Prius - would you buy one?

[pursuitute]

I won't buy one. Ever. I love pulling up next to one at the lights in one of my V8's and watching the boring, bearded, tweed wearing, little grey man look at me with such disgust. I know it's the highlight of his day and I feel good knowing I've given his ego a rub.

 

[MrBurns]

LMAO ... DO the same with the V8 Landcruiser towing the 24 foot boat behind !

Yeah they deserve it.........

 

[MrBurns]

I won't buy one. Ever. I love pulling up next to one at the lights in one of my V8's and watching the boring, bearded, tweed wearing, little grey man look at me with such disgust. I know it's the highlight of his day and I feel good knowing I've given his ego a rub.

Next time just keep reving it so he knows you've used more juice in 2 minutes than he uses in a week and you're proud of it. They are FAGS no doubt about it

 

[trainspotter]

Just a sort of roundabout question? Generating electricty with coal to recharge your "new" Prius is equal to how many barrels of oil pumped out of the ground again? What about the lead/acid ratio for the nickel-metalhydride batteries and the amount of energy to manufature them? Is the $$$ invested in the technology sustainable? Or would it have been better off producing diesel powered 1.3 litre twin turbo 6 cylinders?

 

[Boyou]

You could get one of these to charge the battery and be doubly green..only another 8k..


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3jiZPEDmyk

 

[Boggo]

This prius/battery/hybrid bizzo has got to be the illusion of the century.

The Adelaide city council has got this bus that is only battery powered. The tree huggers reckon its great.
The thing is powered by 11 sulphide nickel batteries and has to spend two hours on a charger for every hour on the road.

Because its such a 'success' (read greenie thong wearing mung bean eating votes at the next council election) they are going to buy another one.

They only cost $550000 each but they are going to save the planet (if you ignore what is involved in building the batteries and the daily power supply).

They just go around the city streets with a dozen people on board, a couple of $20000 1.5 litre Kia mini busses could do the same job.

Rant over

 

[pursuitute]

Ciriuosly, if you've caught the ghey enough to warrant driving a Pious, you really should be travelling on one of these (but don't option the screws or nails):

 

[trainspotter]

A couple of Prius owners take the Gen 4 model for a spin.

 

[Smurf1976]

My 9 year old Nissan Pulsar gets 6.7 litres / 100km in actual driving and doesn't change much between urban and highway. If I travel to work during the peak it's about 25 km/h on average and the car gets much the same fuel consumption as cruising at 110 km/h.

Now, if I simply swapped the petrol engine in the Pulsar for a diesel then that in itself should drop the fuel consumption to about 4.7 litres per 100 km/h with nothing else changed. All things considered, that stacks up better in terms of resource use than a petrol-electric hybrid.

A diesel-electric hybrid would make more sense. Doing it with petrol is starting with the massive handicap to energy efficiency that is the petrol engine. At least a diesel has some chance of being efficient.

All that said, diesel and petrol are both duds in the long term. If we have cars in 100 years time then they will be electric - not hybrids but outright electric. And if we don't have electric cars then we'll all be catching trains, riding bicycles or walking.

As for the arguments about pollution from power stations, that's true but it's still a more efficient energy technology than petrol assuming we're talking about reasonably efficient power stations (and the ones we have in Australia are, with the notable exception of the older gas turbines and a couple of coal-fired plants, efficient enough in that context).

I'll stick with a conventional car for now but my mind is always open to new ideas.

 

[pursuitute]

A couple of Prius owners take the Gen 4 model for a spin.

Those ar Diesel Golf owners, you can tell because they have rubber tyres (and have taken off their shirts because of the spilt ice cream).

 

[ands]

The Suzuki Alto was in the paper yesterday. Suzuki claim 4.6L/100km, but some journalist's tested the car and the worst they achieved was 3.56L/100km. So if you just want fuel economy to be good, maybe check it out. It will set you back $15,000. 1 Litre, 3 Cylinder, but 0-100km in 14sec. Sounds like a get me from A to B car!

My girlfriend's dad is into all those low emission products and he bought a Prius, the display in the car says they achieve 4.5L/100km and they have had the car for a couple of years now.