Car Tech forum: Poll: Would you consider buying a hybrid or alternative-fuel car?

I know that the trend is going towards people buying hybrid cars. My husband and I own 2 Corvettes, we belong to a corvette club here in Chattanooga and I am from era where hotrods where the big thing and we raced them up and down the street. We just sold our 62 chevy street rod that I raced here at the racetrack. It had 535hp. We have 2 cars and a motorcycle that takes premium gas. I personally love this! I would not change this for anything.

To the guy who makes up stuff not found in other peoples posts.

Read the young women's post carefully, where was she "complaining"? It's not there. Since you clearly didn't read her post, perhaps I can make a highlight of it: "I personally love this! I would not change this for anything." How, exactly, do you pretend this clear expression of enjoyment of ones vehicle of choice, is a complaint?

Where do you see her say "I got this pamphlet from the oil companies and realized, yes my gas engine is the best thing on the planet!"?

Get a grip. Not everyone is always unhappy with what they have. Not everyone is complaining about everything in life. Not everyone cares about efficiency ratings and "who killed the electric car". Some people are happy with what they drive. Some people are satisfied with their lot in life. Some people are not consumed with what "big oil" "big three" "big whatever" is doing, nor do they blame them for every insignificant thing that happens in their lives.

You want to talk about new technologies that are out there? Great. But I have a huge problem with you dumping on a young women who is enjoying her car. You have no right to try and steal someone else's joy just because you have some personal problem with the thing they are enjoying.

To the young women, enjoy your husband, your family, and your corvettes and your club, and do not ever let any sniveling weasel try and take that away. This is America, we have freedom, and that is all there is to it.

The Hybrids of today are worse for our environment then the gas powered cars that exist. The only thing worse is the full electric cars...
When you drive a hybrid, it will not last as long as a gas powered car, the hybrid systems over time wear out, they require new batteries to be used, and if there are issues you now need a mechanic and an electrician to fix the issue. The batteries if they are NiCad or Lithium, they need to be recycled, during the recycle process they release a stream of gas into the atmosphere which pollutes the planet in ways that it would take driving your gas powered car 200K miles to reach. The Elecric cars, although a great idea, and honestly when we can convert all of our power plants to solar, and wind. this alternative will be something that even myself would look into.
But as of now you are falsely informed. The electric cars suffer from the same battery issues, they may last longer, or shorter.. really depends on your use of them. However you are now talking a 400+lb battery you are burning into the atmosphere. The equal to this would be driving 400K miles in a hummer. (EPA on a hummer is 12mpg) if that wasnt bad enough, your claims that oh, but electric is nuclear and that is clean, you were lied to my friend, it is not clean. the radiation that is produced from splitting the atoms are stored in tanks, which require constant cooling, this cooling requires power to keep large pools of water cool. During this process the radiation although contained, it will still cause some radioactive seepage into the water table.. so now instead of causing air polution, you can explain to your great grand children why they have 3 arms... the other form in the US is to get your power from coal.. which i dont think i need to explain this one to you. So for now i will drive my 500hp 9mpg Super eater mustang and enjoy it...

I had a Honda Civic with a 5-speed manual. The best I could do is 28 mpg, mostly 70% city/30% freeway. I know this guy who had an old Daewoo Daihatsu with a manual; he got around 40 mpg. I just bought a new Toyota Prius. I had it for only a month. I just filled it up and got 43 mpg, about 70% city/30% freeway. The Prius is classified as a midsized car, and believe me it is very roomy inside. It drives like a regular car, and while I won't win any races, I have no trouble passing or merging on the freeway. Even little cars like the Toyota Yaris and Honda Fit with a manual don't come close to the fuel efficiency of the Prius. Unless you have a little subcompact with a 1.0 liter engine and 60 horses, and you drive like a turtle, maybe you can come close to getting 40 mpg. Read Consumer Reports. They rated the Prius as the most fuel efficient car in North America, followed by the Honda Civic Hybrid, the Toyota Camry Hybrid, the Toyota Yaris (manual) & the Honda Fit (manual). What do you drive?

Do you even know how a hybrid works? Read up on HEV's before posting possible nonsense.
If you're convinced that manuals and hybrids are in the same ballpark regarding gas mileage, name any manual car, equivalent to the Toyota Prius, that gets anywhere near its gas mileage and is roughly the same size (not some 1 seater 1 liter engine, 1 cubic meter intertior space turtle shell of a car...).

It does seem that the number of manual transmission cars in the US has dropped in recent years, but I believe they are still in huge numbers abroad. One country, the Philippines, has a tremendous number of manual transmission vehicles and I would not be surprised if the case is similar in other countries where the price of an automatic transmission is too high a premium or where fuel conservation is a high priority.

That being said, I have heard that CVTs or Continuously Variable Transmissions can give very close efficiency numbers when compared to manual transmissions. I have also heard that they are easier to service when compared to regular automatics, but I'm not sure whether it is true or not. Perhaps some other knowledgeable person can weigh in on the how beneficial CVTs are and why most of the hybrids I have read about seem to use them.

