The batteries for the Prius cost about $1500 to replace now, and have been getting cheaper every year the car's been available. They're warranted for 8 years/100k miles, and designed to last the lifetime of the car. Toyota has tested them to over 200k miles with no deterioration in vehicle performance. (it's Toyota's test, so you can take it with a grain of salt) You're not supposed to ever have to replace them, although there will always be vehicles with failures, just like there are cars that need entire new engines or transmissions. As of the last time I saw an article about it, Toyota had not replaced *any* Prius batteries, and the car has been available for five or six years.
The batteries are not terribly large *or* nasty. The pack weighs about 120 lbs. (about as much as 2 or 3 normal car batteries) and are fully recycled by Toyota (down to the casing and wires). There's a phone number printed on the battery pack, and Toyota pays a bounty to encourage recycling instead of disposal. Their recycling process is refined, as it has been in place since the launch of the Rav4 EV in the 90s.
Or does he? I wonder... how many people's "girlfriends" would send a friend in their place to tell them she's "in another castle?" I think she's totally blowing him off. After all, this dragon guy is a King, and apparently owns a lot more real estate.
Sometimes, sorta, and definitely not if they're little kids. Why anyone would continue to listen to the phone in a bad situation baffles me. Drop the damn thing and drive the second it looks like trouble. That's a far more effective cutoff than relying on a passenger to not be looking at their lap/gameboy/magazine/backseat and automatically shut up at the right moment. I'd be surprised if half the time they didn't yell things that were even more distracting at exactly the wrong moment.
"OH MY GOD LOOK OUT THAT TRUCK RIGHT THERE DON'T NO STOP THE OTHER OH GOD NOT WAIT THE FIRST LANE MERGE MERGE!!!!!!!!!!" or the super-useful "OH SHIT LOOK OUT!" which will have you hunting all over the place for whatever they're talking about, rather than addressing the immediate issues.
They may be more likely than someone at the other end of a call to notice, but it's not a guarantee they'll notice, or that noticing won't create an even larger distraction. The phone, however, guarantees you can end the distraction immediately if you want.
Now I don't use my phone driving much-- but I'm still not convinced it's worse than talking to a passenger. Especially one who keeps wanting you to look at things, something a cell-phone person won't ask.
You should look into a gamecube. It's not exactly what you're after, but there are a ton of games that let you play an overweight middle-aged plumber who hangs out in the sewer with his brother.
I'd much rather play through a "single-player" type game *with* a couple of friends, rather than shoot at them. Unless your friends are all nearly identical in skill level, playing twitch games online against them always ends up being really lopsided. Somebody's gonna clean up, and somebody's never going to get a kill.
More network co-op, game companies!! Pretty please!
He mentioned Garry's Mod, which is single and multiplayer, although it's fairly unusual. It's basically a physics sandbox. You're given a menu system that allows welding, spinning joints, ropes and pulleys, thrusters, and the ability to spawn any object in the game's massive library (and a lot of other stuff, but you get the idea). Build yourself a catapult, or just cram 700 watermelons into a concrete pipe with a bomb and see what happens. It's the most fun I've had with a game in years-- it's open-ended stupidity with all the beauty of a reasonable simulation of actual physics.
In addition to the special "arena" maps they add, you can also jump into any level in the single-player HL2, and play through with your newfound physics powers. Clearing a level with a homemade rocket-powered tank is so much more satisfying than doing it the right way.
I pushed it up the chain, not them. If it were up to BB, it would have died at the customer service counter. At every step of the way, nobody seemed able to do anything or to know who could. I'd ask for the next manager/supervisor/boss/whatever up the chain, get forwarded, and get stuck again. I repeated this process for a while-- I thought I was getting somewhere when I started getting forwarded to people who had receptionists. Only two people in at that level, and I got the lawyer call.
I can't speak for the circuit city price-match fiascos, but my warranty issue at Best Buy was carried all the way up the Customer Service food chain until I got a call from a lawyer at Best Buy who told me that his call was the last time BB would speak to me about the issue.
I should have taken them to court. At the time, I didn't know I could get the cost of suing back if I won-- I was just barely out of college, and I was afraid of the cost of taking it to small claims court. If it happened to me today, I would have told that @#!@#!! lawyer he would indeed be speaking with me again, in court.
If they had such a program, they denied it's existence when I asked them directly (at the store, at another store, and on the phone with customer service) if they could order me another equivalent monitor to use my store credit on. Perhaps the program didn't exist in early 2000? Or perhaps I just got luck-of-the-draw and hit five or six people at multiple locations who were unaware of it and unwilling to ask someone else.
