What is Toyota afraid of here?

If organizers had a "Strongest man in the World" Contest that Stephen Hawking was winning, would YOU join?

With the rules favoring the least economical vehicles, why would you enter a Prius?

 

No surprise here:

"But it’s not because the V8-powered Maloo and turbocharged Falcon are the most frugal in the field. Instead, it’s because the event ranks teams according to their fuel use in comparison to the official, Government-supplied rating that goes on the fuel label."

On any sort of challenge normalized in this way, the more wasteful cars start with a big advantage. Their government ratings leave plenty of waste that the hypermilers can very easy harvest. Efficient cars such as the 2010 Prius have already captured that low hanging fruit, behind the scenes and out of view of the driver. Doing better requires considerably more effort.

As an example, during the summer, I was getting 15% better than my Pruis' EPA highway sticker, with significant effort. In contrast, my 1986 Accord easily produced 35% better than its (modern-2008) EPA highway sticker, with no effort, long before the term 'hypermiling' was invented. On one of its very few post-hypermiling trips, it achieved 47% over EPA -- with no more effort than I now put into the Prius.

 

Was this a deliberate strategy?

 

Agreed. My 2000 C5 with an automatic trans w/overdrive (0.7:1) and 2:73 gears (instead of 3:15 optional gear set) could easily get 28-30mpg on the freeway and still pull a mid 12sec 1/4mile at 111mph. It was a dog off the line though.

 

15L/100km for the Maloo ute is not the highway figure, it's the combined test as per ADR 81/02. Urban is 22.4L/100km (hahaha) and extra urban is 10.8L/100km. This report could be dodgy, btw...

Have a look here for info about ADR 81/02.

To give you a comparison, in Australia, the Prius' combined figure is 3.9l/100km, urban 3.9l/100km, extra urban 3.7l/100km, all per ADR 81/02.

 

Worth realising the Maloo is a 2 seated car, because the tray has a cover rendering it a useless cavity. The Falcon XR6 is very popular in Australia.

The challenge is plain stupid and the people who have commented on the site realise this.

I expect to get this kind of economy the drivers are using pulse and glide. Very hard work when you turn the engine off to glide. The road is straight so no need for power steering. No need to be concerned for the starter motor, it only has to do one trip. Not really practical for every day driving.

Come to think of it, I bet the big cars are manual so starting is done by selecting high gear at a low speed with the ignition on and dropping the clutch then gentle acceleration up to speed. I suspect these clown are slowing to 40km/h then accelerating to 100km/h before shutting down the engine again.