> A driver not employing such techniques still can expect fuel economy as high as 4.06 L per 100 km from the latest generation of Prius models. I think they meant "as low as".
That's high fuel economy, but low fuel consumption.
The Toyota Prius transformed the auto industry
221–230 of 292 posts
Re: The Toyota Prius transformed the auto industry
#222I needed a new car in 2015. A difficult decision for me, since basically every manufacturer sells cars that have four wheels and an engine, and I wasn't sure what I wanted / needed beyond that.
A friend had bought a used Prius and loved it, so I did some research and decided it would be a good choice. Thus I ended up with a car that has four wheels and two engines.
(It only has around 48K miles, have replaced brakes once and regular battery twice, otherwise no problems. And routinely get at least 40mpg.)
Re: The Toyota Prius transformed the auto industry
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's fine to demand more from a car, but to most of us it has to move us from point a to b.
I honestly never quite understood this perspective or why it's so popular... in general I try to always find ways to do normal life things a little weird, or make it a little more challenging, fun, and memorable- and try to break up the routine drudgery. Even just getting groceries can be a fun adventure with my kid if we put the top down on the Porsche, play some music we love, and maybe go to a weird store that tar…
A significant chunk of the crowd here is very anti-car (to varying degrees), so I wouldn’t expect much sympathy if you’re the type of person that enjoys driving. I’d cut your losses in trying to argue your point…and go enjoy driving your car!
As somewhat of an old timer (turning 43), I remember the techie population seemed to overlap a lot with the car enthusiast population a long time ago. Nearly everyone at my first job (small startup) was a car nerd. A lot of engineering and tech goes into cars after all.
Somewhere along the way a lot of techies became very anti-car.
Re: The Toyota Prius transformed the auto industry
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I’d say “not a gearbox”. A gearbox to me is something where there are actual gears engaging and disengaging leading to wear and tear. Doesn’t matter what kind of fancy electronics are then used to hide the mechanical operation from me. A mechanical CVT with belts and pulleys with changing diameters is even worse. What the hybrids (e-CVT ones) have though is basically a planetary gear set, where the gears are pu…
To me the key element is that it can run different transmission ratios: wether that's in discrete steps or a continuous ramp, that's an implementation detail. BEV (most of them) don't have that, the Prius has. When I read GP post my (surprised) impression from the "no gearbox" claim was that the Prius started as a serial hybrid. (it did not)
Is THS actually capable of varying transmission ratio? I thought it can modulate resistance but not actually change gear ratio.
Re: The Toyota Prius transformed the auto industry
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problems with the Prius are basically: - Terrible in snow and ice - No way to defrost your windshield, unless you're already driving - Poor rear window visibility If not for those things it would be great, but unfortunately they've made zero progress on fixing any of the core issues for the last 25 years. The new models definitely do look cooler, and I appreciate that they accelerate faster, but I personally care…
> Terrible in snow and ice New Englander here. I've owned two Priuses (2004 and 2010) and both have been surprisingly able to handle winter weather quite well. Not as good as my Outback, but in light to medium conditions and driven by an experienced winter driver they performed admirably. The older one made it through a major blizzard in rural road and interstate driving across 4 states, albeit at a reduced rate of s…
Next Forester Hybrid will get hybrid technology from Toyota:
https://www.motor1.com/news/696979/subaru-forester-hybrid-to...
Re: The Toyota Prius transformed the auto industry
#226I sometimes chuckle that most of the cool Lexuses are now Priuses under the hood! But that’s a good thing. I own a Toyota Corolla hybrid myself, and hybrids are one of those things that I can say I’ve completely changed my mind about. I used to dislike the idea of hybrids, because I assumed that the overall system complexity must be higher than either an ICE, or an EV. And I’m a sucker for simple systems, so I though…
>I’m at a point where if I’m looking for a car that uses fuel, it’s only cars that use the Toyota hybrid tech (or similar) that I’m looking at. At the moment it’s just Toyota, Lexus, most Ford hybrids (but not all). Don't forget the Mazda CX-50 Hybrid that was just released. Using the Toyota Hybrid from the RAV4 with the elegance and beauty of Mazda design.
The non-hybrid version of the CX-50 is rated for quite good fuel economy. I encourage you to do the math on your own and check my results: it is unlikely that a buyer would ever save money by getting the hybrid option considering that they will likely keep it for no more than 7 years and that the non-hybrid will have larger discounts than the hybrid.
Re: The Toyota Prius transformed the auto industry
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
I honestly never quite understood this perspective or why it's so popular... in general I try to always find ways to do normal life things a little weird, or make it a little more challenging, fun, and memorable- and try to break up the routine drudgery. Even just getting groceries can be a fun adventure with my kid if we put the top down on the Porsche, play some music we love, and maybe go to a weird store that tar…
A significant chunk of the crowd here is very anti-car (to varying degrees), so I wouldn’t expect much sympathy if you’re the type of person that enjoys driving. I’d cut your losses in trying to argue your point…and go enjoy driving your car! As somewhat of an old timer (turning 43), I remember the techie population seemed to overlap a lot with the car enthusiast population a long time ago. Nearly everyone at my firs…
Cars have a lot of unpriced externalities. I see them as a necessary evil. I'd rather future generations had less pollution and more natural resources to enjoy.
There are plenty of other things to tinker with.
Re: The Toyota Prius transformed the auto industry
#228Re: The Toyota Prius transformed the auto industry
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if you have another kid and a wife? At a certain level of utility/space, cars just stop being that fun. Well, until you get to the vans, those are fun in their own weird way.
I do have a wife, not planning on more kids. I'm a bit of a car nerd and have a bunch of older cars I maintain myself- including several that fit the whole family- all of them together costing less than a newer economy car. There are plenty of large cars that are still fun to drive. A Porsche Cayenne/VW Touareg/Audi Q7 can tow as much as a full sized truck, seat 5 in comfort, offroad as well as almost anything, and p…
I tow with my mk4 tdi all the time, it’s incredibly handy. A lot of towing is bulky stuff that’s not necessarily heavy. There’s still a time and place for a truck, or a full-size truck, but not for everyone.
Re: The Toyota Prius transformed the auto industry
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a challenge, but a plea: where's your source(s) for this? I'm about where you were, but would love to know more about the internals so I can make an informed choice when my current (ICE) car dies.
The wikipedia page is quite in depth [0] but is quite dense and took me a few goes to understand. They're fascinating to understand, and they really are mechanically simpler than a standard ICE + gearbox drive line. I got nerd sniped one day figuring out how my Toyota Crown "gearbox" worked only to discover it doesn't really have one. They don't even have a real neutral gear, the wheels are always mechanically linked…
The way I think of it comes from the old ME degree I got. You can analyze assemblies by the number of degrees of freedom. Three degrees of freedom, like three linkages pinned at the corners is a triangle and the relative positions of each element are fixed.
Four axis, like a square pinned at the corners if you know the relative position of two elements you know the position of the others. This is the basis for most traditional machines.
Five axis is floppy. And usually avoided traditionally.
The synergy drive is a five axis machine mechanically. But has two electric motor generators. By varying the speed of the motors you can control the gear ratio of the mechanical path. Since the motor speeds are indignantly variable so is the mechanical path. You end up with continuously variable transmission with a mechanical power path and an electric one in parallel. And it doesn't suck like pure mechanical ones.
Totally genius.