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That is not how a hybrid car works. from How a Hybrid Works

Though the basic principles of hybrid operation are the same -- that is, an electric motor is used to assist a gasoline engine to reduce fuel consumption and emissions -- there are two types of hybrids.

The first type can propel itself using only the electric motor at very low speeds. The electric motor also has the ability to kick in and help out the gasoline engine when more power is needed, such as when passing or climbing a steep grade. The Toyota Prius and the Ford Escape Hybrid fall into this category.

The second type uses the electric motor only to assist the gasoline engine when it needs extra boost, again during brisk acceleration or when going up a hill. The Honda Insight and Civic Hybrid fall into the second category.

Therefore, unless you're driving really really slow or keep on accelerating or climb up a hill, which all three are bad for mileage, I don't see how u can get infinite mpg.

I bought an Echo for half the price of a Prius, and I only get (officially) 3 less miles per gallon than I would if I was driving a Prius.

And, better yet (IMHO) are cars that trade off some of the increased efficiency for increased performance. The 2005 Accord Hybrid has both more power and better fuel economy than its prececessors.

making ugly little cars on which it is apparently mandatory to have the rear wheelwells covered like hearses?

Honda also makes/made Civic and Accord hybrid, and Toyota's Prius isn't THAT ugly. There is also Toyota's Highlander hybrid which as far as I know looks like a regular Highlander (and may outperform it but that bit was hearsay)

There are hybrid sports cars on the way, too. Looks like Mercedes has hybrid plans. (google it, there are several articles)

This reminds me of the [old] VW Beetle http://www.edmunds.com/media/reviews/generations/v w.beetle/1955.vw.beetle.500.jpg. This machine was air cooled. I do not know whether todys beetle is air cooled too.

Marketroids also brought us Maxima and Altima, and this didn't cause any brains to implode or robots to blow up. And these names didn't cause Nissan any hesitation in deciding to release the 2007 GT-R which will be superior in most respects.

I am referring to the much less publicised emission, efficiency and tax band rankings (UK, DE, a few others).

Either provide a link, or at the very the least, the title of the report.

[Me:] I'm not at all familiar with the three models you cited from Daihatsu and Toyota. Are they midsized (like the Prius), compact (like the Honda Civic), or subcompact (like the Honda Insight)? I just want to make sure it's a fair comparison.

[You:] (silence)

You didn't address this concern at all. I suspect you are comparing a midsized sedan to subcompact models. Even the Civic isn't a perfect comparison to the Prius since the Civic is a compact sedan. Still, it's the nearest-class competitor, so...

Double check the latest Civic specs. Honda has also updated the Civic engine train with the improvements that will go into the Hybrid Accord. It is just no as loud as Toyota about it. It now delivers 67+ mpg highway which is clearly better then the Toyota. In fact it is the only hybrid that approaches diesel as far as highway MPG are concerned.

No, you double-check. The fact sheet linked from that page states that the '05 Civic Hybrid (page 3) gets EPA results of 46/51 with the manual, 48/47 with the CVT. Your 67+ MPG is a made-up number. Also, here's a direct comparison between the two cars.

Also, as I pointed out in another comment, comparisons with diesel are not fair since diesel fuel has higher energy content than gasoline (130000 BTU per gallon, vs. 115000). Add about 13% to the gasoline car's MPG numbers before you start to compare apples and oranges on technical merits.

Found some test results. They got the accord hybrid up to 131 mph before the speed limiter kicked in. It was only at 4000 rpm. Red-line is 6500.

• Assassination Politics by Jim Bell
• The American Holocaust
• Anarchist's Cookbook
• Icky, unpatriotic, morbid beheading videos and such
• Bias to balance U.S. news bias
• Map of the White House
• Location of NYC water resevoirs
• Alex Jones loves progress!
• Economic terrorism #1 - buy nothing day
• Economic terrorism #2 - evil ad-skipping Tivo
• Economic terrorism #3 - running out of oil isn't a conspiracy theory.
• Economic terrorism #4 - the top 10 most fuel efficient cars of 2005 :)
• The widening wealth gap
• Paper trails make it much harder to steal elections
• Hamster dance!

If jackboot thug out there wants to arrest me for "implicitly supporting" the content of any of these links, feel free to abuse the PATRIOT ACT in order to force slashdot.org to reveal the IP address associated with this post, and in turn my ISP will reveal my name and home address associated with the DHCP lease (because I didn't bother to post through an anonymous proxy(s)). tinfoil_hat_mode off.

