2012 Camry / Camry Hybrid to be Revealed on 8-23

They were able to gain efficiency without using exotic battery or low weight materials and kept the price low.

 

Cwerdna, yes if you launch a 6000 lb object at a 2800 lb object, F=ma is going to significantly favor the 6000 lb object. I agree. And yes experental evidence, as the NTSA attempts to do in their limited tests, has more weight than predictions on paper.

Airbags also inflate with explosives at extremely fast rates. Cars also have crumble zones. As a result, this is not just F=ma. My point was just that cars DO have airbags, crumble zones, and other safety features to protect the occupants. Most importantly, a 2012 car can swerve and maneuver and avoid a collision in the first place MUCH better than a Suburban. At's like a fat kid versus a skinny kid racing through an obstacle course.

My main intended point of my post was to mention the difference in the two audiences that Toyota is marketing the Camry versus Prius v to (which both weigh about the same?), and that they can charge more for the Prius v than the Camry due to the target market.

What is a Prius v? It's a bloated version of the Prius. A single male or single female is going to buy a regular Prius (or a Camry). A family wants/"needs" a larger vehicle for their family and kids.

(note: statements about groups of people are generalizations, and do not represent all individuals and situations)

 

I wonder if fat kids are more likely to roll over.

IMHO it still is unknown how well TCH will do versus the prius v. The camry has better acceleration and drivers seat. I doubt the passenger room is very different, but someone can correct that. The big difference is the prius v is a wagon with much larger cargo capacity while the Camry has a trunk. I doubt families will find one much better than others, but people that need more storage may go v.

 

Yes, if you sort by accident avoidance score (in mph) and braking distance in Consumer Reports's test results table (don't have the URL handy), full-sized SUVs and trucks and their ilk are at the bottom of the barrel. Best & worst cars review, best safety performance unfortunately only lists the best and a tiny # of the worst.

Fortunately, IIHS did testing of unequal sizes and weights at IIHS news release. Be sure to watch the video in the upper right (also at IIHS-HLDI: Video).

 

The improvement in SUV safety as a whole in the last decade or so has been due in large part to stability control and rollover protection airbag systems. But driver demographics are still a factor. Even the smallest SUVs tend to fare much better than cars and trucks of similar mass. While sheer mass is an advantage in frontal crashes, it tends to have minimal benefit in side impacts and single vehicle crashes.

While the driver death rates can't completely factor out variables like driver demographics, they do tend to encompass crash avoidance to some extent. Since it is a rate per vehicle years, crashes without a fatality essentially count the same as a crash avoided. On the downside, many of the models are obsolete and newer vehicles updated since 2008 aren't included at all. The rates also have a significant variability (just compare corporate twins to see the disparity among identical models). Finally, they don't include passenger fatalities. Standardized crash testing results tend to be much more comparable and specific to how a car will perform if it is in a crash, though don't factor driver ability to avoid a crash. If you're looking for the safest thing out there, I'd personally pick something with reasonable mass, decent handling and top crash test results. My pick would be the '11 Honda Odyssey or the GM trio of large crossovers.

A good website that factors in all the crash tests, mass and safety features is Find the safest cars and vehicles and the most dangerous cars and vehicles . The current results tend to still be incomplete due to the limited number of vehicles with a full set of NHTSA (new testing started for 2011) and IIHS crash tests, but it's a good starting point. You can even use its calculator to put in your own results if they haven't updated yet.

As a side note, Toyota hasn't done so well in the new NHTSA testing, particularly now that they use a female size dummy as the passenger in the frontal crash test. Prius is one of the few standouts. Hopefully, the new Camry will perform better than the one it replaced.

 

Even though I don't like too much Chrome, I think it is very pretty on the Camry Hybrid, much preferred than the HS 250h's.

Toyota Sai

 

Your photo of the white one actually looks sharp to me, but it is different than what I am seeing on the Toyota USA home page for the 2012 Camry Hybrid XLE.

 

Wasn't sure if I should start a new thread in the Toyota hybrid area or post here... First 2012 Toyota Camry commercials look to burn up the interwebs has 3 HyCam ads. This is probably one of the first/few times I've seen hybrid car ads emphasizing horsepower...

 

ads are great....

 

I have not been able to see very well, the detail of the black part of the grill under the chrome.

 

I also see no mention whatsoever of non-occupant fatalities, e.g. pedestrians, cyclists, and occupants of the other vehicles in multi-vehicle collisions.

This omission becomes apparent with the 'battering rams of death', where the 1990s-era SUVs that saved one driver by killing two extra non-occupants were often heralded as safer than the lighter cars they crushed even as they pushed up the community's traffic death toll.

