Racing for Pinks - Prius vs some muscle cars

It seems Vulcans are amongst us.

 

They have been for years. One of their research ships crashed out east.

The post above referring to loop holes in the law has it right. Rules and laws have a way of producing odd results, and all of the exemptions for light trucks and SUVs have certainly done that. We see the same thing in the sailing world, where handicapping rules produce suboptimal boats that handicap well, but aren't really good designs. They are strictly rule beaters.

Tom

 

If there was not marketing nor salespeople, the economy would be half as large as it is today.

 

True, one notable example is US Internal Revenue Code Section 179, which allows small business owners (and others who can depreciate automobile ownership costs) to take the first-year business cost of a large truck, van, or SUV as a current $25K expense, rather than take depreciation over several years. GVW rating of the vehicle has to be more than 6,000 lbs, so this encouraged sales of Hummer H2 and Chevy Suburban-type vehicles.
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p463.pdf

 

Probably true. Is that a good or bad thing?

Tom

 

It is still not a valid comparison, from the 'Performance' standpoint which I already mentioned. Comparing New Tech VS Old Tech is like comparing New Price VS Old Price.....Prius costs $21k but the vintage muscle costed just $4k. You can say it's still the same 'Dollar'.....

And why now do we need muscle car performance in a daily driver?
Technically we don't, and Faster/Bigger doesn't automatically mean better (Prius is not Faster/Bigger, but it's better on something else like MPG & Emission). Just that 'Performance' is rapidly affordable in today's auto market, we're just buying it as standards. Like today's computers, why do we need 'Mainframe-class' processing power to just surf net or writing Emails? Again, technically we don't...but technologies in cheap were bringing us to this level. ($500 multi-core PC with everything, why not?).

 

Invalid. The buying power of the dollar has changed tremendously. However, time, distance and mass measures have not inflated.

 

Totally fair? No.

Eye opening? Yes.

Nice to put things in perspective.

... Brad

 

It's not the same dollar. The devaluation of the dollar is well documented. Roads, on the other hand, have not materially improved in this county since the 1960s. There have been some material and safety improvements, but generally the roads are designed for the same speeds. Increased congestion on the roads have also made ultimate speed even less important. If we had the autobahn, then high performance might make some practical sense, although my experience with the autobahn is that it too is often congested.

Computer speed and power have indeed improved remarkably. The notion of computers as a consumer product is very new as compared to automobiles. Rapid progress is usually found in the early stages of a new technology. Look at the rapid advancement in the internal combustion engine from the early days of the Wright brothers. The internal combustion engine keeps getting better, but the really big improvements came along quite awhile ago.

In recent years the trend has been away from faster and faster computers regardless of the cost. Cost and power consumption have become the driving forces in the computer industry. People are upgrading less often because the computers they have are already fast enough for everything they do. Most of the upgrading today is driven by failed hardware or corrupted software, where it is cheaper in our disposable society to toss your computer and buy a new one with a clean load. Of course some people do run applications that benefit from more power, much like race car drivers can benefit from bigger engines, but these people are a small subset of the total market.

Your comment about cars having bigger engines and more performance just because it is available is right on the money. People are attracted to power, and all of the marketing and advertising tells us it's important. If you want to have fun and attract the opposite sex, you need a sexy, powerful car. An easy way for a manufacturer to differentiate their car or truck is to make it more powerful. Generally this trend continues until it hits some sort of ludicrous extreme. Look at fins in the 1950s. Designers started putting fins on cars to ride on the coat tails of aviation and streamlining. If small fins were good, bigger fins were better. The fins got bigger and bigger until they finally became completely silly, then they went away. The same thing will eventually happen with the horsepower wars in this country.

Tom

 

You had it right the first time, it's "Hear, hear!"....

Such eloquence is rare; you successfully got all that touchy-feely fuzz into a relatively tight package. I think the duality of this is situation is something that we all to often forget when talking about "meeting consumer desires". It's often "convenient" to forget that manufacturers can be as responsible for the desire as they are for fulfilling it.

Live long and prosper.

 

Let me help you fix your statement of absolute truth: "The automobile business [WAS] completely driven by consumers [AND MANUFACTURER'S GREED] . . . ." Welcome to the 21st century.

Ever see a bottle rocket go up (or AMEX / NYSE charts, or the auto industry, or great civilizations) into the sky? Often, as they come crashing down, they'll sputter wildly at the apex. Look at graphs of our economy now. Our economy is [WAS] driven by easy credit, made possible by cheep fossil fuel, which [WAS] made possible ONLY because there was at one time, great abundance, in relation to the number of users.

Only the most ignorant mind is still in denial of the fact that (transportation / business / cheep energy / economic) times are quickly changing. The largest fields of fossil fuels are coming off line . . . even as we finally tackle the herculean task of bringing “hard to get to†fossil fuel fields on line. The rate of return on “old†fossil fuel fields were often greater than 85 to 1. That meant if you put a LITTLE energy into extraction, you got LOTS of energy back in return. The rate of return on “hard-to-get-to†fossil fuel sources are often only 3 to 1. That means modernly, you have to put a LOT of energy into a SMALL rate of return. Meanwhile, we have more & more & more users (china & india). That means less & less energy (per user) MUST necessarily continue to become the norm.

