QOTD: Why Hasn’t Anyone Out-Gas Mileaged The Prius?

toyota has the advantage of...size?

 

An early start, and a design team dedicated to making something different.

 

Not really unless you compare only the the Japanese companies. VW group and GM are as big, and have deep enough pockets.

Toyota has the advantage of a friendly government and ready hybrid market in Japan, that alone makes hybrids more profitable than it would be for vw or gm. Honda is big enough and Japanese, but seemed to not do as good a job in engineering trade offs.

Outside japan, the US is the best market. ford probably would be doing better but it ran into financial difficulties and has been doing hybrids on the cheap. It does say it plans on a ground up one for 2018 as does hyundai. With oil under $45/bbl and US hybrid sales less than 3%, both companies have plenty of time. Hopefully ford won't exagerate mpg this time, but it seems to have done as well on the fusion as toyota has done on the camry hybrid.

Compare Side-by-Side

Ford has sold more fusion hybrid + energi than toyota has sold camry hybrids this year, even though toyota sells a lot more camries than ford sells fusions.

 

so toyota is just too good to beat, in just about every way. at least for almost 20 years. that says something.

 

Gen I was a novelty. No body took it seriously but honda. Gen II though caught everyones attention. Ford partnered with toyota on hybrid tech and parts, but the explorer fiasco left ford without enough money to do a dedicated hybrid. GM and the germans didn't like it, the Germans pushed diesels, gm insulted it.

So yes, I would say since 2003, toyota did it better than honda and everyone else. Ford and Hyundai for financial reasons could invest enough. GM and VW group had the money and just didn't compete. BMW, Mercedes really don't sell the type of car that hybrids do well with, they sell diesels.

2018 hyundai and ford finally will have invested the money, and the patents are pretty open and understood. Still I expect toyota with all the experienced engineers, and with the hybrid reputation, will still be better then.

 

Is that Honda in total, or just their car business?

 

Almost everybody with some billion to throw can build a wonderful prototype. Mass producing it and also making a profit it's another story. The PSA group wasted years developing a pneumatic hybrid i.e. instead of a battery an air tank is used, the air is compressed when braking and then it can help the engine when released after. You would think that a system like that has to cost a lot less than an HSD. Well, no. After making it work and building some prototypes (google for peugeot 2008 hybrid air) , PSA this year announced that to mass produce it in an affordable way it needed to share the project (and the costs) with someone else. No other automaker had expressed any interest so now the project has come to a dead end, good only for museums.
PSA also developed and produced a full hybrid diesel, just to discover that costs too much and saves too little, and now has planned to try with a gasoline hybrid.

 

that's what pre bankrupt GM thought. GM's money waste, among other things was oversized vehicles that don't sell as good as they did in the olden days. It may be that hydrogen cars will be Toyota's downfall. They necessarily have to run on fracked natural gas, as it's very cheep - for now. But - frack wells have extremely short life expectancy. So much so, they have to drill 1,000's & 1,000's of new wells just to keep up with the ones coming off line. All it'll take to kill Toyota's hydrogen money-sink-hole, is a 2 fold hike in natural gas prices - which isn't too unlikely. Just a question of when. Couple that, with another economic bubble burst, then poof, who knows who number one will be. Nothing man-made stays #1 forever.
There are some terrific quick charge battery chemistry's likely to come out within the next few years. One of those people may end up taking the lead.

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If Toyota was betting the farm on hydrogen alone and electricity sources don't embraced renewables, that would be possible.

The fact that they'll be diverse and we'll come to our senses with solar & wind, it shouldn't be an all or none situation.

 

you have a serious talent for turning any topic into a hydrogen tragedy.

 

an ounce of prevention . . . .

 

that's it - way more concise than all the pages so far
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Honda car business. When they saw gen II prius in 2003, they easily could have invested in a real prius competitor by 2010. Instead they spent the money on the insight gen II and cr-z, along with a public relations gaff by not honoring their battery waranties for problem civic hybrids.

The original honda insight still gets better mileage than any prius on the epa test, but, all the prri sold better.

The japanese government showered money on hybrids, and as a result of toyota having a big lead there, they just gained more and more Japanese market share. The new hybrid system didn't happen until the insight and cr-z failed to do well commercially.

A European like PSA with little ability to sell in the US or Japan doesn't have much of chance of commercial hybrid sucess, especially with what I've seen. VW group is the only european with the ability to market a commercially successful hybrid, although mercedes and bmw should make money on up scale phevs. VW just entered the competition and seems far behind with its first hybrids in terms of sales volume, but the jetta hybrid does get good epa mpg for a first attempt - 6 worse in the city, but 3 more on the highway than the gen II prius.

Ford, Chrysler, and Nissan lacked the money. Hyundai was too busy growing in other ways. Ford and Hyundai will both build dedicated hybrids now for 2018, but toyota should stay ahead, but I expect ford and hyundai to gain hybrid market share in the US.
Ford Planning Prius-Fighting Dedicated Hybrid Model – News – Car and Driver | Car and Driver Blog
Spied: 2017 Hyundai Hybrid Electric Vehicle – News – Car and Driver

That leaves Honda and GM which blew it, and yes to hill they had the money then and blew it on something else. I think these guys have had serial failure in approving the right engineering trade offs.

 

Yep, look how long it took Toyota to build a land barge the size of U.S. pickups, on par with Dodge Ford and GM. Now all they have to figure out is how to match our often better pickup/suv EPA ratings. I guess that means we are still the masters at something - high-efficiency guzzlers. And realistically, you save a couple guzzler mpg's down there, & it's better savings than a couple mpg's at the high efficiency end-when you're already getting 50 mpg

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fortunately, toyota has stayed true to the prius mission.

 

Shame it had to go through Honda dealers first.

 

If the Prius was an all ICE 50+ MPG car, it wouldn't be as enjoyable to own and drive for me. I like the high tech nature of the Prius.

I will probably never see it, but I hope to one day own a high tech car that truly does drive its self. I'm in my late 50's and I don't think that will happen in the next 30 years or so. I'm talking about a car that I get in and say, "take me to work" and it does it all. One can only dream.

Cheers!

 

I think you'll "see" that car sometime in the next 5-10 years, you probably just won't "own" it.
The technology is good enough to do this today...but good enough is sort of like Windows or gmail. It mostly works and there are people testing it...but not good enough to bet your life on.
Humans make lots of mistakes driving today, so the technology does not have to be perfect before it is useful.

Mike

 

Google has self serving cars. I thing they were Lexus SUVs.


iPhone ?