Hybrids less efficient than a Hummer...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveG @ Jul 19 2006, 10:43 PM) [snapback]289146[/snapback]</div>

Has Toyota *EVER* built a car that lasted only 100K miles?

Considering the hybrid warranty covers this time period, you can be pretty sure ~90% of vehicles produced will get at least double that, or else the company would lose piles of cash doing expensive warranty work.

And of course, it is pretty easy to work the numbers when you assume vehicle A will last 3X longer than vehicle B right off the top with no justification for it...

If they did take this 100K mile figured based on the warranty coverage (!), should we also conclude the Hummer will only last 3 years/36K? :lol:

Kevin

 

wow, the stupidity.

so i went and checked out their report, as i don't have much else to do at 11pm on a wednesday night.

they claim their mileage numbers come from historical usage data and typical mileage at disposal due to accident, etc. and they also incorporate data from the typical demographic that buys the car.

that said, how can you expect a suzuki to get more miles than a prius? considering the quality of the car and the likelihood of suzuki buyers to have a car accident (younger, less experienced drivers)

ridiculous.

 

Dave,

I also came upon this article and you beat me with a post on it by a few minutes. I too found it a bit preposterous, but I've kind of gotten away from all the details on the current arguments on why the Prius is such an exceptional car. I just still love this car after 2 years and 30,000 miles.

This article came from the "Reason Foundation" that on cursory glance makes me think it's another industry flack site.

As for the 100k mileage, last I heard 300K might not be unreasonagle for our car. And as for this article's contention over the MPG, on my current tank I'll be getting about 57 mpg. And I do nothing special to get it.

Of course, my commute is 32 miles each way. My daughter gets about 45 MPG in her Prius. Her commute is about 4 miles.

 

There's a discussion of this article going on at digg:
http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Why_Your_Hum...gy_Than_a_Prius

Some of the comments are incredibly stupid. I don't understand why some people are so anti-hybrid. Are they feeling guilty or what?

 

Here is the only thing that makes a Hummer back off at a intersection! I bet it is a better investment than the Hummer we should all drive one on our daily commute! God help us. And yes the person that owns this converted Freight Liner drives it day to day too and from work, school etc. It is classified as a large pickup truck in Ohio and does not have commercial plates or requires a commercial drivers license. Hummer yield to it. God Bless America. BTW the person that purchased this got a much, much larger tax brake than any Hybrid driver!

 

The report also uses flawed MPG numbers. They claim that a Suburban gets 26.9 MPG and a Prius gets 29.6! Dodge Ram HEMI: 27.6!

You have got to be kidding me!

Wait, I just found a picture of the author of the report:

http://www.ellentordesillas.com/wp-content/pinocchio.JPG

Nate

 

The Prius scares more people than any other vehicle on the road. No other cars are expected to "pay for themselves". Despite constant and often erroneous bad press, people continue to flock to buy them with little actual advertising. I see more one the road all the time. I tell people we are not SMUG but merely VERY HAPPY!

 

That article is very amusing. It's amazing how people can justify and/or talk themselves into almost anything. I seriously question the economics they applied to manufacturing the Hummer vs. Prius. Have a few VOCs while you paint that massive beast.

I just bought my Prius, but my coworker has some serious data. In under 3 years, he has 85,000 miles. He drives like he's in NASCAR. Some stats: Cost to repair brakes to date: $0. Batteries: $0. Oil changes (synthetic): $480. Tires, three sets: $788. Two air filters, some new floor mats...

Folks, that's ZERO repairs. No water pumps failures, no electronic glitches, no bearings, bushings, etc.

Factor in a lifetime mileage of 46.8, the tax credit, and come on!

Hey, I can buy a Hummer right now at a steep discount. The Chinese will start buying them for the steel and copper scrap soon.

My Ford Exploder was costing me $80 a week in gas, compared to $15 now. It doesn't take a genious to figure out how fast the Return on Investment is.

For every one person that sneers at me, I have 15 ask me about it, including those who want to know how I "plug it in to charge it." It's a start.

 

Here we go again... :angry: Spinella's "company" CNW Marketing is the same company that published that totally bogus study before.

I posted a link to my refutation at http://priuschat.com/index.php?s=&showtopi...ndpost&p=272611. I also attached the files they had up at the time, but it looks like they put up new stuff at http://cnwmr.com/nss-folder/automotiveenergy/ (no time to go look through that yet).

They had TOTAL BS like the Prius (w/excellent reliability) lasting only 109K miles and unreliable vehicles like the Ford Expedition lasting 284K miles. They also had insane claims that it cost $2.5 MILLION to DISPOSE of a VW Phaeton and $325K to DISPOSE of a Prius which they claim cost $13K to make.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(cwerdna @ Jul 20 2006, 02:25 AM) [snapback]289261[/snapback]</div>

Wow! 325K to dispose of a Prius? Better warn the junkyards, because they have to be careful to not take any Priuses for disposal! It might put them out of business!

