Trip and hmmmmm......

XS11E · 2007-03-20T18:28:15+00:00

Went from Phoenix to San Marcos, California last weekend for my sister's birthday, drove over Thursday and came home Sunday.Weird Weather:Two years ago I did the same trip, had the top down, wore fairly heavy jacket and was a bit chilly at times. Passing through Indio it was warm but I didn't need to remove the jacket. This year, I stopped at the first rest stop west of Phoenix and put the top up and the AC on, it was almost 100F.Gas Mileage:From San Marcos to Blythe, top up, AC on, steady 80mph except through the mountains on 371 and 74, AC off and closer to 60mph produced 31.5mpg and that's the best the Miata has ever done! Maybe it's true that the AC costs less mileage than having the top or windows down?Gas Prices:Didn't see any gasoline west of the Colorado River less than $3.059 and some was as high as $3.799! I'm afraid that's an indicator of what the rest of the country may see in the very near future, let's hope not.Speed:It's weird to be cruising at 80mph and be one of the slowest cars on the road. I figure 10mph over is as fast as I can feel safe from the CHP, they were out there and giving citations but most cars didn't even slow down when they went by! Are they really that crazy or am I over cautious?

Mar 20, 2007 23 Replies

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Chris D'Agnolo 19 years ago

But guys, there are always more efficient / less efficient ways to expend said energy. You don't have to blast it all out at once creating a hi performance experience, it could be more 'trickled out' to keep the gas engine from running so much. Lanny seem to understand where I was trying to go with this. Let the electric only help out to the point of ~10 second 0-60 time and that leaves that much more energy still stored up to keep the gas engine off more or longer. IMHO they are missing out on a rather large group of people who'd like to be as efficient as possible and could easily live with even 11 or even 12 second 0-60 sprints. Most non turbo diesels are still pretty darn slow right?

Chris

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Marc Gerges 19 years ago

There's already a way of doing this, at least in my Prius. It involves not putting the pedal to the metal all the time.

Works surprisingly well. :-)

cu .\\arc

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Leon van Dommelen 19 years ago

Absolutely. If the point was the car companies big-brothering their customers, they could just hand them directions to the bus stop and build them a car that does not start.

The idea of hybrids is to provide what the customer wants at less gas, not to dictate to them what they want.

Leon

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Chris D'Agnolo 19 years ago

Leave it up to us consumers ! Aaaaaarrrgghhh, we can't be trusted! Just kidding, you both make a good point. I guess I just find it hard to believe that they couldn't finagle considerably better mileage if they'd used gearing / electronics that yielded reasonable performance instead of exceptional. If they think the consumer has to have that high performance in order to drop cash for the hybrid, I'm betting they are wrong. However, since it's their cash that's being bet, they've made the trade-offs they no doubt see fit.

Chris

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