Earth Day Test Drives! (incl. an electric car)

well, I gotta keep it short but I'll update you guys with more details probably on Tues (since I'll be busy til then).

But here's a teaser of what I did today.

- test drove the HCH (again). Let my dad try it out
- test drove the Honda Fit (yeah, it's not a hybrid but it was one of the eligible vehicles listed for a "free" test drive (i.e. no pressure from salesperson to buy)

- test drove GS450h (omg, this car is AWESOME!)
- test drove HiHy 4x4 base (pretty good!)
- saw the Ford Focus FC car (well, not like I haven't seen them before since there ARE 5 of them running around and I have seen all 5 cars)
- rode in a 1912 Detroit Electric Car (now THAT was cool. We did smell a bit of burning when he went top speed hehehehe)

Lastly, I finally got a Prius keychain. All the Toyota test vehicles (which were the media test vehicles) had the keychain and one of the salesman was kind enough to let me have one of theirs. It's a bit scratched up but not too noticeable!


All-in-all, it was a hell of a fun day. Again, I'll update later with full details!

 

yeah you know what, I might as well type it out now before I forget the details on Tues. I'll just have to work extra hard to make up for the loss time typing this up haha.

GS450h
ok first off, yes I floored the GS and yes my head was firmed jammed to the headrest. It is F-A-S-T! I was running on 4 bars too! (dropped to 3 bars of course after the run). I did an emergency brake test at 60km/h and it stopped in two car lengths (braked just as the front bumper reached the rear bumper of a parked car and I stopped near the front bumper of the 2nd parked car). There was NO pulse whatsoever from the ABS system (I was using two feet to brake). It did feel disconnected a bit and I'm not quite sure whether 2 car lengths is short for a 60km/h brake with a 1,800kg car.

Of course, EV mode was just a pleasure. The nav was a bit confusing to work with (well, compared to my handheld) but I did like the split screen feature showing you the upcoming intersection when directing you to turn. The backup camera and auto-tilt reverse wing mirrors were a great help when parking the car back at the dealership. It's a nice car to drive and is fairly quiet. The ML surround sound stereo sounded a bit flat but I then again, I was listening to the radio. All the sound felt like it was coming from the dashboard and nothing was coming from the rear. I did "reset" the bass/mid/treble to the middle and check that nothing else was skewed. It might be the surround sound feature that was causing that "stage" effect of sound coming from the dashboard.

It handled well around the roundabout as my dad drove around it a few times, increasing the speed with each revolution.

One odd thing is that it remembers the consumption from the last time you stopped. When we started the car, there already were bars on the Consumption Screen from 20-30 mins so that was a surprise.

Also, the Consumption Screen avg didn't match the Tank Avg so I'm assuming someone resetted the Consumption Screen (cause you can't reset the Tank Avg unless you refuel). The Tank Avg read 14.0L/100km when we left. The funny thing is that after all the acceleration and braking tests, we returned it with 13.9L/100km :lol: . We managed to lower the consumption! (well I tried to glide and it wouldn't let me but it does allow EV even with 3 bars!).

Overall, I'm am VERY impressed with the GS450h. It costs Cdn$76,800 and there's no options. It's fully loaded.


1912 Detroit Electric Car Company electric car
This one I HAD to try. It is a 1912 electric car with mostly original parts. The electric motor is original (and it's HUGE! It's like this... um... udder (for a lack of a better analogy) underneath the car. The batteries were replaced 10 years ago. The original were nickel-iron. The current ones are lead-acid.

It's a 2+1 seater so two adults and one kids seat. Since my dad came along, I had to sit in the small kids seat :blink: . Anyway, it has no gears of course and has two pedals. Except that the right pedal is for light braking and the left pedal is for hard braking. Light braking is almost like braking lightly for a traffic light and the hard braking is like a normal brake in terms of stopping power.

To accelerate, you move this short lever (with a red button at the end of it which rings the bell) to 1,2,3,4 or 5. The numbers are sort of like the maximum speed you want the car to accelerate to and keep. The actual acceleration is done automatically. There's N and R of course. Once the desired speed is achieved, the driver usually puts it in N to glide.

He usually starts at 2 and it has a nice punch to it. On our ride, he placed it to 5 at one point and it was going pretty damn fast for a 1912 car. I would probably wager speed 5 = 25km/h?? (or I guess just search for the top speed of a 1912 Detroit electric car lol.. but with better batteries). In 5, I started to smell some burning smell so he dropped it back to 3. In 5, he was going fast enough that there was wind noise around the windshield :lol:

The steering is by this other long lever ahead of the speed lever. Push away to steer left and pull towards you to steer right. It's about half the width of the interior.


Alright, that's it for now. Any other requests? (I've also test driven the HiHy twice and the RX400h, FEH and HAH back in May 05)

 

yep!

what's weird is that the HiHy and GS450h has different electric motor whines than the Prius. They're very distinctive. I'm surprised no one has mentioned that.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveinOlyWA @ Apr 24 2007, 12:33 PM) [snapback]429191[/snapback]</div>

yeah, you had your left hand on the shorter speed lever and your right hand on the longer steering lever. I think had had to use two hands to steer.