This added to the arms race of ever-increasing weight. It is another form of the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_dilemma"]Prisoner's Dilemma[/ame].

 

Thanks for the video!
It showed me that the crumble zones absorb energy based on how long the hood is (in a head on crash), but once the crumble zones have performed their work, the center of masses still collide. The last clip on the video of the Camry versus the Smart car is incredible when the Smart car gets launched backward into the air!

If all cars were the same size (or within a range), we would not have 6000 pound SUVs versus Yarises. The 6000 pound SUVs should have been banned before they ever became a reality, based on collision safety! We don't let people drive around waving guns out the window, and we shouldn't allow 6000 pound SUV drivers on cell phones on the same roads as Yarises and Priuses! People end up dead.

Everytime I see a full size SUV at the gas station before I pull up and after I leave I just think "that's what you get for buying that thing!"

I don't think I can count on all my fingers and toes how many collisions I avoid every year by rapidly swerving out of the way in my Corolla. My 2004 Corolla has 176,000 miles on it right now (I drive a lot) and with all that driving, I would say there are dozens of times every year that someone attempts to make a QUICK lane change while not noticing that I'm in the lane next to them or also turning into the same lane and I rapidly swerve to avoid the collision. There are a few situations where I know I swerved as fast as I am physically capable of and my Corolla literally moved on a dime (like when you get startled and jump out of the way). I don't know if a vehicle several feet off of the ground (an SUV) can swerve as rapidly as a car that's much closer to the ground, but I completely agree with your comment above that the driver is an extremely important factor that can avoid a collision in the first place.

 

The headlights on the image he posted are a different shape than the shape of the headlights we're seeing on the Toyota website.

Here's a picture I just took at my local Toyota dealer. Notice how the ... just kidding - it's from Torque news.






Source for all above photos and more photos: IMPRESSIONS: 2012 Toyota Camry SE

This is what I'm seeing on Toyota's website right now...

SE V6 shown in Classic Silver Metallic (above)
LE shown in Magnetic Gray Metallic (below)

Official Toyota Website: 2012 Toyota Camry
.

 

I notice on the XLE Hybrid it will have a blind spot monitor, I wonder if it's like what Acura has. Definitely helps to have an extra eye..

 

Actually, the Smart was vs. a Mercedes C300 since their goal was to crash cars against each other from the same automaker (at the time).

Yes, this is why I've said (in other posts) if it were up to me, 5000+ lb. monstrosity class SUV would be virtually illegal or VERY hard and costly to get. Barring that, one could could look at measures like not allowing them to be bought unless there's an actual proven need, barring their manufacture, forcing them to abide by slower speed limits (kinetic energy = 1/2 * mass * velocity^2) like truck speed limits since they are classified as trucks, and mandatory extra periodic driver training, esp. focusing on accident avoidance maneuvers.

A full-sized SUV has FAR inferior accident avoidance capabilities compared to your Corolla and if it were of the same vintage, it'd likely have no stability control and would be even more likely to go out of control at a given speed.

 

I think Sergiospl posted a picture of a JDM Toyota Sai, not a '12 Camry. (FWIW, I did go Tokyo Motor Show in 09 and did in person see the Sais featured at Tokyo 2009: 2010 Toyota Sai hybrid looks suspiciously familiar along w/the JDM HS 250h.)

 

Ah thanks for that. I hadn't heard of the Sai and didn't know what it meant. Too bad the Camry hybrid didn't look as nice.

Throughout the 90s and even the early 2000s, SUVs not only lacked crash avoidance capability, but truck-based models generally had mediocre crash test results. They also did poorly in side impacts, impacts with other large SUVs, impacts with fixed objects like walls/poles and especially rollovers that accounted for a large share of fatalities. Until the advent of better-handling crossovers and widespread integration of stability control, many of them were indeed death traps relative to larger cars and minivans.

What a difference a decade makes. I'm still not fond of the largest SUVs for a variety of reasons, but there are plenty of safe smaller and midsize SUVs in a segment that probably didn't have a single model I'd consider safe 10 years ago.

 

The IIHS' adjusted death rate for small 4WD SUVs in 2001 (67/MReg) was lower than all but midsize vans, larger vans and luxury cars.

http://www.iihs.org/research/topics/pdf/r0910.pdf (See page 13).

 

I want a periscope on my cars so I can see around the big mammoth POS's

 

it lights up a light in the side mirrors when you have someone in blind spot... and it is optional on XLE.

as to the SUV crash people, can you please move it to the other thread? thank you