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To be clear, before you quote any industry averages, you need to realize that those were achieved not by producing more efficient vehicles, but by ceasing production of less efficient vehicles. What street legal, gas-only, 4 wheel vehicle exists on the market today that can get better than 50MPG? In the 1990s, there was the Geo Metro, weighing in at 42MPG; now we have hybrids on the market that can't touch that. Of the 19 hybrids listed in the chart on that page, 12 get WORSE gas mileage than a 1990's gas-only beater; the other 7 are made by Honda and Toyota. Where are the gas-only cars that get that kind of mileage today? Hell, where are the domestic hybrids that can do the same? Don't get my wrong, I'm not bashing imports at all; I love my Corolla, I just want to know when the fuck we're going to catch up to 20 years ago.

AC flame bait, or someone totally disconnected from reality.

Laptop batteries are maintained for long run time, not long life. They are deep cycled. Fully charged and then deeply discharged. Both reduce battery life. The battery in my car is rarely charged above 80% and never discharged below 50%.

Im still running on the original 8 year old battery and have over 135,000 miles on it. The AC is spreading FUD that plagued sales from when the Prius first hit the US market. The rate of battery replacements and costs ate both below the frequency and cost of a standard automatic transmission.

http://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss/f13/toyota-hybrid-150-000-mile-battery-life-15002/

There is data out there, but I'm lazy at the moment. Here's one simple thing labeling the Insight as the Most deadly Car in America, reviewed independently of NHTSA and other "official" channels, though their data does come in to play.

Speaking as a former Insight owner who knows cars, I was nervous in the car. Your comment above suggests that an aluminum structure could be an equal to a steel one; I would have to disagree with that for malleability alone, not to mention other factors.

Furthermore, asking for references on a small car being more dangerous than a bigger one is like demanding proof that fire burns newspaper just like regular paper; it should go without saying that a small, low mass vehicle with sub-par handling capabilities is going to have higher than average injurious results. Even so, the information is around if you dig.

I liked the car so, as I said in my other post in this thread, I am looking forward to seeing the bigger, 4-door version and hope that it can be improved safety-wise.

But hopeful. If just 1 or 2 big players in the automotive industry make a real push, there's no reason gas cars couldn't be a thing of the past in the near future.

I'm tired of hearing about these crap "hybrids" that only get like 2 mpg more then their non-hybrid counterparts.

Honda Insight... not a car for everyone, for sure, but it's a nice commuter car.

http://www.greenhybrid.com/compare/mileage/

http://www.greenhybrid.com/compare/mileage/

They've got a pretty impressive database of information going. I'd say lowering those two cars 11 and 12 miles per gallon is a bit aggressive.

There's a hybrid database that I've been scanning over the past year or so to see exactly which hybrid is "worth" the extra cost (ignoring the environmental impacts of course, since I'm a greedy capitalist pig ;-))

Hybrid Mileage Database

So far the EPA numbers in TFA seem to line up well for the Prius at least, but I haven't looked at any of the other numbers.

Unfortunately, that site is has a number of junk figures.

Looks like these numbers agree pretty well with GreenHybrid's data, which is composed of self-reported mileage numbers from hybrid owners. I'd still probably rely on GreenHybrid more because the EPA testing is just that, testing, not real world use.

For 'real world' numbers: http://www.greenhybrid.com/compare/mileage/

-Rick

100MPG+ Prius STOCK:
http://www.toyota.com/html/hybridsynergyview/2005/ fall/marathon.html

stock Honda Insights get close to 80MPG before you start tweaking:
http://www.greenhybrid.com/compare/mileage/honda-i nsightcvt.html

plugin-Prius @ 150MPG+:
http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=818

Note, most of these date from at least 2005. Welcome back to the future.

http://www.greenhybrid.com/compare/mileage/toyota- priushsd.html has extremely well-documented average Prius mileage at 48MPG. Coincidentally, matches the new EPA numbers.

I call shenanigans on you and your "friend".

http://www.greenhybrid.com/compare/mileage/ only for "conspiracy theorists". LOL you made me laugh daveschroeder (516195) !!!

Here's another good site where people can enter real-world mileage numbers: http://greenhybrid.com/.

This is my own hybrid: http://greenhybrid.com/compare/mileage/car/1201.ht ml.

You can see how new, regular and not low rolling resistance, tires affect mileage. And the couple of times I drove down to LA from the Bay Area.

Here's another good site where people can enter real-world mileage numbers: http://greenhybrid.com/.

This is my own hybrid: http://greenhybrid.com/compare/mileage/car/1201.ht ml.

