Car That Can Park Itself Put on Sale by Toyota

Falling asleep through fuller's post...

God, my wife needs that

My wife learned how to parallel park using a small Massey Ferguson tractor. Once she got it in her head what to line up with, what to aim for, and when to turn the wheel, she could spot anything.... even a conventional with a 53' trailer.

GM has actually been working on a parallel hybrid pickup truck for some years now. I'm surprised it hasn't hit the market yet, actually. Of course when I saw it it still had some issues to be worked out (as in some fairly major components stopped working about 10 minutes before I was scheduled to drive it, DOH! so I didn't get to play with any new high tech toys :/)

nate

nate

No, it was GM's way of saying, "Look Mr. California Government, we tried. We did our best and this is the best electric vehicle we could come up with. We've proven that your 10% fleet ZEV pollution standard is impossible to attain with reasonable performance and range so you'll have to relax that restriction."

It worked too. From GM's position, the failure of the EV-1 was a victory.

It is still more suited to urban use than suburban or highway use. The Prius system is essentially a way to regenerate braking energy back into acceleration. Good for stop-and-go, but doesn't do much for places where constant speed is held for much of the driving cycle.

I'm still waiting for a manufacturer to have the courage to build a hybrid that is capable of operating as a pure electric vehicle for ranges of 10 miles or so while using an efficient constant-speed engine for greater ranges. That way you could operate in ZEV mode for urban trips while retaining highway range.

Even the supposedly "refined" hybrids from Toyota and Honda are conventional vehicles with motor/generators kludged into their drivetrains. They carry all the complexity of both electric and gasoline vehicles. Nice for proof-of-concept, but not really capable of realizing full hybrid potential.

BTW, The US has been building hybrid vehicles for many decades. They are called "diesel-electric locomotives"! :)

George

Being able to spot a 53' trailer isn't all that special. They're kind of hard to hide. ;)

Meanwhile people with 1980s Escorts that the slapped several deep cycle marine lead-acid batteries in were getting 120 miles per charge. $10K to convert the car. This was in 1990.

GM as usual builds crap. I hope the new Prius makes all of the others sweat bullets as they can't sell them fast enough with gas over $2 a gallon. The toyota site for the U.S. now has a lot of concrete data compared to a month ago - and it's all good. $20K price and potential tax rebates and incentives and... Plus the power, room...

Why bother to get a Civic for $17-$18K?

Which is - gosh - I do 8-12K a year on my car. 70% city driving and short commutes. That's most of us in the U.S.

It will come. Soon, in fact.

Heh. And - guess what - they work and use a lot less fuel.

"Spot" means to line up and back up squarely to a dock door.

The Prius DOES improve things significantly when you're doing lots of constant-speed driving: I recently drove from Boston to North Carolina and back in my Prius, and averaged 47.5 mpg. This was going about 70mph when the speed limit was 65 and about 75mph when the speed limit was 70 (which it was for several extended portions of the trip.) That's about

Also, in my day-to-day commuting from the suburbs of Boston to Boston, which is about 50/50 urban/highway driving, I'm averaging slightly over

To my mind, at least, that makes the Prius quite suited to suburban or highway use. The increased mileage of the '04 (if it lives up to the specs, that is) will only make it moreso.

In perusing Toyota's Japanese site for Prius, someone in one of the Yahoo Toyota Prius groups saw some text that made it look like the version released in Japan may have an option to run EV-only, though I think that was from reading text run through Babel-fish, so who knows if that's really the case. But, it would be interesting if they're leading up to that!

Well, this 'kludge' of Toyota's is providing me with mileage and low emissions that I'm very happy to be taking advantage of *now*, rather than waiting for future versions. The improvements made between the current Prius and the soon-to-be-released '04 certainly do make your point that there's lots of unrealized potential yet to be explored in the arena of hybrids. Here's hoping they continue the trend! :)

-Eddie

They even planned for its failure. Rather than support the vehicle, they refused to sell them. Instead, they only leased them so that they could technically own all of them. That way, when the leases are up, they can take them all back and not have to support them.

If they wanted them to succeed, they'd have been trying to sell them, not purposefully telling people they weren't allowed to have them and keeping them from sale.

Evidently, GM plans for failure quite well. I guess they have quite a record to build upon.

Marc For email, remove the first "y" of "whineryy"

I figured as much, but it was too much for a layman to pass up. :)

The trick is to distinguish the 53' trailer from the 48' trailer without looking on the side for the "53'".

Okay then. Now go pass a Semi on the inside of a tight curve, and we'll introduce you to the term "trailer cheat" up close and personal. And no, it's not about taking a test... ;-)

Drive something like an old Beetle or Yugo, they're easier to mash.

-->--

They are honestly, from an engineering standpoint, a second-best approach.

The proper way is to do what they do with locomotives. A small turbine the size of a turbocharger(or smaller) sips just enough fuel to charge the batteries. The entire rest of the car is electric.

No wierd start/stop the engine nonsense. No dual power transfer modes or other kludgy transmission. Just a simple generate more energy that we use driving scenario.

I think it will come in a few years, though. I've seen a couple of prototypes of this sort of design and they work amazingly well and have about half the parts under the hood. The last one I saw was multi-fuel as well. LPG and this type of setup are made for each other.

What turbines? ALL... diesel electric locomotives I've ever been within earshot of are piston diesel engines ... that drive a generator ... which powers an electric motor. No switching to batteries either. Perhaps you did not convey your thoughts clearly?

He's talking about a (small) system for an automobile. He probably doesn't like diesel engines (note the LPG side note) because of their particulate emissions.

US Auto makers were about to start on development of diesel hybrids when newer rules for particulate and NOx emissions from diesels were promulgated that will make it very difficult to meet. Diesel hybrids are probably the most efficient thing going with current technology.

Floyd

Your turbine still has to provide enough power to handle the maximum sustained load the car will be under, plus all conversion losses, plus enough to charge the battery while you're crusing. Your electric motor/battery system has to be large enough to run the entire car. If nothing else, you're going to run into space constraints with this system.

I'd like to see this system too; I think the original Prius is ridiculously Rube-Goldbergian and I'm not certain it or the Insight actually provide any real benefit from the hybrid part of it. But I think there are real engineering obstacles with a serial hybrid, not just some matter of "courage".

Approximately 9/2/03 10:33, Philip® uttered for posterity:

Dunno if they are still around or not, but there used to be some 1-2 car local trains running on the old Great Northern spur lines that had turbine engines. Suspect it is simply easier to mate a diesel to an electric than it is a turbine, or cheaper.

About time! After watching Asians trying to parallel park, I have come to the conclusion they shouldn't be driving. It's laughable to watch, but really not funny when you realize that these people are driving on the same roads at the same time as you are. I don't know who passes them on their drivers' exam, but they should be fired.

Ya know how to blind an Asian? Put a sheet of glass (prescription or safety) in from of him.