Car That Can Park Itself Put on Sale by Toyota

We already covered this. Because of the batteries and drag coeficient and gained efficiency, we're talking about a 30-40HP 4-stroke engine.

That's going to make a difference and with the new Prius getting voer 50mpg, a true hybrid design could do much better on milege as they just dropped several hundred pounds of weight in batteries and engine and got better efficiency at the same time.

Oops. Problem here is that downshifting works, buit revs go way up and mileage drops fast. The hybrids suffer no such problems, which is the big deal. Oh - the electric motors offer huge amounts of torque assistance. Comparable to a V6, actually.

Um - gosh I see the 2004 Prius at over 50mpg on the highway, too.

As opposed to the corporate welfare to Chrysler in the '80s? Or, to keep on the topic of "new technology" how about the corporate welfare for GM for the EV-1?

Much of the corporate welfare was set up for the American companies, they just abandoned the market for the Japanese to get the benefits.

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

1997, IIRC, in Japan. 7 years is enough time if you, say, drive a delivery or taxi service. 28K a year. Doable if you were to look at the very first ones made.

Your "complaint" is never mentioned because it does not exist in properly operating fuel injected cars. ALL automatic transmissions slip so your second belief is also a canard. BTW, two years ago I drove a new Honda Civic with a CVT transmission. A novel idea from Honda that the public turned thumbs down on ... as evidenced by the deep discounts and lower resale value of Civics so equipped. Does Honda still off CVT in a Civic anymore?

Chrysler Turbine Car:

Huh! You are wrong on both counts!!

It was a cab driver using a Prius as a cab in Vancouver, lots of city driving. Just look up the article in their online paper. You'll see that he made it to 209,000 miles (300,000 km) without any trouble. Then he sold the Prius back to Toyota, since it contained such great real-world aging data.

And the electric drive train does in fact get used on the highway.

100% (yes, 100 percent) of the time that the engine produces thrust for the wheels on the highway it also creates electricity. That electricity is used for recharging the battery-pack. When it is fully charged, the pack is drawn from for a little bit until there's room for charging again. It's a continuous top-off cycle that only gets interrupted when additional thrust is needed. At that point, the electricity is routed to the thrust motor for immediate consumption instead. In short, it gets used A LOT, just the opposite as you thought.

JOHN

My position is 2000 model cars are plenty clean enough considering they run on gasoline. This opinion comes from the perspective of what cars used to emit at the beginning of Smog Wars. I also believe the ever tightening EPA and CARB regulations reflect bureaucracies working to justify their existence via tighter tail pipe and evaporative emissions than ANY real life need. Today's gasoline cars probably emit a fraction of 1% of their historic uncontrolled exhaust emissions. The original goal has been accomplished.

I mostly agree. MOST of us know that racking up a bunch of miles in a short time is easier on the entire car than say ... pizza delivery by a teenager. ;-)

We're guilty of being pseudo "early adopters".

The Insight is a two-seater with significant expense in light weight materials and design, as well as aerodynamic tuning. It is the aerodynamic tuning that gave it better highway mileage than city mileage, when the Prius had better city mileage than highway.

But the performance isn't poor. Because of the nature of electrical motors, the car feels quicker than it is, especially for all the people that are used to shifting at 2k rpm. For people used to running cars up to redline to get the most from them, they will notice that the upper end isn't there when the electric boost wanes. Both were done well with hiding the fact they are slower on paper from the people that drive and buy them.

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

You would be surprised. While fuel economy is not an issue when someone buys an SUV, it is a significant issue for someone who owns an SUV. They read the low EPA numbers, but fail to realise what those numbers mean. Ten thousand miles and over three hundred fill-ups later, they are gob- smacked by the reality of driving a gas-guzzler. My brother was flabbergasted that his then new Expedition got worse mileage than my clapped- out '76 T-bird (I drove with a lighter foot). I suspect that a lot of money could be made with a hybrid Lincoln Navigator or Cadillac Escalade.

I was part of the market survey for the hybrid Ford Escape, that may yet see the light of day. They were expecting something like 38mpg city and

26mpg highway. The highway improvement was marginal, if not negligible, but the soccer moms would see dramatic reductions in fuel costs.

