bernardos70

George Lopez said it:

"'I do 60mpg!'
'Yeah, but you look like a p*to doing it!'"

x_rayted711

There was an article or post around here before about how it would take like 12 years at $4.00 a gallon for the Prius to be worth the $10,000 price over the xB.

chapascion

My question without reading the article is does it take into consideration on how these car were mfg? One would think that has a lot to do with it too, considering parts, mfg lay out, etc etc.

SSQ

Oh No, I am not bashing french, but just their cars. I own a Peugeot 407 in asia and instead of it being the car I drive when I am there, it's pretty much the car I have to call the service people to come look at everytime when I am there. It's mechanically fine, but the electrical stuff is just a mess.

French cars are KNOWN to be troublesome in Europe and Asia, and I knew about the reliability when I bought it based on reviews from a survey conducted by my favorite TV show about cars (happens to be British), and my dad who owns (notice I'm not using "drives") a Renault. But there just that "Frenchness" that makes you really want to have it in your garage, even if it'll just sit there.

t-ak-box

That was great scrasm. Because only a-hole would really believe that.

Never let others think for you. Always think for yourself.

eddo456

If they were to put a hybrid engine in some of those extremely small vehicles then i am sure they would move to the front of that list, the prius is is last because it is much larger, duh. I wonder how many people have seen some of those cars at the front, half of americans would not be able to fit into them, we are a bunch of fatties.

GetCaughtDead

I hear that arguement all too often, and it makes me really sad. I'm not directing this toward you specifically, in fact I'm glad you mentioned that. I'm also not saying the Prius is a good arguement, because like someone else said, it's really not very 'green' when you look at the overall picture. It's also an apple, if the xB were an orange. But let's take the Civic for example because it comes in both standard and hybrid configurations. I don't have the specific numbers and I don't care quite enough to dig them up, but it doesn't matter.

Anyway, I'm always hearing people talk about how you have to drive the hybrid Civic for X number of miles, or X number of years or whatever before the gas savings will break even with the extra cost of the hybrid over the standard setup. My response is always the same: "So?" I mean, money is important an all, but does it HAVE to save you wads of cash to make you wanna stop putting so much crap into the air? That's so American that it makes me wanna ride a makeshift raft to Cuba. Ironically, there are easily 10x as many people who would gladly shell out a higher price for an American car (even though they're some of the worst cars on the road) over a "foreign" car, simply because of where it's made (or "where the money goes", as my dad puts it when I mention the fact that Toyota makes so many of it's cars right here).

I completely understand that when we get to the point where greener cars can actually cost less, that's when we'll see a real shift in the market, but we have to start somewhere. It's like those people who scoff at the bajillionares who will cough up a couple million dollars for a few days in space, even though those rich white guys are simply subsidizing space travel for the future generations by funding new developments. It's this sort of attitude that only makes change take longer. And we obviously don't have forever.

I'm not saying that every 18 year old kid should pick up a third part-time job so they can buy a new hybrid. We all wish for cars that we can't quite reach. I'm just saying that all things being equal, the price savings on fuel will always be nothing compared to the price savings of a world that doesn't suck.

etli

For fuel efficiency, just give me a freaking 88-94 Honda Civic CRX. 3 cyl 1.0 L engine. 50 mpg city / 60 mpg hwy

Or hell, give me a motorized bicycle - 150 mpg

emiller

That is so true. There were dozens of gas powered cars back then from pretty much all the manufacturers (American, Japanese, and European) that could get the same mileage or better than the current hybrids. They were also about 750 lbs lighter than the cars from the same class today. All the extra weight needs more power to move the same speed and Americans like powerful cars so they had to add a little more for that. It just killed the mileage. Id give up 40 hp if they could make the tC 2500 lbs.

SSQ

In terms of pollutant emission, I don't think it's the cars that arn't on the list that are making the damage. It's not even the SUVs, trucks, or Mustangs. It's the drivers.

You see here every morning and afternoon, there would be bunch of trucks, vans, SUVs, on the road, all with only one person driving it. WHY? I have always know americans being a tad heavy, but does it really require a V8 to power an american? No... This is the practice from american drivers that is killing Earth.

There are some cities that has car pooling lanes, that's it. It's just not enough. If global warming is real (not going to go there), tough measures should be taken!

Here's a crazy idea (please don't flame me). In addition to the british concept of road pricing (taxing based on distance traveled per year), and a more powerful gas guzzler tax annually, pass a law that requires a certain amount of people to be in a car anytime it's on the road based on the size of the engine.

For example, a 1.8L Corolla or a 1.5L Accent would require a minimum of 1 person in there (driver included, so you can drive these cars to work alone). 2.4L tC and Camry? 2 people. 3.5L Accord? 3 people. How about that 8.4L Viper? well, that guy better be driving with 8 people on there or else he's Viper will be impounded for one month every person he's missing (6 months if there's only 1 driver and 1 passenger). This would be on assumption that cars that are allowed on the road already passed a certain standard of emission regulations.

I know I know, this is a stupid idea. I have too much time on my hands.

GetCaughtDead

How about if vehicle registration fees increased exponentially with engine displacement?

$registration = $25+liters^5

1.0 liters = $26 registration
2.4 liters = $105 registration
3.0 liters = $268 registration
4.0 liters = $1,049 registration
5.0 liters = $3,150 registration (watch out, Rustang owners!)
6.2 liters = $9,186 registration (guess what? your H2 sucks anyway )
8.4 liters = $41,846 registration! (because you NEED 8.4 liters! )

JDMJim

and my 3.0 V-6 from 1993 still gets better mileage than the 2.4 Toyota engine from present day. hmmm....

