;)

[Spoon]

ok, any questions/comments that show up in this post have NOT been searched for. The reason for this is that I don't just want to read what someone else had to say about it. I want to be part of the discussion.
Like I daid before, I don't currently have a Prius. I am thinking about getting one, so I am coming to places like this and doing some research to form an opinion.
Has anyone seen the review by Top Gear on youtube? (Here it is) The guy bashes the Prius. At the end he mentions some sort of VW. Didn't really catch the name of it. I'm pretty sure it's not a VW we have here in the States. Anyway, he clamied that the VW got 60+ mpg on its deisel engine. Which, I don't doubt but, it make me think. Has anyone tried to but a deisel in a prius, or anyother alternative fuels? From what I've seen the Prius is the best hybrid out there that the average working family can buy. It can be made better though, for not a lot of money. So, why isn't anyone out there doing it? I know there is the total EV conversion but I'm looking form some improvements on the hybrid idea.
Has anyone ever tried to do anything with cooling fans and/or heat sinks, cooling systems? Now, I don't know all that much about the inner workings of the Prius but I do know that it seems to have some big a$$ batteries and an electric motor that probably gets pretty hot.

[catgic]

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[skandale]

First, Jeremy Clarkson poo-poos most normal cars...
Of course, when you get to try all Ferraris and such, the Prius IS quite a bore...

The VW he mentions is the VW Polo BlueMotion. It is a tiny car (smaller than Golf/Rabbit), so it cannot really be compared to the Prius. Many small cars can get great FE, but the Prius combines similar FE with a normal, family sized car.

Some people here in Norway says that the Smart ForTwo has lower emissions than the Prius, but the Smart is a 2-seater with cargo space for a toothbrush and a MasterCard!

People who don't like the Prius seems to love to compare apples and oranges.


Stein

[mcevedy]

Agree about Jeremy - all is black or white - very little grey, but this is what makes the show fun!
The VW Polo Bluemotion is a supermini , so a fair bit smaller. To achieve the CO2 readings to make it 'better ' than the Prius, VW have stripped it out including removing A/C. With A/C, it scores worse than the Prius. It is however a perfectly reasonable answer to the same question that the Prius answers, just from another angle. I have just changed from a small auto diesel - a Mercedes A170 CDi LWB, which was a great design, but nothing like the build quality of my Prius. It also didn't do the same mileage, is noisier and had less toys! I did like the size though, and the space.

[KD6HDX]

Look Brah, Prius no ka oi.

None bettah...

Battery get hot, but not hot enough for huli huli chicken.

All da BLALAS know dat...

Prius with traction control probably not good for sandy roads and beaches, slip too much for off road travel on dirt roads and hills.

Ask someone on da rock that owns one.

I've been to Kauai, snorkled Lehua rock. We can't wait to go back someday and kayak the Napali coast.

Late

[ZA_Andy]

I'm a great fan of Top Gear - it's good, entertaining TV and Clarkson's journalistic wit adds a considerable flavor to it. Sadly that doesn't mean it's FAIR and unbiased journalism, nor necessarily all that accurate.

He says, for example, that the Prius is slow, with a 0-60 time of 13 seconds. Actually 0-60 is 10 seconds, and while it's no Ferrari, it's as good, or better than most similarly sized family cars - including the small diesels that Clarkson typically recommends. Thus if the Prius is worthy of condemnation for it's performance, it is in very good company.

He also says he got 45mpg out of it in his commute and wasn't driving particularly hard. I find that hard to understand, since that's imperial (meaning it equates to little better than 35 mpg (US). There are a few here who report similarly poor fuel efficiency, but most get notably better than that. Mine returns just over 56mpg (which is around 70 imperial).

It must be said though that in many respects he's right. For someone used to the build quality of cars costing 3, 4 5 or even 10 times the price of a Prius (and which Clarkson tends to like), build quality is poor. Comparing it to other vehciles in the same sort of price range is a different matter of course, but doesn't make for good TV. Also, since fuel prices in the UK have been significantly higher than in the US for many, many years, while we were happy here to buy vehicles capable of little better than 12 or 20 mpg and never much thought about the cost of a tankful of gas and how often we had to stop to fill up, much of the rest of the world were very concerned with fuel efficiency and thus developed dozens of vehicles, such as the VW Lupo Clarkson refers to, which were typically small(ish) but got great milage. Of course most of these weren't ever sold in the US because we were far too hooked into SUVs and land-yachts by marketing hype.

The result is that in a very real sense, the Prius is not a remarkable vehicle in the UK since it sits within a category of cars which get similar fuel efficiency. Here there is very little to compete with it at the present time, since we are really only beginning our awareness of fuel efficiency - basically 20 years or so behind Europe.

[Spoon]

Good point about the diesel. I don't have a prius so the frequency of the engine starting and stopping wasn't taken into consideration.
Next topic, the 1.5L ICE. It seems a bit underpowered. I read that it puts out 76hp. What is the reason behind that? To keep emisions low? Does it have something to do with how it works with the electric motor? Is it's power just understated for some reason? There are plenty of other cars out there with a 1.5L/1.6L that puts out 100+hp from the factory. There are plenty of tuners out there that push them well past 100hp and they can go much further with forced induction. The prius doesn't look like it has much room to add a turbo or super charger though. I know a guy that had a Del Sol with a supercharged 1.3L and got 50.1 mpg under normal driving situations (meaning when he wasn't on the race track).
I haven't seen any CAI on any sites that carry aftermarjet parts for the Prius. Has anyone made one for their car? If not, is there a reason that no one has?
Does Toyota use this engine in any of the other cars?
Would the charging system benefit at all if some solar panels where integrated?

[catgic]

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[Godiva]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Spoon @ Aug 7 2007, 12:58 AM) [snapback]491730[/snapback]</div>

Next topic, the 1.5L ICE. It seems a bit underpowered. I read that it puts out 76hp. What is the reason behind that? To keep emisions low? Does it have something to do with how it works with the electric motor? Is it's power just understated for some reason? There are plenty of other cars out there with a 1.5L/1.6L that puts out 100+hp from the factory. There are plenty of tuners out there that push them well past 100hp and they can go much further with forced induction.[/b]

Don't forget that the Prius does not rely on the ICE alone. It also has an electric motor that provides plenty of torque. There's no need to tinker with it as it works just fine as it is for the purposes for which it was designed. It's not a race car so there's no need to do 0-60 in 5 seconds or go 130 mph.

[KD6HDX]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Aug 7 2007, 08:42 AM) [snapback]491840[/snapback]</div>

It's not a race car so there's no need to do 0-60 in 5 seconds or go 130 mph.
[/b]

I like to say, - Zero to Sixty in 50 watts...