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Q: How do you turn the car off in an emergency - e.g. stuck accelerator pedal?
A: You can't just press start/stop, as the vehicle speed sensor inhibits the button, so you can't turn off the ignition whilie the vehicle is moving. This isn't even in the manual. However, pressing and holding start/stop for 10 seconds will cause the ignition to turn off completely. This is a surprisingly long time in an emergency. In fact, in several "unintended acceleration" episodes, the drivers said they tried to turn off the push-button ignition, but couldn't turn it off.

Karnal was talking about Lexuses--maybe this is a recent change, but you only need to hold the button for 3 seconds to turn the engine off. Or press it 3 times in a row. See, for example, page 484 of the 2012 ES 350 Owner's Manual. It's similar in Nissans... hold for more than 2 seconds, or press 3 times within 1.5 seconds (page 6-2 of the 2013 Altima Owner's Manual.

I'm a Toyota guy and I want a supercar. Toyota doesn't make one.

Yes they do.

Well, "made"; their Web site says "all 500 units sold".

I'm a Toyota guy and I want a supercar. Toyota doesn't make one.

Yes they do.

101k dollars buys me a lifetime of fuel.

How many years of fuel comes with a Honda Civic when you drive it off the lot?

Besides, the high end price is only for the limited edition early adopter model, which appears to be sold out. The low end version starts at $52k, not all that far off from a Lexus (we are talking luxury cars, here).

Toyota produces a lot more hybrids than just the Prius, so either all of their hybrids are loss leaders or, more likely, they're not really losing money on hybrid sales at all.

The small motors used in typical hybrids are over 90% efficient going forwards and over 85% efficient acting as a generator.

And the ones used in diesel-electric locomotives add another 7% to that. ANY motor big enough for a car will be efficient if properly built.

For sports cars.

For all cars Otherwise, why is no production hybrid using one?

Actually, the tesla roadster is coming equipped with a two-speed sequential gearbox plus reverse. This is necessary because the vehicle is a super high performance car and it needs to hit high speeds. Commuter cars don't need two forward gears, so they don't need any gears (except perhaps as part of the mechanism which drops the shaft, if any) so they don't need a reverse gear, either.

Your news is old, they ended up tweaking the motor to spin even faster as they couldn't solve the problems with the two speed transmissions.

A "generator-motor" system is called a "series hybrid", whether you have batteries or not.

I'd tend to disagree; without any way to store the electrical power, the system is unable to decouple fuel usage and motive force; or recover energy via regenerative braking. If it's considered a hybrid; it's a pretty weak one.

So far attempts to use a single power system to do meaningful regenerative braking on that scale have failed.

Source? What do you consider 'meaningful' regenerative braking? Still, current production hybrids use NiMH batteries; with a 66% charge efficiency, meaning that discounting generator/motor losses you lose a third of your energy just charging the battery. Going by your 85% generator and 90% motor, that's 50% recovery stop to go. LiIon is 99.9% efficient done right, increasing the overall efficiency of regenerative braking to 76%. Might lose a bit of efficiency with the control circuits as well, but I think that's included in the motor efficiencies. Anyways, that's effectively 50% more energy, which means 50% more miles recovered from the stopping energy. Would boost the effective mileage of stop and go city driving quite a bit. Let's see Toyota boasts about it, Lexus claims it, Ford claims it.

The only thing limiting the usage of regenerative braking is the power of the electric motor and that it can only be applied to the wheels hooked up to the drive train. IE if you have a front wheel drive hybrid, braking lightly enough to only use regenerative braking will only have drag on the front wheels. Not actually that bad - regenerative braking is naturally anti-lock.

If you don't care about regenerative braking and batteries, then there's really no reason why you would need that many batteries, or for that matter, any at all beyond what you need to start the engine which runs the generator.

I have always figured the ideal solution was to build a generator into a turbine (to reduce the weight of the generator.) Chrysler drove a turbine-powered car across the country in the 1960s. My understanding is that it ate transmissions. I aim to eliminate the transmission. If your generator is not large it had better be fast. Turbines are fast. Seems like the perfect match, to me.

Right now though, fast small turbine = inefficient loud turbine. Atkinson style IC engines are quieter, more efficient, and need less maintenance.

Electronic control is becoming more common anyway. There's a lot of small-to-medium sized equipment with an electronically-controlled hydraulic drive, now. And if I were designing some

Toyota doesn't have heavy trucksor SUVs?

Toyota doesn't have heavy trucksor SUVs?

And he hasn't seen this yet either http://www.lexus.com/models/RXh/

(Mostly) self parking Lexuses are available in the US as well. (Lexus is the luxury brand of Toyota, the same company described in the article linked above).