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Correction: most cars are 2800lbs or more, with the heat-seeking SUV's that americans like to drive weighing in at up to 6400 lbs.

Correction: most cars are 2800lbs or more, with the heat-seeking SUV's that americans like to drive weighing in at up to 6400 lbs.

Please step on brake, gas, and clutch simultaneously to reboot.

http://www.edmunds.com/ownership/howto/articles/45 792/article.html

For those wondering what heel-toe downshifting is, see this artcle on Edmunds.

My numer is right for the U.S. (story) but opposite for Europe. Blorg is right. Sorry for the confusion.

And, to the other people replying here, I've done this. When my car's engine stops developing power, the ZF disconnects pretty much completely. No chance of push-starting it. And besides, push starting at 30 MPH? Are you daft?? Considering that you can push-start a manual at 5 MPH, I'd say that my point is probably valid.

Sure, here's some links for you.
Popular Science - That's where I first read about it, there was actually a test-drive in the early 90s or so but I couldn't find the article. The tester's opinion did stick with me though!
Edmunds
Gizmo Highway
GM's drive-by-wire and fuel cell concept vehicle
In fact there's a whole slew of articles out there - it's tough to pick which ones are the best.

Odds are it will eventually happen. If people can't adjust, car makers will simply introduce an electronic force-feedback system which mimics what you'd normally feel. Heck, it could have an on-off switch too, so if it was raining/snowing/etc you could turn on the force feedback to 'get a feel for the road' but during a normal sunny drive to the store the system could be off.

How did this get modded informative? An infinitely variable damper is not a gimmick. It would be infinitely useful. The demonstration where the car jumps is just showing how much force this suspension system can generate. The real innovation here is that everything is done electronically, whereas older systems used hydraulics. Check out this article for the basics of why this is a good thing: Active Suspension Also, GM's new Cadillac XLR uses an electromagnetic suspension, as well as the forthcoming 6th generation Corvette.

Work vehicles, maybe.

Introduced way back in 1936, the Chevrolet (and GMC) Suburban was based on a commercial panel truck, but instead of having a huge, windowless cargo area there was a large passenger compartment. Basically truck-based station wagons, the early Suburbans had two doors (not counting the two-piece tailgate) and three rows of seats that seated up to eight passengers. The most common powerplant of the day, an inline six cylinder engine, powered the Suburban. With but 90 horsepower, the 217 cubic-inch six had its work cut out. Minor changes to the facade carried the first-generation Suburban through 1940.

Sounds like it's a personal panel van to me. Nothing off-road about that, and definitely tarmac-based.

Not only are Scions hideous, but they're killing the better Toyota MR2 to do that. :'(

My Camaro will out accelerate you, out corner you, and has a higher top speed than your hybrid.

not fucking likely... though to be fair, they never actually turned this into a production vehicle.... pity... I'd sell my soul

Honestly, I just don't get the hype over hybrids. A Jetta turbo diesel gets comparable mileage, is a larger, more comfortable, more powerful car, and presents no extraordinary risk to emergency services trying to free you in an accident.

If you're worried about emissions, run it on biodiesel. Now you've closed the carbon loop, and are running on a 100% renewable resource. Even hybrids can't make that claim.

In comparison, hybrids just seem to me like a solution in search of a problem.

Well, since I can't resist it turns out (pathetic, isn't it?): there's a surprisingly nice summary available from Edmunds.

The good ol Bait & Switch is alive and well...

Car lots
Video game consoles & Spam
Job-related markets
and Vacation Packages

Finding the other half trillion examples is left as an exercise to the reader.

Wearable phones are an attempt to answer that request from users. Yes? And the "vision" is when the designers try to figure out how to do it.

Your general "standardised" and "extensible not overpackaged" points are what you'd call "creative tensions" across basically all technological markets. (MSWord/PDAs/digital cameras are overpackaged, should be more extensible in features or software -- you could say it about products in most niches.) Meeting a price point is pretty obvious. And skinning has been around for many years, especially in phones which were among the first products to get that idea.

Your "core modules" would be roughly analogous to asking computer manufacturers to all use the same motherboard configurations or graphics cards. The problem's the same sort of leapfrogging standards one we see in basically everything. The business model could work if you wanted to try to take the low end of the market, assuming you could get enough accessory companies to support your first core module release. It's not gonna get supported across the entire market; Motorola isn't going to shut down its plants and make the same chips as someone else. They all view their proprietary models as a competitive advantage, to start with. In two years whatever standard we've all locked into will be unable to support whatever (granted, lame) new accessory people are apparently willing to buy, God bless their little consumer-confidence-boosting souls. And someone's going to want to make a killing on that (granted, stupid) high-end of the market.