FYI, the scrap value on a 2006 package 6 Prius is nearly $8k. That's right, someone will PAY YOU $8k to take it off your hands, because there is signifcant value there.

The battery in the Prius is recyclable, and Toyota will pay you $500 for it. It's worth a lot of money for the valuable nickel inside. As for the rest of the vehicle, it's your standard Toyota. There's no "exotic materials", unless you consider ultra-high-strength steel and aluminum "exotic".

It's a car. The idea that it costs orders of magnitude more (in terms of energy) to build or dispose of is utter crap. We know what goes into it, Toyota knows what goes into it, and, guess what? It's $22,000. If it were really that energy-intensive, it wouldn't cost $22,000!

 

The numbers in the article are similar to those appearing back in March, discussed in this thread:

http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=17795&hl=

Don't even try to make sense of their numbers.

Below is my calculation from the prior article:

"Looking at that another way, US DOT says US residents drove 3 trillion miles in 2004. If we all drove Civics, at $2.42 per mile, that would suggest that the "energy cost" of our driving was about $7 trillion, or perhaps half of the entire US GDP. Nonsense. The US DOE says total 2004 value of US fossil fuel production and net imports was just about $400B. So, the "energy cost", using this figure, is perhaps 20x total US direct expenditures for fossil fuels. Nonsense again."

Except, in contrast the the old goofy article, in this new goofy article, the "energy cost per mile" for the Civic has skyrocketed to $3.238. (Note the fraction of a cent there -- nice touch, right out of "How to Lie With Statistics".) Which would therefore put the "energy cost" of our driving (all Civics) at $9.7 trillion, or a little over three-quarters of the entire US gross domestic product (12.4 trillion in 2005, per the US Dept of Commerce website).

Not even remotely plausible. It's just propaganda, probably intended merely to reinforce the faith of the already faithful. Don't give their numbers a second thought.

 

Repeat a lie often enough and the masses will begin to believe it. It's not about facts or truth. It's about creating a construct that people can hold on to, in order to justify their prejudices. In this case, aimed at people prejudiced against Japanese cars (perhaps because of Pearl Harbor) or people who want an excuse to waste fuel.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(cwerdna @ Jul 20 2006, 04:25 AM) [snapback]289261[/snapback]</div>

and yet, somehow toyota is losing money on every 25k sale of a prius, eh?

:lol:

by creating one argument, they knock down others. gotta love these people.

 

I was really getting annoyed with some of the comments on Digg last night. I responded quite a bit to comments, most were reasonable but I lost my cool with a few trolls (only way to describe them, really). One guy I responded to actually was saying that hybrids must not be good as he's been seeing them on used car lots lately. That was his reasoning, it's too soon to see 2004-2006 cars on used lots, so they must not be a good deal. Hello, how many OTHER cars are on used car lots? You simply can't know what the motives of people are for trading in cars, either. Maybe they moved and didn't want to transport a vehicle. Maybe they leased it and upgraded to a new version. Maybe they drove like a maniac and didn't get the milage they thought they would get. Or, to his point, maybe it wasn't economical and they traded in for a Hummer that had an overall less operating cost. Don't mention that the Hummer is twice the upfront investment than a Prius and gets 1/3 the economy (on average). Man, sometimes I'd love to live in this magical world some of these people live in, where a 10mpg H2 is doing good for the environment and we're winning the war on terror. Oh, wait, we are winning that, right? Bad example, sorry.

I just don't understand how people can actually believe this tripe. A Hummer lasting, on average, 300k miles while a Prius will magically shut off at 100k? People too lazy to do their own research and blindly believe what others tell them. Lemmings to the cliff, lemmings to the cliff.

Andy

 

Yeah. Last year I had to wait 4.5 months to get one. This year 3 months...maybe. :lol:

 

Ooh! Ooh ooh ooh! This sentence leapt out at me:

Now I'll be honest with you, I've never looked into the fuel economy of the Aveo nor do I care to even right now, but I can be pretty darned sure that they don't get 45+mpg. Yeah, I'm pretty sure of it.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Rancid13 @ Jul 20 2006, 11:04 AM) [snapback]289463[/snapback]</div>

Yep. Totally bogus.

The Aveo w/manual only gets 27 mpg per http://autos.msn.com/advice/CRArt.aspx?contentid=4023460.

Car and Driver got 24 mpg at http://www.caranddriver.com/roadtests/7867...o-ls-page3.html on an Aveo wheras they got 42.03 mpg on a Prius at http://www.caranddriver.com/roadtests/7701...rius-page3.html.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Rancid13 @ Jul 20 2006, 11:04 AM) [snapback]289463[/snapback]</div>

Seen the crash tests of the Aveo? http://www.euroncap.com/images/results/sma...tasheet%203.pdf

If Spinella wants to own and drive one, I say GO FOR IT!