As others have pointed out, the hybrid market is doing fine without addressing your particular niche, but the industry is nudging in your direction. The Lexus GS Hybrid appears not to suck too badly.

I'm not sure why, but no-one has mentioned the Lexus RX400h

It can run on batteries whilst you drive your daughter to school and then the rather large 3.3 litre petrol engine can kick in to get you to work. It has part-time 4WD and it's size will help when you hit that deer. If you care, it does 0-60mph in about 7.5 seconds - and will go upto around 130mph (if you want to go that fast in something weighing 2 tonnes)

In the UK the police are looking to use them: http://www.mixedpower.com/modules.php?name=News&fi le=article&sid=739

The main thing for me is that you go from something like 15mpg in normal SUV to more like 30mpg (in a suburban run). Petrol in the UK is approaching 1 GBP per litre (nearly 7 USD/gal). When you're in city traffic you aren't making the problem worse, you just sit inertly. It uses a constantly variable transmission and so is apparently very smooth to drive. It even brings the petrol engine to rest in a position where it's ready to start back up again.

If you go for the 45k GBP version you get a highly-luxurious, relatively efficient, pretty fast 4WD SUV.

I believe there's quite a waiting list in the US for them.

For a one-off conversion to a decade-old Jeep Cherokee, it would take lots of unique parts and experienced labor. You are probably looking at tens of thousands of dollars and when you are done it will still look like an old Jeep.

If you are fixated on going hybrid with an SUV, why not buy a brand new hybrid Highlander or Lexus? You'll spend as much and get the same marginal gas mileage increase, but you'll also get that new-car smell.

Now, if they did have a descent SUV (that wasn't dog ass slow getting on the highway) that was energy effecient, I would get one in a heartbeat.

Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Geo(a subdivison of Chevy), Saturn (GM), Lexus (Toyota), Kia, Scion (Toyota).

Revised: Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Kia.

Apparently it's all too easy for the 800lb gorillas to make people think they're small startups by making a new subdivision with a new name.

Not all SUVs are big/bad and evil. Sometimes you just have to look for them. You might be surprised.

Toyota has been in the hybrid game longer than Ford and is licensing it's technology to Ford. My take is that Toyota will know how to implement it better.

The U.S. will get there, especially with Bluetooth showing up in some new Toyotas to link your phone to built-in handsfree systems when you get into the car.

Don't laugh...

The new Lexus Hybrids (lexus-hybrid.com temporarily down) will have up to an extra 1000 newton-meters of electrical torque available. The RX400H is being sold as an *upgrade* to the RX330. "V8 power with compact car fuel efficiency".

Hybrid isn't the rinky-dink compact car anymore. It is profitable.

2000-current Honda Insight, 2-seater:
http://www.hondacars.com/models/model_overview.asp ?ModelName=Insight

2003-current Honda Civic Hybrid 5-passenger compact sedan:
http://www.hondacars.com/models/model_overview.asp ?ModelName=Civic+Hybrid

2001-2003 Toyota Prius 5-passenger compact sedan:
http://www.toyota.com/prius

2004 Toyota Prius 5-passenger midsize liftback:
http://www.toyota.com/prius/minisite/index.html
(for those who dislike Flash, info here:
http://www.toyota.com/prius/minisite/html/printabl e.html and here http://www.toyota.com/prius/minisite/specs/specs_b ody.html )

if you live in Japan there is also the hybrid
Estima (7-8 passenger minivan similar to the Previa),
and the mild-hybrid Crown large sedan.

if you can wait a year or so, Ford should have out
their hybrid Escape (info: http://www.hybridford.com (Flash only),
a "small" SUV/CUV that actually has towing capacity.
Lexus should also have their RX330 hybrid (the
RX400H) small SUV/CUV out (see http://www.lexus.com/about/hybrid/index.html
with Toyota shortly following with the hybrid
Highlander cousin.

I've also heard of the GM/Saturn Vue, the Nissan
Altima (I think that's the model), and the Toyota
Sienna, as next on the block with hybrid powertrains
(i.e. full/assist hybrids).

Hmmm.... actually I there because I was looking for a car... IS 300 5 speed, has a 250 hp v6 and an MSRP of $30,000? It's probably not the car I am going to get, but it's one I am looking at. The BMW 330i is MSRP $34,000, and the Mercedes C320 is $30,000.

> I did a Lexus-Nexus search.

No, I'll bet you did a Lexis search, you moron. Get the name of the company right. Lexus is a car, Lexis is a legal service.
LexisNexis is the company.

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