Toyota Energy saver.....??

[ozpont]

Where there is bright marketing.. there is all too often hidden facts... Toyota's Prius is but one.. Worth Reading...

Toyota factory turns landscape to arid wilderness

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=417227&in_page_id=1770

[Larry]

I wonder if Al Gore knows about this.... but then again I guess it wouldn't be politically correct to mention it now that he is part of the Hollywood set!

[50scars]

Toyota Prius is a wonderful car, if you drive it exactly like they designed it to be driven. However, if you live somewhere that requires getting on the freeway and running for your life, the Prius will do it, but you will not get anything like the mileage they claim. Unless you have to charge the batteries manually every now and again, because you don't drive enough on the gas engine to charge them, you will never save the extra cost of the car in gas mileage. And if you keep it long enough, you will have to replace the battery pack, which is NOT JUST $98.

[Nomadac]

[50scars]

I have a friend who is a college professor. He owns a Toyota Prius. One of the early ones with the rear skirts. He lives in a Subdivision that is off a state highway, with a supposed speedlimit of 55; you know what that means. So he drives maybe 500 feet at 20 MPH, then has to get out and run with traffic for about 2 miles. Then he gets on the Interstate, where the limit is 65; again, you know what that means. He drives about 20 miles on that, then gets off at the exit about 500 feet from the entrance to campus, where he drives about 20 MPH for less than a mile. He constantly complains that the Corolla he traded in got better mileage than his Prius does. I guess it is 4 or 5 years old. He does get great mileage in town, but we are noticing that we are having to charge the battery pack if he drives a lot in slow or stop and start traffic, and if he lets the car sit for a couple weeks, like when he flies to California to visit relatives, it will be totally dead when he returns. Believe me, it takes a while to recharge the battery pack, you don't just slap your 10 amp charger on overnight.

[Nomadac]

[50scars]

Like I said in my first post, you have to drive the car in the way it was designed to be driven if you are going to get the mileage as advertised.
On a flat level Illinois Freeway with no head wind, I have gotten over 35 MPG on the instant mileage of more than a few Crown Victorias. I am not about to try to tell you that they will deliver that all the time. I do know that over the 200,000 miles they tended to be around here, the dashboard display average MPG was around 23 on all of them.