Zman

A Toyota 1.5L should be put in EVERYTHING! haha Seriously, a Chevette or Metro would own with it.

ahs2m2

Panda 1.2 Dualogic
Now I've never heard of this car manufacturer.

Vlad1024

Why do old people need a northstar v8 in their cadillac to go 10 under the limit?

JDMJim

cuz nothing else will move that kind of heft from a standstill

SleeC-slc

1) All the money spent in mods to vehicles will never earn a dime, or even try to begin to, at least hybrids are trying to begin to save you some ca$$H.
2) In my opinion/rebuttle to those who do not believe in global warming I have to say what about your own health, what about your childrens health? Even if the excessive co2 emissions from the human race are not causing the global warming trend, these emissions (not only co2 but also many carcinogens found in fossil fuels) are lingering in our atmosphere and consequently resulting in adverse health effects in humans. Meaning essentially you are turning your car on closing you garage door, opening a couple small vents, and idling your car until your out of gas, in the case one has a family, you might as well lock them in your garage with you, and add another vehicle for each member of the family who drives/owns a car.
So even if you are partially retarted, and incredibly stubborn in your beliefs about global warming, your still killing yourself and everyone around you.
On the carpool lane...
3) The carpool lane is a hypocritical positive reinforcement for carpooling. yes it may spur on a few people to carpool more, or to begin carpooling, it is still adding extra pavement to the earth, a generally impermeable substance, which not only collects toxicity from the vehicles constantly driving on top of it (which undoubtedly will be swept away to the lowest body of water in the region, whether it be an irrigation ditch or the lake you bring your family for a hot summers day swim), but also creates vast amounts of runoff resulting in flashflooding, and subsequent erosion of sediments on hillsides, inflicting more damage upon water ecosystems. Not to mention all the water that would be/should be naturally percolating into the groundwater aquifer system, is not any longer, it is now flooding bodies of water for a day or so, without that groundwater to push water into the bodies of water over a long steady period, resulting in dried up bodies of water.
These expansions of roads also use precious materials, and if pavement, precious petroleum products. not to mention all the trucks used to transport matrial, trucks driven by consruction workers, areas exploited for the rock /concrete/ petroleum products needed for that road.
Sorry, I wasn't expectingto vent that much, but I did. umm I was going to go off on something else but I forgot what it was, and i have reached my spam threshhold for the day.

Question:
Has a tC ever been sucesfully converted into a hybrid? Using the camry hybrid system/transmission?


Thanks for listening to me.

GetCaughtDead

Still, it is worth noting that carpool lanes still help to alleviate traffic jams, which compound the problem of excess CO2 emissions greatly. Think about all those extra minutes that it takes one person to sit through some DC beltway rush-hour traffic, and then multiply it by 100's of 1,000's for all the other goobers waiting in the same line. That's a lot of cars to be sitting still, running, spewing CO2 for a combined thousands (read: "some huuuge number") of hours each day. As for the erosion problem, I agree with you, except that a highway would be there regardless of if they add another lane, so the runoff problem wouldn't exactly be avoided by not adding them. I see a net gain (or a net decrease in ecological destruction, if you want to call that a gain), but good points.

Carpool lanes are a marginal attempt at creating an economic advantage in reducing carbon output, because sadly, that's the only way that many people will be willing to change.

SleeC-slc

This is true, the thousands of Idling cars stuck in traffic do pose a problem, but is the solution really to just throw more resources at it? No. Rather than sit around and come up with the same thoughtless "solutions" such as the carpool lane why do we not attempt to try something thoughtful and creative that really gets to the bottom of the issue. Take the head of the snake to defeat it, rather than repeatedly poking at it and hoping it will go away.
there are solutions to these issues, and they are notthat complex, the only reason i can see why they have not yet been implemented in america on a large scale is because the supporters of the more logical solutions (at least in my view) do not have deep enough pockets to lobby against the heavyweights of the beurocratic, congressional lobbyist world.
One solution would be to implement no idling policies and laws, for instance at a stop light you add a 4th colored light above the red light. The light will function normally, from green to yellow to red, but if the light will stay red for longer than 10 seconds (the time at which idling begins to offset turning ones car off and back on, and begins to majorly effect the environment) the light will turn pink (or another color other than R,G, or Y). As the light countsdown closer to turning back to green it will go back to red, signifying to turn your car back on, stay that way for 5-10 seconds, and then change to green.
and what about the shortlights you say? when the light cycle is too short to be put in place it will...you guessed it, not be used.
and how to enforce this you say? police enjoy writing tickets for many petty laws, I am sure they would love to write tickets for this as well, and on the bright side it would be just.
The advanced computers which run most of the lights in america will undoubtedly be able to control this lighting system without much, or any, modification to the hardware, so the cost of the convert will be within reach.
Yes people will complain, "its cold outside" "its hot outside" then bring a blanket or a fan.
Maybe cars with more than half of their seating capacity filled (other than two seater vehicles which would have to have full seating capacity filled) could be exempt from the strict no idling laws. Which would then add an incentive to carpool not just on the highway, but in the city as well, and solve the problem of mom and baby in the excursion (6+ seats) getting to drive in the carpool lane

JDMJim

heaven forbid we ever have a decent mass transit system. at least in Chicago anyway. We can barely afford ours and it's all decrepid. no wonder everyone uses the H/W. one of the worst is I-55 cuz EVERYONE has to use it to live in the cheap booming areas of the city. It needs to be a Tollway. get the darn Semi's off the road. they snarl up all the traffic anyway