With less & less cheep energy, all the old norms are going bye bye. Cheep energy made our (credit based) economy possible. As it goes away, ALL of the middle class will necessarily have to "go away". The middle class will get poorer & poorer. So you see? The auto biz is NOT driven by consumers. It [WAS] driven by cheep / abundant energy. When consumers [HAD] cheep energy, they blew through it, as though tomorrow would never come.

Now, here we are. Where is that? Making plans for the crisis of dwindling power? No. We're worried about muscle cars ... and "when will cheep & easy credit return?" ... and $2 gas, and debating whether consumers are to blame (versus lazy self interested manufacturers, simply out for the quick quarterly profit) for cheep / easily financed / wasteful products. But the days of an economy based on 250 million energy wasting cars, and the industry that builds them, are in their twilight. Pumping such an auto industry full of freshly printed (worthless) paper money won't bring back such an auto industry. The land barge industry is soon to only be a footnote in history. (shaking head) Boy, I'm walking on sunshine now. We need to change our thinking and our ways, if we want to really fix the system.

Falls Church News-Press - The Peak Oil Crisis: Cars - Redux

 

Hill, give me your timeline for the demise of any vehicle larger than a Prius? One year, two years, five years, ten years, 25 years? Does your prediction include Japanese-built land barges or just those built in Detroit? Give me timeline I can hold you to.

In 2008 Prius-type vehicles will be about 2 out of every 100 vehicles sold, when will they become 5%, 10%, 25%, 99%. I am not saying you are completely wrong, just somewhat unrealistic.

I have been hearing we are out of oil since 1988 from my wife's family, every christmas, thanksgiving, easter: We are at Peak oil right now! I guess some year they will be right, I am just not sure if it will be in 5 years, 10 years, 25 years, 50 years, 100 years.

 

What an irony. You of all people (saying how 'ready' you & your family are, when 'things' go south) would pooh pooh the eventual. But that's just how most folks are. Don't worry about it until it's too late.

 

The problem with the Prius' accelaration is two different issues:

1) It's just driver perception. The sound of a high RPM electric motor varying the speed ratio of an Atkins cycle engine just doesn't sound all that powerful. Plus you don't get that ka-chunk sound/feel when the gears do shift on a crappy torque converted auto or a mis-clutched manual. That makes the Prius seem slower.

2) Battery voltage. Due to the Prius' designer's choices, the electric motor (which is a permanant magnet motor), there is a max speed under which full torque can be applied. This is due to the fact that a spinning motor is basically a generator. The faster the speed the higher the voltage generated. If that voltage is higher than the battery, then the motor is basically a regenerative brake. Not good if you are still trying to accelarate. This for the Prius is around 75 km/h. If this car was designed around the 70's it would have a hard time going any faster, but fortunately current engineers have mastered phase advance. Since motor generates a sine wave voltage (AC rather than a DC voltage), you can find spots along the sine wave where the battery's voltage is still higher than the motor's velocity generated voltage. But this doesn't generate nearly the torque as when the motor was at a slower speed. But it does allow the motor not to deter the engine at higher speeds and even generates some amount of output torque.

So if you want to drag race a prius, all you need to do is redesign the battery system and replace the batteries with higher voltage ones. This alone would probably kick some major muscle car nice person...

Keep in mind that the 50hp electric motor alone in the GM EV 1 could go 0-60MPH in about 8.9 seconds. That's with it's electric governor on. It was rumoured to be able to go 0-60 in about 4.9 seconds with it off... but you would burn out the batteries doing it once...

Now the prius has a 38 hp main electric motor... and another 10 hp in the smaller motor plus plus the engine. I suspect it can do 0-60 in about 8 seconds given the right battery/controller configuration. But I don't expect very good MPGs though...

But hey you can afford the gas by selling the cars you've won from unsuspected street racers... LOL...

 

I would have agreed with that statement 10 years ago. Now I realize that it is much too simplistic. The is a extremely large set of consumers ready to buy an EV, or lacking that, a PHEV, or lacking that, a high MPG HEV....and the first production HEV only showed up since a forward thinking Toyota executive decided to commit to something forward thinking, not market research.

Yet here we sit with a wildly succesful EV fleet crushed, EV RAV-4s selling for more that there original price, and Tesla's backlog of EV sales covering months or more.

The reason that this situation exists is that all major manufacturers are determined to point to the lack of demand as a reason for not fielding a vehicle. Then when corrected on the above point, say that battery technology is not available, then when corrected on that point, say the technology is too expensive. I hope Tesla kicks their rear...hard. I'm ready to vote with my wallet to prove EV demand is real by spending $$$$$. The lack of EV choices is not a technology, marketing, or consumer perception problem. It is a collective auto industry self serving decision.