Nah, you just assumed a bunch of crap, rather than ask me what the sticker said in more detail. The policy specifically mentioned repair and replacement as the ONLY things that they would do, and they failed to do both.
It said (in large letters):
"Best Buy will honor manufacturer's warranty.
(in small letters, paraphrased):
Best Buy will repair or replace this open-box item with a similar item of equal or greater value for the length of the original manufacturer's warranty.
(out of the manager's mouth when I verified):
We'll repair or replace it, even if we quit carrying that model.
If they had made as much as a peep that they would not, I would have simply driven to the Best Buy across town and picked up a new one there. Since I was assured rather thoroughly that there was no more risk with the open-box unit than with a new one, I went ahead and skipped the extra 40 minutes of drive time.
Since they could neither repair (they apparently don't have the facilities) or replace (since they no longer carried it and were unwilling to order one from the manufacturer), I think a refund would have been reasonable. Since they had apparently stopped carrying high-end monitors altogether (not only could I not get a monitor that matched specs, they didn't even have any monitors at a similar price point), all store credit could get me is an inferior monitor and $200 of leftover store credit I had to blow on crap I didn't need or want.
I think you may have misread a bit. I paid very near full-price for a monitor that Best Buy assured me they would uphold the warranty on.
I bought open-box only because it was the last in stock that day, and I needed it quickly.
When I returned it, they would neither repair nor refund-- only store credit, for a monitor whose original warranty was for three years. They no longer carried anything comparable, so the store credit broke down like this:
1. Get $600 credit. 2. Buy best monitor in store, a $400 unit that could not match the specs of the one I was replacing. 3. Have $200 left and a monitor not as good as the one they promised to replace.
It's not that "it would have been nice," they quite clearly promised and did not uphold the warranty. I was not "out for a deal," I needed a monitor and bought the last one in stock that met my needs. I did not ask for anything from them beyond what they promised. When I purchased, I asked, and they assured me that they would repair or replace the monitor with a comparable model EVEN IF they no longer stocked them. Straight up lied.
Stuff breaks. I'm not mad about that. But they broke their word (printed word, even). Like I said, if it had happened today, I would be in small claims court getting my money back-- but that was six or seven years ago, and I wasn't quite as prepared for that then.
My experience with best buy is along those lines, in Indianapolis. Quick summary of the worst:
Bought $600 high-end 19" monitor (back when such things were expensive) open-box, with big sticker on the box that says "best buy will honor manufacturer's warranty." Monitor dies in three months-- Best Buy has stopped carrying the monitor, or, in fact, any monitor that matches the resolution and refresh rate I had been using. They refuse to repair or replace it, granting only store credit. Emails and phone calls to Best Buy's customer service get nowhere, with a lawyer eventually calling me and telling me "This is the last time we will ever speak to you about this issue."
Had I been older and wiser, I would have sued in small claims court.
This phenomenon is true of just about anything. It explains almost all of the "things used to be built better" arguments. They didn't, but the bad ones are all broken now and only the durable and well-built items remain. Bad games? Forgotten. Good games? Remembered.
I think they probably do have some experts they don't show because it's boring. That's why my original comment said "and maybe this would ruin the show's mainstream appeal."
I still think they could be more honest about what their test results show. I wouldn't change anything else-- it's fun to watch as it is. Replacing "therefore all cars get better economy at all speeds with the windows down" with "therefore this particular car gets better economy at 40mph with the windows down" doesn't seem like much of a big deal to me.
That's why I'd like a scientist in the mix, too. Engineers for "how they could build the setup better," and scientists for "why this test doesn't prove what you might think." They need a muppets-style balcony seat with two grizzled old PhDs making snide comments about their experiments. They don't have to listen, or change what they're doing (what they do now makes great TV), but I would *love* for the viewers to be better informed.
None of this passing off a single data point as a conclusive test for myths with dozens of variables. That should get catcalls from the balcony every time.
They already try to emphasize the arguments the mythbusters have on the show-- this would just give them more material to work with.
Expensive, or "difficult to get regulatory approval for," but not hard. They just needed a proper jet engine-- the British show Top Gear had no problem flipping a pair of cars multiple times with an actual 747.
I love the show, and maybe this would ruin the show's mainstream appeal, but I'd LOVE to have a couple of resident Physicists and Engineers advising them to get more rigorous results. Things get waaaaay too oversimplified.