You can see how new, regular and not low rolling resistance, tires affect mileage. And the couple of times I drove down to LA from the Bay Area.

I don't think I've ever seen an article summary with so many links!

In some cases the electric motor can motivate the car on it's own, but that only applies to the Prius and Ford hybrids, the Civic still needs the engine to get it going. It's only under a limited set of circumstances that the engine can fully take over anyway.

He says the Civic Hybrid is 36MPG and the Prius is 44MPG without citing his figures, because the site he does cite http://www.greenhybrid.com/compare/mileage/ very pointly says Civic Hybrid is 44MPG and the Prius is 48MPG REAL-WORLD average.

Not only that, but he fails to do an apples-to-apples comparision of the same status car (new to new, used to used) at the same time as same class (mid-size to mid-size).

The only fair comparision would be a NEW 2004-2005 Honda Accord or Toyota Camry almost exactly equipped to the 2004-2005 Prius, so he's just another in a long line that fails to do that. When you leave out options, safety features, luxury items, you've already biased the comparision.

How about trying a used hybrid vs a used conventional car of the same year and options comparision?

Somebody previously on Slashdot did a used Insight vs a Civic HF, which was fair because they were both the same sized car (internally), but I wonder if the safety options/ratings were the same.

Besides, when has a new car ever saved anybody money? Where's the comparison of how a new: 3/5-series car, H2/H3, Suburu WRX/STi, Scion tC, IS 350, or other fair-comparision vehicle of the same status and class - saved you money versus just not buying it? Why aren't there articles deploring these vehicles in the same breath? Where's the V4 vs V6/V8 doesn't save you money articles?

Obviously, people step up to these luxury/performance cars for reasons other than just cost and savings.

Much like the statistics about statistics usually be wrong, this is just another article from the anti-hybrid side wielding information disingenuously.

Replacement costs are down to about $3000 now.

Battery replacement costs have dropped to about $3,000 today from $10,000 or more in 2001 -- about the same cost as replacing a worn-out gasoline engine in a conventional vehicle.

Guess again. The Escape not only improved it's fuel economy considerably, it's doing better in the real world than Toyota's SUV's.

Ford *does* have a hybrid, you know. And according to at this site they did a better job than Toyota at it (comparing SUV's).

I found this interesting. Not a Hybrid Look at the mileage on some of those :) Specifically, I'm rather proud of some of the VW TDI numbers, proving that reliable proven technology can do almost as good as this new fangled hybrid tech ;)

Proud owner of a 2004 VW TDI Beetle

The Toyota Prius HSD uses 4.4 litres per 100 kilometres travelled, which translates to 53.46 miles per gallon, and expels 106 grams of CO2 per kilometre travelled.

Toyota Echo models with manual transmission consume about 5.8L/100km, or 40.55MPG, and expel CO2 at a rate of 138g/km. Automatic models consume about 6.5L/100km, or 36.17MPG, and expel CO2 at a rate of 156g/km. (I listed both, since you didn't specify whether your car was a manual or an auto; in general, autos use more fuel than manuals.)

By those figures, your Echo is using up between 31% and 48% more fuel than a Prius, and spitting out 30%-48% more CO2.

However, most Prius owners don't attain the fuel consumption level on the sticker. Courtesy of http://www.greenhybrid.com/, it's more realistic to say that the Prius gets about 4.9L/100km, or 48MPG. Furthermore, the CO2 emissions scale steadily with the amount of fuel used up, so it's probably emitting closer to 120g/km of CO2. This makes the comparison a bit better for the Echo, but it still uses 18%-33% more fuel and emits 15%-30% more CO2 - and it's a much smaller car than the Prius.

Though people don't achieve the standard measurement of fuel consumption on average, a conservative driver can beat the fuel consumption measurement on the sticker in just about any car. I have a Nissan Pulsar that was listed at 7.4L/100km (just under 32MPG), but I consistently get around 6.7L/100km (just over 35MPG) - about 10% better than the sticker.

Petrol-electric hybrids aren't a bust, as such, and the technology is improving. Daihatsu have a hybrid in the works that goes 60-70km on a litre of petrol - up to 1.4L/100km, or 170MPG. For the moment, hybrid cars are still superficial: they make a statement about the environment and about the future, but they're hideously expensive and they don't pay for themselves. You'd be better off buying a small car with decent fuel economy, and joining a tree-planting campaign.

Consider this, though: it is estimated that the construction of a typical car consumes 25-50 barrels of oil and pollutes 120,000 gallons (450,000 litres) of water. If you were really concerned about the environment, you probably wouldn't have a car at all.

