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2009 Toyota Prius

#181
popinfresh said:
Nice double sig :p

FWIW, you can't really blame the industry for the lack of development IMO. In Australia, when Ford Aus dropped their V8's completely for EFI inline sixes there was an uproar amoungst consumers because they couldn't get their big V8.
The American car industry, jeeze, imagine if Chev or Ford started heading to hybrids/electric many years ago.. Wouldn't have ended good for them.

These warning signs of global warming/enviromental disaster have been around for YEARS, did anyone care? No.

IMO YMMV etc etc

Edit: Wasn't neccesarily refering to your post Mike, just this discussion in general.
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+1 to pretty much all of this. What happens is during the sales push for product "A" with a V-8, the company spends a lot of money and time selling the engine's attributes to the consumer. Car magazines do the same as a large engine with good numbers makes for a good read. Perfomance is what sells those publications.

So when company develops product "B" with an inline 6 (not a bad engine configuration), they have to sell it to a public that they spent years extolling the virtues of the V-8 to. No dice if your V-8 sales pitch did its job.

Mike (just once this time)

EDIT: Ford had been slowing pushing their turbo program for over a year. I think it's called Eco-boost? Anyway, the idea is to replace some of their larger engines with smaller, turbocharged, poweplants. They advertise the fuel savings as 15-20%, I'm betting it's less....and pointless if it is. Most of the turbo engines I'm familiar with require premium. We'll see if the project gets pushed into completion and if the public buys it.
 
#182
hbarcat said:
It appears as if the Toyota has some significant problems with the Drive-by-wire throttle control and the computer controlled HSD transaxle technology. Like I posted above, this is complex technology and it will take a few years to work out the glitches. In the meantime, a certain percentage of Prius owners will be stuck with cars they hate.


But don't they say that the pioneers take the arrows? :D
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I hate to see it, but that was a concern of mine and part of the reason I didn't go with a Prius. I put about 30,000 miles per year on my car.

When I bought new in '06, the goal was to keep it for the duration of the note or longer. Meaning I'd have at least 150,000 miles before I bought again. At the time, there just weren't enough long term reviews on the Prius and the battery life was still in question.

Mike
 
#183
hbarcat said:
It appears as if the Toyota has some significant problems with the Drive-by-wire throttle control and the computer controlled HSD transaxle technology. Like I posted above, this is complex technology and it will take a few years to work out the glitches. In the meantime, a certain percentage of Prius owners will be stuck with cars they hate.


But don't they say that the pioneers take the arrows? :D
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Honda has very conspicuously and very publically stuck with their much simpler hybrid technology compared to the Prius. The new Insight has the same type of "first generation" hybrid as the older first gen Prius, Insight, Ford Escape Hybrid, etc. That's a big reason that it's so much less expensive than the Prius. They think that Toyota is moving in the wrong direction with their current "Synergy" hybrid system.

Do some googling you'll find some interesting articles on the subject. Apparently the Toyota system is substantially more complex for almost no gain in real world driving.
 
#184
mike_v_s said:
EDIT: Ford had been slowing pushing their turbo program for over a year. I think it's called Eco-boost? Anyway, the idea is to replace some of their larger engines with smaller, turbocharged, poweplants. They advertise the fuel savings as 15-20%, I'm betting it's less....and pointless if it is. Most of the turbo engines I'm familiar with require premium. We'll see if the project gets pushed into completion and if the public buys it.
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My wife's car has a supercharger and it requires premium, but it gets OUTSTANDING gas mileage.
 
#185
To me the Prius buyers are getting burned, but its a good thing - they are funding the next generation of hybrid cars, which will eventually become standard. I salute them in the same way i salute those guys going out to buy the really expensive computer hardware being produced all the time. They get the "best computer" for a while, and because they do, the parts eventually become affordable for the rest of us.

Diesel engines are innately more efficient than petrol engines because no spark plugs are needed and the fuel combusts spontaneously. With cleaner diesel now being available petrol-hybrids are going to take a beating. Perhaps replacing the batteries with supercapacitors will be the next step in erking out that last bit of fuel efficiency.

Or perhaps even a diesel hybrid?
 
#186
Philbiker said:
My wife's car has a supercharger and it requires premium, but it gets OUTSTANDING gas mileage.
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Let me guess. Mini Cooper, one of the Chevrolet Eco-Tec 4's or the older Mazda Millenia?

I'd love to be wrong about Ford's plan, but I think that when compared to the engines they will be replacing and taking into account the probable horsepower bump they will get in an effort to "sell" the new engine, plus the likely premium requirement, the Eco-Boost program won't be the success they hope.

I think it's a good idea, I just don't predict it's potential being realized by either the company or the public.

If it were me? I'd start by dropping one of those engines in a mid level Mustang as sort of a GT-lite (mid 80's SVO anyone?). That way you can sell the performance and still push the mpg advantage. Putting it in the "flagship" puts the engine in an undeniable place for the company and will no doubt bring a lot of talk you don't have to pay for. Packaged correctly, and that Mustang could be a decent draw for the import crowd that likes to tweek such things.

Watering the engine line into the Taurus and SUV lines shortly thereafter in a similar capacity would be the next step. If (guessing) 50% of your Taurus buyers go for the mid level SES, put the EcoBoost in that car, standard.

As it sits, Ford has positioned the Eco-Boost as the top engine option (on the Taurus SHO) and I think that's a bad idea for two reasons. It puts them in the position of having to make it a performer, possibly reducing the mpg advantage, and it places the engines in the segment of a model line that doen't sell nearly as well as the base/mid lines do.

