combustion engine has come a long way, consider the air quality in Los Angeles in 2006 versus 1976 -- despite having far more cars operating in the city today. And this air quality improvement came even with the death of the electric car!

3. Rumor: Many EV1 drivers and fans wanted to purchase their EV1 when the lease ended and GM killed the program, but GM crushed the cars instead to keep people from discovering how great they were.

Fact: All U.S. automakers are required to provide parts and service on a vehicle for a given number of years after it is produced. To support the 1,000 EV1s GM had made would have cost the company a lot of money because of its advanced technology and totally unique nature (it shared almost no parts with other GM products). This is not the case with, for instance, Toyota's electric RAV4, which shares the majority of its parts with regular RAV4s. I'm sure GM also worried about the potential for lawsuits if owners bought the cars and started modifying them (something that surely would have happened -- look at what's already happening with the Prius). "But Karl, these EV1 fans were willing to sign waivers against future liabilities if they could buy the cars." Waivers are great in theory, but any lawyer knows there is always a path around them -- especially if the payoff is big enough (which will always be the case when GM is the defendant).

4. Rumor: GM purposely made the EV1 perform poorly so that it could never succeed.

Fact: Before I define how "good" or "bad" the EV1 was let me first say that GM was given plenty of funding from the government to develop this car. They can cry about spending over a billion dollars, but much of that cost was covered by your and my tax money. That said, if GM was trying to make the EV1 fail, they did a poor job of it. The company tried to offer a vehicle that had every modern creature comfort (air conditioning, power windows, high quality audio system) and they offered free roadside assistance. They also developed a second-generation EV1 that used nickel-metal hydride batteries to get far better range on a charge (though these batteries were even more expensive, and hard to keep cool). They could have sabotaged the EV1 much more effectively by offering no creature comforts and no roadside assistance and spotty dealer training, yet most EV1 customers were thrilled with GM's support of the car. However, the company knew the vehicle would never offer the combination of utility and functionality demanded by 99 percent of U.S. consumers, and they knew it was a money loser for that other one percent. GM's biggest mistake was letting the R&D (largely funded by the government) from the EV1 program go to waste by not immediately transitioning it into hybrid drivetrain development. The film touches on this mis-step by GM, and it's the one point I completely agree with.

The thing is, it's not the car that the movie made it out to be...when they went to niHD batteries to increase range, they ended up losing range due to the fact they needed to divert electricity to cooling the battery packs. The range of 120 miles was only in lab testing...typical range was 40-70 miles in temperate (neither hot nor cold) conditions. In cold weather, the range could fall as low as 12 miles total.

The movie made claims of easy maintenance, however, it wasn't...GM essentially had to absorb the cost, and the prospects of continueing to do so was cost prohibitive.

The movie also neglects the fact that battery technology then was poor by todays standards, which is suspect even now. Many battery packs were failing after only 6 months, and they weren't cheap to continue to reproduce.

Personally, I think the car would have been good to keep on not as an electric car, but as a small gas powered car....the 0.19 cd would have given it incredible mileage.

[Karps TA]

I never know how to feel about cars like this. Cause I certainly do not want to live in a world full of cars that look like that. Hopefully the Volt will make a splash and atleast show car makers that you can make a hybrid/electric car AND actually make it look decent.

[ND4SPD]

Need to read a little closer guys...


America's Combined rating for the 2010 Prius will lift up to the 50-55 mpg mark

Not quite 94MPG... but still nothing to sneeze at.

[Rocket Power]

I got a Prius down to 9mpg:rolf.

[ND4SPD]

I got a Prius down to 9mpg:rolf.

LOL! NICE! :thumbsup