when you replace the battery

[patsparks]

Off topic, if the first post in a thread is deleted because it was posted by a troll and all his/her posts are deleted does the whole thread go away?

On topic, Once upon a time safety was size wins, now they have crash tests and engineers who build safety systems into cars. The Prius is one of the safest cars on the road with real safety built in rather than using the "I'll kill your family to save mine" mentality. People drive around in toy trucks thinking they are safe but toy trucks meet a lesser safety standard than passenger cars. Hit either with a 40 ton Kenworth and the results will be about the same.

Anyone who says a Prius is a little car is either ignorant of the Prius and how much room it has inside or is making a conscious and conspicuous attempt to put the car down by implying small is somehow inferior, unfortunately that is also a misconception displaying ignorance.
In the gentle art of shifting a family of people from one place to another a small car does very well and small car owners should be proud that they have purchased a vehicle which suits their needs without caving in to the urge to purchase a toy truck to prove they are better men. Motor vehicles are many things but the basically they are transport. Unfortunately some people see them as a status symbol or something to prove they are better than their peers. Fortunately the people they are trying to impress often see the purchase of a big toy truck as foolish and think of the owners in a similar way.

In an era of diminishing fossil fuels the use of a big toy truck sucking petroleum fuels down at a rate of a 1/10th or 1/20th of a gallon per mile for anything but moving freight or large numbers of passengers (10 or more) is seen by a growing portion of the global population as selfish and ridiculous. It is one of the reason Americans get so little respect from people outside North America. People still perceive you all drive big toy trucks and cars big enough to have their own zip code. The replacement of these wasteful behemoths with smaller more efficient vehicles will do more to win the respect of the world than sending 1,000,000 troops into a foreign country to secure oil supplies for your thirsty trucks.

Even more on topic, The technology used in Prius can be used in bigger cars so the size of the Prius has nothing to do with the safe use of batteries in automobiles. This is more about safely managing the batteries which Toyota in concert with their development partner Panasonic have expended a lot of time and energy to ensure was right. That is why you could not find any examples of the batteries in an unmodified Toyota hybrid causing injuries or deaths.

[darelldd]

Originally Posted by Stefx

The danger from the fuel in the fuel tank is much greater than the battery, yet all our cars have a fuel tank.

Thanks for saying this. Amazing how happy we are to live with 10 or 20 or MORE gallons of gasoline in our attached garages. And yet we're scared of batteries. Yeow.

I do need to point out that not ALL of our cars have a fuel tank, however! Not the one we drive most! That one is full of scary batteries.

[darelldd]

Originally Posted by mattpopp

safety is number 1 in my book.

I'll play along until this comes to an ugly end. Not like we didn't see it coming from the original post, but hey....

If safety is number 1 in your book, you should lobby hard and long to get rid of ALL full size trucks and SUVs on the road. In general, if you run two smaller cars together, everybody walks away. In gerneral, if you run two large, ladder-framed trucks together... or if you run that large truck into a smaller car, somebody is likely NOT going to walk away. We are ALL safer if we're all in smaller cars than iif we're all in full size trucks. For full-on safety, get rid of cars alltogether and walk or ride a bike.

Driving a full size truck doesn't make society safer. It ensures that the people in the smaller car suffer more in a collision that may or may not be the fault of the driver of the smaller car. You win if you hit a small car. You lose if you hit another safety-minded individual in another similar (or even larger!) truck.

It isn't just hybrid drivers that hold ingorant large-car-for-safety drivers in contempt. No, no. It is also EV drivers. And even small "regular" car drivers. Sometimes it is even big truck drivers who actually need those trucks for their work.

As it is, the Prius is too big for my needs.

[Alric]

Consider this table taken from:

gladwell dot com - big and bad



"The numbers are expressed in fatalities per million cars, both for drivers of particular models and for the drivers of the cars they hit. (For example, in the first case, for every million Toyota Avalons on the road, forty Avalon drivers die in car accidents every year, and twenty people die in accidents involving Toyota Avalons.)"

As you can see there is no correlation between vehicle size and safety. I enjoy seeing how a Jetta is apparently much more safe than a Tahoe.

[nerfer]

Originally Posted by mattpopp

My answer is it is a personal choice, that is exactly what it was in the beginning. I was just wondering if there is some underlining meaning that I do not understand about Hybrid's. The only benefit is none in my eyes and 99% of the population.

Hybrids break down, just like any other car. The only problem is that no shade tree mechanic like myself can work on them. You have quit a few threads about fixing broken Pruis. So that thought is out the window.

I'm not sure I follow that. Anybody with a problem on their Prius will google it and end up here talking about it, same as other message boards for other vehicles. And how does that mean you can't fix it? Talk to Hobbit or some other knowledgeable shade-tree mechanics before you jump to that conclusion. At least 90% of what could happen to it are the same as any other vehicle. And given its reliability, chances are you wouldn't need to do anything for quite a long time. Even the brake pads last a good 100K miles.

And other than saving money, you'd also be keeping oil money out of the hands of terrorists. I consider that quite a benefit. I don't want our country go begging to OPEC for more oil so our economy will keep working.

But the Prius is in short supply right now. You might try to get your hands on a Chevy Cobalt XFE (the high mpg option) if you prefer American non-hybrid, so you can keep your wrenches from getting dusty. But that's considerably smaller than the mid-size Prius. Might as well get a Nissan Versa with CVT in that case. Ford Explorer Hybrid gets similar mpg to the Cobalt XFE and Versa CVT but is a mid-sized SUV, if you like being jacked up high off the ground (albeit for a lot more money up-front). Just don't go for the Chevy Aveo - it's really a South Korean Daewoo and single-handedly gives all small cars a bad name.