When you get the phone industry to buy into this, though, talk to someone about GE's Autonomy 'skateboard' base for cars. The base of the car can take a wide variety of flavors on top. Think Toyota will want to go into the business of selling accessories for GM's chassis?

consider the cost of ownership of a ten passenger van versus the cost of ten segways. The segways win compared to the cost of a new van.
What?

Segway Human Transporter (HT) I Series
Price: $4,495.00
X 10: $44,950.00

2004 Chevrolet Express 2500 15 Passenger Van
MSRP: $26,175.00

According to This site, an estimated cost per mile for the segway is 18 cents per mile, with battery purchases included. Multiply that by 10 people, and you have a cost of $1.80 per mile.

According to Edmunds.com, the cost per mile on the Chevrolet van is $0.66 per mile.

I wont argue with the fact that segways have better access, but it's just not true that they are cheaper in any way, whatsoever.

For those looking for a working link, try here or here.

The everyday version gets 60mpg does it? What car might this be? Some sort of miracle car? or is it an insight? You know on Mars we get 100mpg daily. Then again the gravity is only a fourth of what it is on earth so we just pick up our cars and throw them.

Top ten mpg cars:
http://www.edmunds.com/reviews/list/top10/47000/ar ticle.html

Hey dipshit, its not a fucking truck. RTFP !!

For Reference see Here AND HERE!

Next time you deciede to jump into a damn conversation read the whole fucking thread and do some damn research. jackass.

Your one to be talking about facts.

Actually it's 19 city/28 highway.

These vehicles look exactly like their conventional counterparts:

2005 Ford Escape
2005 Lexus RX400h
2005 Toyota Highlander
2004 Honda Accord
2004 Honda Civic (available now)

And of course, there's the Prius. One of my neighbours has one and it looks a hell of a lot less ugly in person than it appears in photos. Although I'd still not want one because my main reaction is: worst cockpit & instrumentation ever. Not only do I hate the center-mounted gauges, I think they're extremely dangerous not being in front of the driver:

2004 Toyota Prius (available now)

These vehicles look exactly like their conventional counterparts:

2005 Ford Escape
2005 Lexus RX400h
2005 Toyota Highlander
2004 Honda Accord
2004 Honda Civic (available now)

And of course, there's the Prius. One of my neighbours has one and it looks a hell of a lot less ugly in person than it appears in photos. Although I'd still not want one because my main reaction is: worst cockpit & instrumentation ever. Not only do I hate the center-mounted gauges, I think they're extremely dangerous not being in front of the driver:

2004 Toyota Prius (available now)

These vehicles look exactly like their conventional counterparts:

2005 Ford Escape
2005 Lexus RX400h
2005 Toyota Highlander
2004 Honda Accord
2004 Honda Civic (available now)

And of course, there's the Prius. One of my neighbours has one and it looks a hell of a lot less ugly in person than it appears in photos. Although I'd still not want one because my main reaction is: worst cockpit & instrumentation ever. Not only do I hate the center-mounted gauges, I think they're extremely dangerous not being in front of the driver:

2004 Toyota Prius (available now)

These vehicles look exactly like their conventional counterparts:

2005 Ford Escape
2005 Lexus RX400h
2005 Toyota Highlander
2004 Honda Accord
2004 Honda Civic (available now)

And of course, there's the Prius. One of my neighbours has one and it looks a hell of a lot less ugly in person than it appears in photos. Although I'd still not want one because my main reaction is: worst cockpit & instrumentation ever. Not only do I hate the center-mounted gauges, I think they're extremely dangerous not being in front of the driver:

2004 Toyota Prius (available now)

These vehicles look exactly like their conventional counterparts:

2005 Ford Escape
2005 Lexus RX400h
2005 Toyota Highlander
2004 Honda Accord
2004 Honda Civic (available now)

And of course, there's the Prius. One of my neighbours has one and it looks a hell of a lot less ugly in person than it appears in photos. Although I'd still not want one because my main reaction is: worst cockpit & instrumentation ever. Not only do I hate the center-mounted gauges, I think they're extremely dangerous not being in front of the driver:

2004 Toyota Prius (available now)

These vehicles look exactly like their conventional counterparts:

2005 Ford Escape
2005 Lexus RX400h
2005 Toyota Highlander
2004 Honda Accord
2004 Honda Civic (available now)

And of course, there's the Prius. One of my neighbours has one and it looks a hell of a lot less ugly in person than it appears in photos. Although I'd still not want one because my main reaction is: worst cockpit & instrumentation ever. Not only do I hate the center-mounted gauges, I think they're extremely dangerous not being in front of the driver:

2004 Toyota Prius (available now)

non-STI = 2.0L, STI = 2.5L.

non-STI = 2.0L, STI = 2.5L.