To add to your jet engine example, my biggest gripe was always their "windows down vs. AC" gas-mileage test. All their test could possibly show was that at the one tested speed in the one tested vehicle, that's what happened. Even their retraction and correction later was oversimplified-- they explained that at some point, the speed of a vehicle becomes great enough that the AC wins over the windows-- but they acted like that number is the same for all cars regardless of all the other variables. (engine size, AC design, window size and position, and overall aerodynamic shape, to name a few)
Since we're just going ignore the "ugly" races like trolls and so forth, I don't think that the unrealistic female avatars are dramatically different than the unrealistic male avatars. I mean, seriously-- I'm a triathlete and I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of ending up like the 6'5" bodybuilder tanks most games drop in as male avatars. There isn't anything like your average-looking male in the games either, but that hasn't slowed the guys down.
The original Super Mario Brothers, a game which stars a pair of overweight male plumbers, has a better draw among female gamers than a lot of games. Does this mean that girls prefer playing obese men in games?
I agree with the rest of your points, but this one always drives me nuts. There aren't any more realistic men in games than there are realistic women.
I've read a couple of articles about various groups with naturally-decaffeinated coffee plants. One group was doing genetic engineering, and the other had found a wild variety with no caffeine. Both still had some breeding to do to get things to market.
Nonetheless, even though coffee with no caffeine exists, I still don't have any idea why you'd caffeinate it, so your point still stands.
No kidding. I realize they wanted to make the console smaller, since people griped about the size of the original-- but this is like making my car smaller by putting the back seat and the trunk in a trailer I have to pull around all the time.
I read an article in mid-2004 that said toyota hadn't replaced *any* Prius batteries, despite the car being available for four years. Not sure if it's still true, but it bodes well for the average failure time when there are zero failures four years in.
This is a critical point. Without taking the resale value into account, the calculations are useful only in determining what your monthly payment is-- not what your lifetime cost for the car is.
By my math, if I'd bought a Prius instead of a Civic HX in 2001, I would just now be crossing the point where I was ahead. I would not, however, have that money in hand unless I sold the car. I would have paid out more per month, but I would also get more back on selling.
On the other hand, it's almost never a winning financial bet to buy a hybrid when you already have a working car. New vs. new, a hybrid will just barely edge out a similar but cheaper car over five years or so, but it would have to be a staggering difference in fuel economy to beat out a paid-for car.
Slashdot Mirror
I say this over and over:
The batteries for the Prius cost about $1500 to replace now, and have been getting cheaper every year the car's been available. They're warranted for 8 years/100k miles, and designed to last the lifetime of the car. Toyota has tested them to over 200k miles with no deterioration in vehicle performance. (it's Toyota's test, so you can take it with a grain of salt) You're not supposed to ever have to replace them, although there will always be vehicles with failures, just like there are cars that need entire new engines or transmissions. As of the last time I saw an article about it, Toyota had not replaced *any* Prius batteries, and the car has been available for five or six years.
The batteries are not terribly large *or* nasty. The pack weighs about 120 lbs. (about as much as 2 or 3 normal car batteries) and are fully recycled by Toyota (down to the casing and wires). There's a phone number printed on the battery pack, and Toyota pays a bounty to encourage recycling instead of disposal. Their recycling process is refined, as it has been in place since the launch of the Rav4 EV in the 90s.
Or does he? I wonder... how many people's "girlfriends" would send a friend in their place to tell them she's "in another castle?" I think she's totally blowing him off. After all, this dragon guy is a King, and apparently owns a lot more real estate.
No, for that you need to be the fabled Rocket Scientist, and I doubt they'd be much good troubleshooting Red Hat.
;)
Besides, designing rocket engines isn't brain surgery.
Sometimes, sorta, and definitely not if they're little kids. Why anyone would continue to listen to the phone in a bad situation baffles me. Drop the damn thing and drive the second it looks like trouble. That's a far more effective cutoff than relying on a passenger to not be looking at their lap/gameboy/magazine/backseat and automatically shut up at the right moment. I'd be surprised if half the time they didn't yell things that were even more distracting at exactly the wrong moment.
"OH MY GOD LOOK OUT THAT TRUCK RIGHT THERE DON'T NO STOP THE OTHER OH GOD NOT WAIT THE FIRST LANE MERGE MERGE!!!!!!!!!!" or the super-useful "OH SHIT LOOK OUT!" which will have you hunting all over the place for whatever they're talking about, rather than addressing the immediate issues.
They may be more likely than someone at the other end of a call to notice, but it's not a guarantee they'll notice, or that noticing won't create an even larger distraction. The phone, however, guarantees you can end the distraction immediately if you want.
Now I don't use my phone driving much-- but I'm still not convinced it's worse than talking to a passenger. Especially one who keeps wanting you to look at things, something a cell-phone person won't ask.