[patsparks]

Please be careful using the term "full size truck" to describe the toy trucks American motorists fell in love with after the last time oil was hard to get.

This is a full size truck


This is a toy

because it couldn't haul a profitable payload. I reckon it would struggle with just 1 loaded trailer.

[mattpopp]

Then I guess that makes me the owner of two toy trucks. There is one thing that I think that a few people here can agree on. There is a ton of people that live in the city and drive a diesel truck to work every day. I dont like those people. They never had a use for the truck and all they do is put a demand on something that they dont need.
Yall have quickly jumped together to assume that either one of my trucks dont get used for the reason that they are built. An elec motor car will not haul a back-hoe. But if it was not for people like me that Drive toy trucks to haul toy equipment to sites to clear out Acres of beautiful land and trees so People like everyone of yall can have new apartments or new homes outside of the city. so you can have this "fake out of city life style".

We are not running out of Oil. That's about as dumb as Al Gores global warming. a thousand people die because of heat and we have a crises but thousands and thousands of people freeze to death each yr and it goes unnoticed. Anyways about your Oil. Its just more Liberal Hype. Our Liberal Politicians want us to live under fear, it gives them more control and power over us. I am sure it may come as a shocker to some of yall.

Just as I am clueless on a Pruis yall are clueless on the world we live in. If you have traveled the world you will find out pretty quickly that its not the cars that we drive why so many others have a problem with us. But again those same people fail to realize we are the reason they dont speak another language.

[smoke46]

Those toy trucks are what haul the machinery to the fields to harvest your vegetarian diet. Thats not a full size truck. its a tractor trailer. Learn your classes in trucks. Full size= class C. Tractor trailer= class A driver lisense. Toy trucks are trucks with a half ton rating and below.

[donee]

Hi All,

There is one serious accident between a Silverado and a Prius, 50 percent offset, head on. The Pickup driver became distracted, and wandered into the oncoming lane.

The Prius driver did go to the hospital. His most life-threatening injuries were not from the truck however. But from the paint cans he was hauling impacting his head. Pictures of the crash show that he should have been able to walk away from this 40 mph (80 mph closing speed) crash. From the picture, it appears the Silverado was thrown up in the air by the sloped front of the Prius, avoiding much of the impact.

[Jack66]

Originally Posted by mattpopp

Then I guess that makes me the owner of two toy trucks. There is one thing that I think that a few people here can agree on. There is a ton of people that live in the city and drive a diesel truck to work every day. I dont like those people. They never had a use for the truck and all they do is put a demand on something that they dont need.
Yall have quickly jumped together to assume that either one of my trucks dont get used for the reason that they are built. An elec motor car will not haul a back-hoe. But if it was not for people like me that Drive toy trucks to haul toy equipment to sites to clear out Acres of beautiful land and trees so People like everyone of yall can have new apartments or new homes outside of the city. so you can have this "fake out of city life style".

We are not running out of Oil. That's about as dumb as Al Gores global warming. a thousand people die because of heat and we have a crises but thousands and thousands of people freeze to death each yr and it goes unnoticed. Anyways about your Oil. Its just more Liberal Hype. Our Liberal Politicians want us to live under fear, it gives them more control and power over us. I am sure it may come as a shocker to some of yall.

Just as I am clueless on a Pruis yall are clueless on the world we live in. If you have traveled the world you will find out pretty quickly that its not the cars that we drive why so many others have a problem with us. But again those same people fail to realize we are the reason they dont speak another language.

Matt, I am not an environmentalist but even I understand that the supply of oil in the world is limited. I agree with your statement to the point that we do not currently have a noticeable shortage of oil. We probably won't see that for a few more years. More and more people are using oil to include an incredible rise in demand in China and other developing countries. Imagine a line on a graph representing oil demand and it only goes up. Now imagine another line that represents the amount of oil left in the world. The supply is only getting smaller and the demand is only getting bigger. Where do you think this will end. I for one think it will end badly -- probably not for a few years. $4 gas is just a taste of what will happen. What do you think the Saudis will do when they figure out the only thing that makes up their economy is coming to an end and there is nothing to replace it? Think anyone will want to buy their sand? Thiink they might want to do something about it that we won't like. Think they will tell us the truth and say their oil is running out and we should find alternative fuels?

Also, many of us are not clueless about the world you live in. We either have trucks for things the Prius can't do (but my Prius has really surprised me) or we had trucks not too long ago. I'm in the Army and we have quite a large fleet of trucks and heavy vehicles -- some of which get less than 1 MPG becausw they weigh over 60 tons and blow things up like they were designed to do.

Take some time to learn about the Prius if you want and ask some questions. Do searches first since just about everything under the sun has been talked about -- to include Prius owners that have trucks and still love them. I used to have a truck but kids came and I don't have the same need to tow or haul stuff around. I LIKE trucks and don't mind people owning them -- even if they don't haul equipment, lumber, or dirt.

I made a personal choice to consume less oil and pollute a little less on the road and at home. I'm not angry that you have two trucks -- I just think that if you had enough interest to Google Prius or Priuschat then you might just want to look around, invisible like a ninja, and look for some of the things that led you to Priuschat in the first place. The Prius isn't the end-all-be-all vehicle -- it has a place and people that are happy with it. That doesn't mean you will be happy with it.

If you get really bored then start a conversation with Patsparks -- he'll tell you that you don't deserve a Prius and he'll probably be right.