I still don't know anything definitive about the pros and cons of CVTs but Wikipedia has some information. Apparently, Infinitely Variable Transmissions are a type of CVT and they are more efficient than the standard sort. Of course, due to Wikipedia's flexible nature, I am never sure if what I read there is actually true. He's a link to the article for the more technically inclined. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuously_variable_transmission

Hi Bob --- Is it because you have been assimilated into the "Hybrid Hive" and now have special "relativistic" powers or simply because you have the inside track with my Uncle Al, that you were able to make your Bakatcha post to Lee at 5/2/07 6:29 PM, while Lee made his primary Car Tech Forum: Poll post at 5/3/07 11:55 AM on the following day?

I am disappointed to learn that you, your dealer and Honda have still been unable to resolve the "not-so-lean-burn" control software problem with your 2006 Civic Hybrid.

I have had my new 2007 Prius going on five months now. I keep a top-level driving log, and as I rattle this off to you, I have driven it for 4383 miles, and sipped down 73.167 gallons of Regular Unleaded petrol since putting it into service. For this same distance my Mercedes would have guzzled down ~292 gallons of Premium Unleaded gasoline.

My individual City-Around Town and Highway-Interstate fuel economy actuals (measured by refill method) to date are, City: 62.3 mpg (around town speed 30-45 mph) and Highway: 54.8 mpg (66 mph target Interstate cruise speed w/ intermitent A/C use). These FE numbers are mostly with the A/C off (soon to change with summer coming upon us). I also employed and continue to employ, "Pulse and Glide" and "Warp Stealth" Hybrid Hypermiling driving techniques to achieve and maintain these "stellar" FE numbers as well as keeping the tires inflated to 44 psi.

I initially commented on my 2007 Prius in CNets Automobile Reviews back in January, and have not changed my positive opinion of the Prius expressed there. It is my opinion that the production GEN II HSD Prius is an Engineers Dream that some how survived having the "suits in the corner office" ruin it by "productizing it" for mass production. I do not just "like" mine I "LOVE" it. When the "100 mpg" 2009 GEN III Prius comes out in two years, I will be trading my GEN II 2007 in on the new GEN III 2009. JP

NY times is testing it on their fleet of distribution trucks either as we speak or very shortly. Source: Diesel Power magazine July 2007. Article starts on Page 190. The test is with Dalm/Chr and the New York Power Authority, and Con ED. Hopefully this will become an orderable option soon....

Let's compare apples to apples here. If you're going to compare manual transmission versus automatic transmission, then the next logical comparison would be against the Prius' specific transmission, not the car itself. While I support the use of hybrids in order to reduce emissions, I think we should be fair when evaluating and making comparisons. After all, a lot of factors go into making the Prius a fuel efficient vehicle. The transmission it uses is only part of the big picture.

Have you even seen how the CVT/PSD (Power Split Device) on the Prius even works? It has no loss from a torque converter like on an automatic transmission. Some CVTs on non-hybrids do use power sapping torque converters.

Take a look at http://eahart.com/prius/psd/ and http://prius.ecrostech.com/original/PriusFrames.htm (under Understanding Your Prius)?

BTW, if you check the CVT, 4 speed auto, and 6 speed manual versions of the 2007 Nissan Versa at http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/sbs.htm, the MY 2008+ EPA ratings are:
CVT: 26/33, 28 combined
4 speed auto: 24/32, 27 combined
6 speed manual: 26/31, 28 combined

So, the CVT does help the cars perform better in the EPA tests.

If CVTs were less efficient, it'd seem illogical (that besides Toyota putting them on because of their HSD implementation) that Honda and Ford would put them on their hybrids too.

I will admit that Car and Driver in a recent column (can't find the article online) did not find any improvement of a CVT equipped Versa vs. either a manual or auto (don't remember which), contradicting Nissan's claims.

The CVT in the Prius (et al.) is another of the things that takes some getting used to when driving a hybrid ... for example, my mind has had to adapt to hearing a constant engine speed even though the car is smoothly accelerating ...

I have always assumed that the primary advantage of a CVT in a hybrid is that it can be used to keep the small engine operating in its most efficient ranges a higher percentage of the time versus a transmission with only 4 to 6 discrete gears to play with ... that being the case, and given that most cars are (hopefully) designed with top gears that put the engine in an efficient mode at highway speeds, one would expect somewhat more benefit from a CVT during variable speed (e.g., in town) or variable terrain (e.g., hilly roads) driving than on a relatively flat highway ... the Nissan EPA numbers would seem to support that conclusion, albeit by such small amounts that it could be mostly due to rounding errors ... but it at least makes for interesting discussions around the engineering water cooler ...

Regards,
Greg

I did the math last year on hybrids, mpg, price, all that cool stuff. considering the price of the car (I was seriously interested in Honda Hybrid), the price of gas now, and the MPG, it worked out to be feasible ONLY if I kept the car for fifteen years and drove it continually. In our New England climate a fifteen year old car is considered a junker, ready for the crusher. The hybrid boasted of getting something like 34 mpg, which was supposed to be impressive, except that my y2k Honda Civic regularly gets 35 highway and 34/around town! So, where's the savings?
I can't wait fifteen years to get my money back, thank you.

i'd buy parts to build a hybrid or alt fuel car, woodgas fired boiler to run my car on steam is my preference. i won't need a car till i can finally get back to the countryside, stuck in a city i don't need a car, the bus is fine, and the busses here run on a biodiesel/fish oil mix. so when i'm not walking or developing sores on my bum from my computer seat i'm using alt fuels to get around.