You should look into a gamecube. It's not exactly what you're after, but there are a ton of games that let you play an overweight middle-aged plumber who hangs out in the sewer with his brother.
I'd much rather play through a "single-player" type game *with* a couple of friends, rather than shoot at them. Unless your friends are all nearly identical in skill level, playing twitch games online against them always ends up being really lopsided. Somebody's gonna clean up, and somebody's never going to get a kill.
More network co-op, game companies!! Pretty please!
He mentioned Garry's Mod, which is single and multiplayer, although it's fairly unusual. It's basically a physics sandbox. You're given a menu system that allows welding, spinning joints, ropes and pulleys, thrusters, and the ability to spawn any object in the game's massive library (and a lot of other stuff, but you get the idea). Build yourself a catapult, or just cram 700 watermelons into a concrete pipe with a bomb and see what happens. It's the most fun I've had with a game in years-- it's open-ended stupidity with all the beauty of a reasonable simulation of actual physics.
In addition to the special "arena" maps they add, you can also jump into any level in the single-player HL2, and play through with your newfound physics powers. Clearing a level with a homemade rocket-powered tank is so much more satisfying than doing it the right way.
I pushed it up the chain, not them. If it were up to BB, it would have died at the customer service counter. At every step of the way, nobody seemed able to do anything or to know who could. I'd ask for the next manager/supervisor/boss/whatever up the chain, get forwarded, and get stuck again. I repeated this process for a while-- I thought I was getting somewhere when I started getting forwarded to people who had receptionists. Only two people in at that level, and I got the lawyer call.
I can't speak for the circuit city price-match fiascos, but my warranty issue at Best Buy was carried all the way up the Customer Service food chain until I got a call from a lawyer at Best Buy who told me that his call was the last time BB would speak to me about the issue.
I should have taken them to court. At the time, I didn't know I could get the cost of suing back if I won-- I was just barely out of college, and I was afraid of the cost of taking it to small claims court. If it happened to me today, I would have told that @#!@#!! lawyer he would indeed be speaking with me again, in court.
If they had such a program, they denied it's existence when I asked them directly (at the store, at another store, and on the phone with customer service) if they could order me another equivalent monitor to use my store credit on. Perhaps the program didn't exist in early 2000? Or perhaps I just got luck-of-the-draw and hit five or six people at multiple locations who were unaware of it and unwilling to ask someone else.
Nah, you just assumed a bunch of crap, rather than ask me what the sticker said in more detail. The policy specifically mentioned repair and replacement as the ONLY things that they would do, and they failed to do both.
It said (in large letters):
"Best Buy will honor manufacturer's warranty.
(in small letters, paraphrased):
Best Buy will repair or replace this open-box item with a similar item of equal or greater value for the length of the original manufacturer's warranty.
(out of the manager's mouth when I verified):
We'll repair or replace it, even if we quit carrying that model.
If they had made as much as a peep that they would not, I would have simply driven to the Best Buy across town and picked up a new one there. Since I was assured rather thoroughly that there was no more risk with the open-box unit than with a new one, I went ahead and skipped the extra 40 minutes of drive time.
Since they could neither repair (they apparently don't have the facilities) or replace (since they no longer carried it and were unwilling to order one from the manufacturer), I think a refund would have been reasonable. Since they had apparently stopped carrying high-end monitors altogether (not only could I not get a monitor that matched specs, they didn't even have any monitors at a similar price point), all store credit could get me is an inferior monitor and $200 of leftover store credit I had to blow on crap I didn't need or want.
I think you may have misread a bit. I paid very near full-price for a monitor that Best Buy assured me they would uphold the warranty on.
I bought open-box only because it was the last in stock that day, and I needed it quickly.
When I returned it, they would neither repair nor refund-- only store credit, for a monitor whose original warranty was for three years. They no longer carried anything comparable, so the store credit broke down like this:
1. Get $600 credit.
2. Buy best monitor in store, a $400 unit that could not match the specs of the one I was replacing.
3. Have $200 left and a monitor not as good as the one they promised to replace.
It's not that "it would have been nice," they quite clearly promised and did not uphold the warranty. I was not "out for a deal," I needed a monitor and bought the last one in stock that met my needs. I did not ask for anything from them beyond what they promised. When I purchased, I asked, and they assured me that they would repair or replace the monitor with a comparable model EVEN IF they no longer stocked them. Straight up lied.
Stuff breaks. I'm not mad about that. But they broke their word (printed word, even). Like I said, if it had happened today, I would be in small claims court getting my money back-- but that was six or seven years ago, and I wasn't quite as prepared for that then.