Why make a "Eco" engine and then sell it as the performance option?

Mike
 
#187
Visirale said:
Not dissing you, but the Prius is a horrible attempt at a solution to the current problems we're having. It's an alright car on it's own right, but a lot of the owners are completely self-righteous about it and think the Prius is the savior to our nation.
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and they drive slow, impeding the path of others. :hiding:
 
#189
mike_v_s said:
Ford had been slowing pushing their turbo program for over a year. I think it's called Eco-boost? Anyway, the idea is to replace some of their larger engines with smaller, turbocharged, poweplants. They advertise the fuel savings as 15-20%, I'm betting it's less....and pointless if it is. Most of the turbo engines I'm familiar with require premium. We'll see if the project gets pushed into completion and if the public buys it.
Click to expand...



My opinion is just the opposite. Turbocharging is a well developed technology that can easily provide a 15-20% fuel savings (or free power increase - which amounts to the same thing).

The reason it hasn't been utilized so well up until now is turbos are almost always an afterthought. They stick one on an engine that is designed to run without one and when used on such an engine higher octane fuel is required to simply make it work without breaking engine components. Also, the fuel/spark map has to be modified for the same reason. The timing is ******** and the fuel enriched to prevent detonation and these two things negate much of the benefits of the turbo.

It's really quite simple to design an engine with a lower compression ratio that will take advantage of high boost turbos so that a more aggressive fuel/spark map can be utilized and you can have all the power and efficiency advantages of the turbo and still use cheap gas. The reason they don't: IMO, traditional engines make more power by increasing the compression ratio and this type of thinking is still too pervasive among automotive engineers. They seem to think that it's taboo to design an engine with lower than 8:1 compression, but turbocharged engines for typical public use should probably have ratios around 7:1 or lower.
 
#190
Diesels are certainly great on mileage but they have an inherent problem with particulate emissions (soot). Replacing the bulk of commuter traffic in any city with diesel powered vehicles means you are creating a permanent haze over the city and guaranteeing chronic health problems for many of the residents. This is a problem that can't be solved by the normal advancements in pollution reduction technology. Diesel engines will always be at a disadvantage to gas (or alcohol) with particulate emissions.


Turbo diesels are particularly suited to long trips on rural highways, though. Outstanding fuel economy and away from the high traffic of the city, soot emissions are washed out of the air by nature before they can accumulate to harmful levels
 
#192
hbarcat said:
My opinion is just the opposite. Turbocharging is a well developed technology that can easily provide a 15-20% fuel savings (or free power increase - which amounts to the same thing).

The reason it hasn't been utilized so well up until now is turbos are almost always an afterthought. They stick one on an engine that is designed to run without one and when used on such an engine higher octane fuel is required to simply make it work without breaking engine components. Also, the fuel/spark map has to be modified for the same reason. The timing is ******** and the fuel enriched to prevent detonation and these two things negate much of the benefits of the turbo.

It's really quite simple to design an engine with a lower compression ratio that will take advantage of high boost turbos so that a more aggressive fuel/spark map can be utilized and you can have all the power and efficiency advantages of the turbo and still use cheap gas. The reason they don't: IMO, traditional engines make more power by increasing the compression ratio and this type of thinking is still too pervasive among automotive engineers. They seem to think that it's taboo to design an engine with lower than 8:1 compression, but turbocharged engines for typical public use should probably have ratios around 7:1 or lower.
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Sorry. I must not have been clear. I agree with you. I like the idea....I'm just afraid Ford's approach might not realize the program's capability.

Mike
 
#197
john turner said:
lol

who among this thread's posters has actually -driven- a prius?
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I haven't, but I think that hardly disqualifies someone from commenting on the car's place in the market and industry.

As far as the "slow" comments on the car, I believe that's more a factor of the driver than the car. The Prius performance numbers are on par with a lot of cars on the road. If you're stuck behind someone slow in a Prius, there's no mechanical cause for that.

Mike
 
#198
mike_v_s said:
I haven't, but I think that hardly disqualifies someone from commenting on the car's place in the market and industry.

As far as the "slow" comments on the car, I believe that's more a factor of the driver than the car. The Prius performance numbers are on par with a lot of cars on the road. If you're stuck behind someone slow in a Prius, there's no mechanical cause for that.

Mike
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i'm just wondering, there's a lot of folks offering opinions about the vehicle that have no experience with em.

i own one, for the past 3 years. when they're "opinions" contradict my experience, i'm going to be skeptical of the source of this opinion. not saying all prius owners are going to agree, but if someone's talking about how the vehicle performs, and they've never even driven one, well... :eyebrow:
 
#200
hover said:
Alot of people, most certainly many who also drive hybrids are into this "hypermiling" mindset. Not a bad thing, but surely aggrivating at times.
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That 'hypermiling' is looking better and better to me as gas prices rise again, though I doubt I'll dive fully into it. There certainly are some easy wasys to add mpg's though, and the simplest is to drop speed. I do the posted speed limit, and a little less on multi-lane hiways. It is aggravating to get up 15 minutes earlier so I can get to work without speeding, but I have to say, I clench my jaw less, use 'colorful language' less and have fewer headaches. LOL!

I suspect that the folks who are so exceedingly eager to get past me are probably already not having a good day before they manage to crowd my bumper.
 

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