Sorry I won't be able to read the report, then. If it's based on UK vehicles it won't be much interest to me anyway, since we have different requirements for emissions control systems here in the US no doubt the results here would not be the same.

Searching with Google, it's hard to find any complete specs on the three models you like so much.

The latest reference I found to the Charade was for a 1992 model. It's about 2 and a half feet shorter, and 4 inches narrower, than the Prius.

I was able to locate some slightly more detailed specs on the Sirion, which is newer, and which has less cargo capacity than the Civic, and slightly more than half that of the Prius. I don't know what "rental class B" means in the UK but in my book this is a subcompact car.

And one of the articles I turned up on the Passo called it "Toyota's smallest compact car". I think we should keep our comparisons within the same class of automobile. Still, I'd like to see some evidence that at least one of these cars really does have "comparable or slightly smaller" cargo space relative to the Prius, instead of only half.

No, I haven't mixed UK and US gallons. All my figures are in US gallons -- the Prius's 51 MPG and the numbers I cited for the Civic. Even if you adjust the Civic's published US numbers to Imperial gallons it won't be 67 MPG -- actually around 60, but you'd have to adjust the Prius's numbers likewise. Maybe the British versions are rated higher than the US versions due to differences in emissions controls.

Toyota Prius does not list a highway spec because it is in the not-funny category.

Sorry, this comment is lost on me. Did Toyota decide their highway mileage for the Prius was not funny enough to publish, or did some reporter simply leave it out of their review? Toyota's website will give you the 51 MPG highway spec for the Prius as sold in the US.

The mileage estimates I used are from the EPA (the US Government's Environmental Protection Agency) tests, which were standardized sometime around 30 years ago. Those tests aren't exactly commensurate with reality, especially the city driving tests. All the same, a lot of Prius drivers do get results comparable to the EPA numbers. I concede that *I* don't, but my daily commute involves a lot of stop lights and a couple of big hills, which will affect the mileage of any vehicle (as a matter of physics). Highway mileage is different; at 65 MPH I get 45 to 50 miles per US gallon, close to that EPA number. The EPA figure represents an average speed of 48 MPG and a top speed of 60 MPG. Civic mileage at higher speeds would drop off from the EPA numbers faster than the Prius, due to Civic's higher aerodynamic drag.

If you have a more aggressive driving style then I suspect you'll find the civic hybrid (automatic; has cruise control by default) a little underpowered. I drive a 2003 though, so the 2004/2005 models may have been tweaked in favour of more power. I've never had any problems with maintaining climbing speed though. It's just a little weak in the acceleration department.

Check out the latest Toyota Prius too. I haven't so I can't help, but I've read that acceleration performance is better than previous years.

Only one way to find out for sure if they satisfy your driving appetites and that's to take them out for a spin! Make sure you get some passing tests in to a get a feel for the responsiveness; a matter of personal taste.

With respect to real mileage numbers, check out http://greenhybrid.com/.

I get reasonable mileage out of my hybrid, but for my next car I think I'm going to get a flexible-fuel vehicle. That way I can cut my fossil fuel consumption 85% by using an Ethanol mix.

Could someone please come out with a Hybrid FFV? Anyone know of any manufacturers working on this?

and everyone's mileage DOES vary.

I own a 2004 Prius, and I must say that I DON'T get the mileage advertised, although I have seen per-trip variations outside what I so-far consider my normal range. My own figures are closer to 47MPG (combined) for the life of the car, now at 4000 miles. However, my style of driving tends to be shorter trips taken in a hilly locale--both of which negatively influence mileage. Slightly longer trips (a daily commute of 60+ miles) and flatter terrain (coming north to town on the coastal plain) allows a friend here (also with an '04 Prius) to average 53 or so. All other factors seem similar--we have similar driving styles, same tires at same pressure, etc.--but there's a big difference in the mileage figures for the same car. I don't think the EPA takes this into account; they're looking at a bad extrapolation of data based on emissions and a short test--almost a perfect, no-wind, flat-land drive.

I believe the Prius is a good, capable machine. I can see how, in the right circumstances, the car would do as well as, or better than, the EPA figures. Lots of folks do it.

Check out Greenhybrid.com and Prius Chat and see what others have to say.

Based on my own experience, this follow-on article is a more accurate portrayal of hybrid performance.

For reference's sake, here is my own vehicle's performance. In my case, temperature seems to be the primary factor affecting my mileage; lower in the winter and higher in the summer.