40 mpg Prius vs 50 mpg European Diesel cars

Hope you find out. I'm doing the same, Bob. I believe the originator of the 40/50 comparison was trolling for the equally misinformed.

Makes me feel quite smug, Jean.

interesting, anyone know what causes better mileage in winter?

higher density of fuel due to cold? not running a/c? lower motor winding resistance due to cold?

is this a common phenomenon?

is it true for non-hybrid cars, or only hybrid cars?

Right, and recovering energy in the process, energy that can be used on the up-side.

It isn't true for hybrid cars if you winter where the snow falls.

According to the information on this site

there are 228 batteries roughly the size of a D-cell battery. There is a picture of the battery pack on the site.

I'm not sure that hybrid vehicles get better fuel economy in the winter than in the summer. For conventional internal combustion engines, the air is denser in cold weather so theoretically, the air-fuel mixture burns more completely. The engine takes longer to warm up in the winter so the air-fuel mixture is enriched a little longer so in the real world, most people tend to get better fuel economy in warmer weather.

I was in DaNang during the TET offensive. I had been scheduled for a short TDY to Hue, but it was postponed because of the anticipated offensive that only we MI types believed was going to happen. That was very fortunate because everyone in the office that I would have been at was either killed or captured by the NVA.

-- Michelle

. . .

Bob Wilson

Thanks, bookmarked for later consumption. I'm told by the service manager at my dealer the battery pack is surrounded by computers and not user serviceable. Amazing technology and I think it will only get better.

I have a friend who has a hybrid Highlander and likes it. He just checked mileage in city driving and it was 36 mpg city driving. Not bad for a vehicle of that size and weight. I just had my 04 Sienna on a road trip this week and I checked the mileage, 27.63 MPG, also not bad for a 4400 lb vehicle, gas only. I'm a prudent driver which helps.

Amazing luck. I'm happy we both made it out alive. I hope to make it back to the Vietnam memorial at least once more in my lifetime.

You know, in my Passat (which I'm going to sell), I always seemed to have so much energy left when I came to a stop (even when I started braking/slowing WAY back), that I found myself thinking about that a lot....

You can go to toyota.com and look at Prius faq's and info about hybrid technology to learn why the Prius does not offer optional battery packs, plug-in chargers, etc., even the response to a question about whether the Ford Escape uses Toyota's technology (it does).

It is natural human nature for people to think that their ideas are better than what the automakers have designed and built, but in most cases, the automotive engineers have thought everything through pretty thoroughly. Other factors to keep in mind are the marketability of a product, production and retail costs, and utility of the product.

Okay, I see his point. Fair enough, if the flexibility you go on to describe can be made to work.

My short-term expectation is that battery technology will shrink the current pack. This would (a) release more space in the rear of the car (for normal uses like carting around random rubbish) and/or (b) allow more battery capacity in much the same volume.

yeah, I wonder what the corporate image makers were thinking with that name? Is it supposed to suggest anything at all?

The only association that 'Prius' brings to my mind is 'Priapus', but maybe that's just me?

"recharges."

Oh, I do not think I am smarter than Toyota's engineers. I figure they are thinking about this or have thought about it and the idea has been at least temporarily shelved under the heading of "infeasible" for reasons I don't know or "unmarketable, except to that DH character and a few loons like him."

:-)

I will check the faq, though, and see what they had to say. I hadn't realized they would bother to put up a faq that included speculative items like this.

*** Posted via a free Usenet account from ***

According to the faq section of Toyota's web site, "Prius" is derived from the Latin prefix meaning "to go before"

It is not true, the real thing is that the Prius has lower mpg's at winter, it is because it's main target is to be a close to zero emission vehicle, so at colder weather the catalyzer needs more gases going through it to keep at good work temperature to avoid contamination.

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You would still have your petrol engine for times when the battery got low. But at least you could arrange to always start out with a full charge. If you did a lot of short journeys, it would vastly reduce overall fuel consumption.