My experience with best buy is along those lines, in Indianapolis. Quick summary of the worst:
Bought $600 high-end 19" monitor (back when such things were expensive) open-box, with big sticker on the box that says "best buy will honor manufacturer's warranty." Monitor dies in three months-- Best Buy has stopped carrying the monitor, or, in fact, any monitor that matches the resolution and refresh rate I had been using. They refuse to repair or replace it, granting only store credit. Emails and phone calls to Best Buy's customer service get nowhere, with a lawyer eventually calling me and telling me "This is the last time we will ever speak to you about this issue."
Had I been older and wiser, I would have sued in small claims court.
This phenomenon is true of just about anything. It explains almost all of the "things used to be built better" arguments. They didn't, but the bad ones are all broken now and only the durable and well-built items remain. Bad games? Forgotten. Good games? Remembered.
MacGyver, maybe?
I think they probably do have some experts they don't show because it's boring. That's why my original comment said "and maybe this would ruin the show's mainstream appeal."
I still think they could be more honest about what their test results show. I wouldn't change anything else-- it's fun to watch as it is. Replacing "therefore all cars get better economy at all speeds with the windows down" with "therefore this particular car gets better economy at 40mph with the windows down" doesn't seem like much of a big deal to me.
That's why I'd like a scientist in the mix, too. Engineers for "how they could build the setup better," and scientists for "why this test doesn't prove what you might think." They need a muppets-style balcony seat with two grizzled old PhDs making snide comments about their experiments. They don't have to listen, or change what they're doing (what they do now makes great TV), but I would *love* for the viewers to be better informed.
None of this passing off a single data point as a conclusive test for myths with dozens of variables. That should get catcalls from the balcony every time.
They already try to emphasize the arguments the mythbusters have on the show-- this would just give them more material to work with.
Expensive, or "difficult to get regulatory approval for," but not hard. They just needed a proper jet engine-- the British show Top Gear had no problem flipping a pair of cars multiple times with an actual 747.
I love the show, and maybe this would ruin the show's mainstream appeal, but I'd LOVE to have a couple of resident Physicists and Engineers advising them to get more rigorous results. Things get waaaaay too oversimplified.
To add to your jet engine example, my biggest gripe was always their "windows down vs. AC" gas-mileage test. All their test could possibly show was that at the one tested speed in the one tested vehicle, that's what happened. Even their retraction and correction later was oversimplified-- they explained that at some point, the speed of a vehicle becomes great enough that the AC wins over the windows-- but they acted like that number is the same for all cars regardless of all the other variables. (engine size, AC design, window size and position, and overall aerodynamic shape, to name a few)
Since we're just going ignore the "ugly" races like trolls and so forth, I don't think that the unrealistic female avatars are dramatically different than the unrealistic male avatars. I mean, seriously-- I'm a triathlete and I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of ending up like the 6'5" bodybuilder tanks most games drop in as male avatars. There isn't anything like your average-looking male in the games either, but that hasn't slowed the guys down.
The original Super Mario Brothers, a game which stars a pair of overweight male plumbers, has a better draw among female gamers than a lot of games. Does this mean that girls prefer playing obese men in games?
I agree with the rest of your points, but this one always drives me nuts. There aren't any more realistic men in games than there are realistic women.
DirecTV tivos never even supported TivoToGo in the first place. The whole idea terrifies them.
I've read a couple of articles about various groups with naturally-decaffeinated coffee plants. One group was doing genetic engineering, and the other had found a wild variety with no caffeine. Both still had some breeding to do to get things to market.
Nonetheless, even though coffee with no caffeine exists, I still don't have any idea why you'd caffeinate it, so your point still stands.
No kidding. I realize they wanted to make the console smaller, since people griped about the size of the original-- but this is like making my car smaller by putting the back seat and the trunk in a trailer I have to pull around all the time.
I read an article in mid-2004 that said toyota hadn't replaced *any* Prius batteries, despite the car being available for four years. Not sure if it's still true, but it bodes well for the average failure time when there are zero failures four years in.
This is a critical point. Without taking the resale value into account, the calculations are useful only in determining what your monthly payment is-- not what your lifetime cost for the car is.
By my math, if I'd bought a Prius instead of a Civic HX in 2001, I would just now be crossing the point where I was ahead. I would not, however, have that money in hand unless I sold the car. I would have paid out more per month, but I would also get more back on selling.
On the other hand, it's almost never a winning financial bet to buy a hybrid when you already have a working car. New vs. new, a hybrid will just barely edge out a similar but cheaper car over five years or so, but it would have to be a staggering difference in fuel economy to beat out a paid-for car.