And no, I don't own or want an H2.

2005 Chevrolet Cobalt

And the carbon emissions of SUVs are limited by their high price and the higher cost of fueling a low-MPG SUV (15-20 city MPG SUV, 20-30 city MPG sedan [Should the 40 city MPG Ford Escape SUV be included or not? Show your work.]).

And the carbon emissions of SUVs are limited by their high price and the higher cost of fueling a low-MPG SUV (15-20 city MPG SUV, 20-30 city MPG sedan [Should the 40 city MPG Ford Escape SUV be included or not? Show your work.]).

I don't think we are that far away from other applications like automobile headlights and real replacement sources for household lighting...

The Hyundai HCD-8, a concept car recently unveiled at the North American International Auto Show, features LED headlights. More information about the HCD-8 can be found in a Hyundai press release.

More likely though, you leave the big jobs to the big boys, and you want to do very specific things, maybe even building on top of google... eg. find porn movies, copying edmunds' database so you can sort cars by their power/weight ratio (or list all RWD cars, or find the lightest RWD car, or...), or make your own third-party feed of slashdot from their homepage since they watch you like a hawk when you download their .rss too often, but not when you download their homepage too often.

Little custom jobs like that can take a minimal amount of code (especially if you're a regex wizard), take minimal bandwidth, and take enough skill that target sites aren't likely to track you down because there's only three of you doing it.

http://bestbookbuys.com (compares prices for books accross most online bookstores)
http://consumerreports.com (untainted consumer information, subscription required)
http://edmunds.com (a good read before you buy a car)
http://insweb.com (cheap online insurance agency with a number of insurance providers)
http://www.ftc.gov (to learn your rights as a consumer or as a business)
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/forum.jsp?forum=107 (scams performed on Ebay -- good read for Ebay newcomers)
http://resellerratings.com (to check the track record of electronics resellers, some of the cheapest electronics resellers are one-fly-night operations that take your money one day, go bankrupt the next, and restart the day after under a new name)
http://pricewatch.com or http://pricescan.com (compares prices on pc hardware and electronics)
http://techbargains.com
http://bottomdollar.com

As I have said many time... Microsoft is very borg-like!

And how is this different than, say, GM sitting by the wayside while other automakers figure out what works?

Chrysler introduces PT Cruiser (2000) / GM introduces HHR (2005).

Toyota introduces gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle (1997) / GM annouces plan for hybrids in 2007.

It is common for the larger companies to let the smaller ones take the risks.

My car has a 12.5 gallon tank and gets about 28 mpg highway, so it has a range of 350 miles. Granted, they aren't there yet. As fo rthe batteries, I just meant that as they get lighter, they will be more expensive. As in a 52kg battery will cost more than a 10kg battery that holds the same charge.

>> new car insurance lately?
We have a Honda Pilot so we have enough room for the kids, insurace cost $700 per year.

I'm talking about a 1997-1999 4 door e36 BMW M3

Oh, you mean the old M3. I guess my unthinking self figured who wouldn't mind 700 additional pounds if it meant 160 extra horses and 130 ft./lbs. of torque. Not to mention the standard 6-speed stick getting you from 0-60 in 5 flat.

When I see e36s on the highway, they're generally beat-up pieces of shit that some privileged teenager whined and complained to get.

Glad you like them, though. Good on ya'.

I'm talking about a 1997-1999 4 door e36 BMW M3

Oh, you mean the old M3. I guess my unthinking self figured who wouldn't mind 700 additional pounds if it meant 160 extra horses and 130 ft./lbs. of torque. Not to mention the standard 6-speed stick getting you from 0-60 in 5 flat.

When I see e36s on the highway, they're generally beat-up pieces of shit that some privileged teenager whined and complained to get.

Glad you like them, though. Good on ya'.

The 4 door M3 is a sweet car. I can't stand something too heavy.

the BMW M3 is a 2-door coupe/convertible. You're probably thinking of the M5.

The 4 door M3 is a sweet car. I can't stand something too heavy.

the BMW M3 is a 2-door coupe/convertible. You're probably thinking of the M5.