Chrysler working on electric cars and plug-in hybrids (AutoSpies.com)

Insurance is lower on hybrids? Why? Where does sales tax come in? Interest on financing?

This is, in short, why Consumer Reports is regarded by people who come in without a "they don't take advertsising so they must be Pure In Heart" bias as completely without a shred of credibility: they're cooking their numbers to get the Right Answer.

I agree - but...

The comparison cost calculations all assume mixed highway/city driving.

I have a neighbor who bought one of those Priuses a few months ago.

He just told me the other day that he just bought his first tank of gas for it, and has close to 1200 miles on the odometer.

Of course I didn't believe it, so I started asking him questions about it.

Turns out he has never driven the vehicle faster than about 40 mph and average speed is more like about 20. We live in the city, close in, everything he drives to is connected to him via feeder roads that are posted speed of 35Mph.

So, he basically has no wind resistance of any kind to deal with, and none of his fuel is being spent on braking effort.

I'm still not convinced he's getting 1100 miles on a tank of gas, but it should serve to illustrate that the hybrids shine the most in city driving. And there's a lot of people like my neighbor out there who live in the city and commute around the city and getting on a freeway is a major thing for them.

Ted

Here are a couple of brain teasers for the people who don't understand physics and therefore lack critical thinking skills on this subject:

(1) So would he have done better or worse if he had taken the batteries out (excess weight - only help mileage if a lot of regenerative braking is taken advantage of) and run only on the IC engine that it came with? With that implied fuel mileage he obviously did not take advantage of the extra acceleration that the batteries have the potential of affording - he was just hauling around dead weight.

(2) This fellow who got 1200 miles on a tank of gas, would he get even

*greater* distance on that tank if he had had even *more* stop and go (use of the regenerative braking) than he did in the driving situations that got him that 1200 miles? Could he have gotten perhaps 1250 or 1300 miles on that same tank had there been even more stop and go?

(Those are rhetorical questions for anyone who understands physics. They only are brain teasers for those who are subject to the "golly gee whizz" factor.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

No offense to your friend but I would have to call bullshit on that one. The Prius holds 11.9 gals of gas. I'll assume he ran it low and had to add 10gals. EPA number is 48mpg with city driving and he's claiming to get 120?

Steve B.

Maybe his wife is pulling a joke on him. Adding gas without telling him.

Prius's are in short supply. Maybe it was a demo and came with 700 miles on it and he forgot.

That to me is much more likely. He's recently retired and has no inherent need to buy absolutely brand new, his main concern was monthly costs remaining constant and lower.

Ted

Adding weight always reduces fuel mileage no matter what kind of driving you do.

Hey, Bill, stop spilling the beans on my new business plan for making a million dollars on my new perpetual motion advanced engine design!

Ya see I figure to build the regenerative brakes into the engine, and feed them with an oscillator circuit. If I get them to come on something like 120 times a second, I can generate ac power and feed that into a washing machine motor I put into the trunk to feed the rear drive wheels.

Ted

Hybrids are effective in stop & Go city driving. However if the cost too much and the battery replacement is too expensive the cost saving can be of ones imagination. Here cabs are very successful using the Prius, but they can easily drive them 100K miles per year.

The engine being off when not needed is a very significant saving. No engine idling at stop lights.

Yes a hybrid's saving is mostly on the city driving. There is little saving in highway driving.

He's probably old and forgot he refilled it.

Even so, if you look just at gas, 4 year payback on a hybrid is very reasonable.

I actually saw a "report"

about that guy in France who's designing and building those cars driven by compressed air. The narrator actually said (towards the very end of the "report") that they could put a compressor on board the car, run by the engine, so the engine could compress its own air to be used by the engine, "a no cost fillup ever". How many people in the general public and politicians would hear that and believe it and make policy decisions to subsidize it based on that kind of crap? Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')