Once you replace the big diesel with a comparable gas turbine generator (which will be way smaller), there is lots of weight freed up for batteries and power electronics. There may even be some weight/volume for a resistor bank when regenerative braking needs some dynamic braking to control speed on grades, or the batteries are full.

I think the problem is that not enough trucks are sold to amortise the engineering costs of developement. Passenger vehicles are made by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, so developement costs are much smaller on a per vehicle basis.

Chrysler never receieved corporate welfare. The government DID NOT loan Chrysler money, it merely insured loans from private financial institutions. And Chrysler paid back the loans early. Stop trying to beat that non-existent dead horse.

So the performance really IS poor, it just doesn't appear so to people who didn't use even use the meager performance of the cars they've driven before.

Not especially worse than a Diesel of equivalent power.

As the range in operating speed is very small, a pair of stubs off of the exhaust pipe, of calculated length, can provide 'active' noise cancellation.

Insulating the turbine-generator unit is helped by its small size. To cool the exhaust, you sacrifice some efficiency by driving a fan to mix cool air with the exhaust.

We are not talking about a steam car that produces no power; until, a head of steam is raised, but a TRUE HYBRID that can drive the wheel with battery power as we wait for the turbine to spool up. As we are going with a small turbine, it will take longer than turbo lag, but the turbine was never meant to drive the car, only to periodically top up the batteries, or to supply the electricity needed for cruising.

This is an issue, but just as cars now have fans that will run, even after the engine has been shutdown, if necessary, the turbine can have controls that provide for a proper spin down, even after shutdown of the vehicle.

I am not sure about this one. The only referent that I have to the minimum time between runs is for large, steam turbo-generating stations, where there is both a minimum economical on-time, and a minimum time where it makes more sense to idle thanto shutdown and restart.

However, even if it is a real problem, it is cured by simply sizing the battery pack to last for longer than the minimum time between runs.

No, the reason for a lack of production automobiles based on turbines is the abysmal part-load performance, the poor throttle response, and lack of anything useful to do with the weight saved. In a series hybrid, the weight savings can be used for more batteries.

Agreed...'tiny' is very subjective. FWIW, you're going to have to have an engine capable of generating enough power to drive the motor: equal or slightly smaller hp as the electric motor itself, or you'll eventually deplete the batteries on long trips. The beauty of locomotive-type propulsion is not in the efficiency. You lose some of that every time you convert from one type of energy to another.

jak

I was going to try to ignore this post, but it's just plain wrong. Toyota has been making a profit from the Prius for several years. It's been in the papers, the press releases and on the newsgroups. But there are still folks like C. E. White who think that it can't be done without losing money.

You guys do realize that the IRS did not decide that the Prius qualified for a tax deduction until 2002, right? That means that the early purchasers did not have that incentive to buy and Toyota still sold all they made.

Please, do SOME research before making claims that the Evil Japaneese (TM) are taking over the car business.

Daniel

Clean enough is being pragmatic. All that electric vehicle crap is NOT cost effective nor is the relentless search for zero emissions ... while using gasoline. It's like searching for the Holy Grail. A religion.

This will come as a surprise to you. In a period of two weeks during August, more than 11,000 elderly French men and women died of heat stroke and elevated smog created by the heat and sunlight. Even if you shut down all of Euope's NOx producing vehicles, these frail people would have died. Does Europe have strick smog regulations? What about all those diesel cars? You'll save a lot more people by not HITTING them with cars.

False. You need to park your ignorant butt in Mexico City for a summer where air pollution is really killer.

Under the portion of the driving cycle where the engine is not run (or minimally) ... probably true. Once the Prius engine is running, there is a very small difference (on the grander scale of historic auto emissions) between a Prius and any other comparably sized gasoline propelled car.

All your whimsical dreams have a price. My contention from a historic perspective is that the emissions goal has been accomplished. You can practically lock youself up in a closed garage with a running automobile and not die of carbon monoxide poisoning with current cars running low sulfur gasoline. People in the pre-catalyst era used to commit suicide this way in a matter of 30 minutes.

Agreed, Floyd! But we have John1701a ... a religous zealot proselytizing for hybrids.