Why is the Prius the MPG King?

Tom Ogle. He claimed to get 100 mpg out of a Ford Galaxie. His design was based on something called a Pogue carburetor. They could never prove scientifically that what he claimed worked or was feasible. Investments dried up, his wife left him, etc., etc.. He started drinking and in 1981 died of an overdose of painkillers combined with alcohol.

 

I think you can debate whether Prius deserves the title MPG King.

But the Prius is the Prius. For a mass produced and sold vehicle, it's royalty in it's mass marketed success.
Prius is for most synonymous with Hybrid. Today there are many more competitors for the crown of MPG King. Full electrics playing on an entirely different playing field.

My personal opinion is that the Prius was and has been very well supported by Toyota from inception. The story of the Prius success is an evolving story. I think early on, competitors didn't take it seriously. With success came competition...continuing through today, but also in my opinion, competitors have never really grasped the entire formula.

The Prius is still unique in being a built from the ground up Hybrid, that offers both great Hybrid gas mileage, very good driving characteristics, and I think most importantly, usable utilitarian aspects. The Prius can be a daily driver, weekend road trip vehicle, and the vehicle you use to pick up things at Home Depot. Also, the Prius has been comparatively affordable.

The competition in my opinion has never really fully matched this package in totality.

There is a lot of competition today.....so I wouldn't call the Prius the King in any single aspect. But if you take all the aspects of a Prius, and it's successful history, I say, long live the King.

 

Prius success I think came about because Toyota spent the money to "over engineered" it based on the standards...then...because they wanted it to work. However...Toyota does win the Reliability Award overall in my book.

 

tom ogle was taken out by the big oil mafia

 

Yes.. yes. It was kind of something like that. I don't know if the guy got lobotomized. Besides there was a re-engineering follow-up after him. Same principle and more advanced.
Ill tell you man there were a handful of gas saving evolution in 80's all derived from that principle. There was an aqua-gas. if I was correct. Geez for I was in my teens at that time. I had passport to a lot places for my uncle was political. and I actually seen and drove the car for months to different places. There was a difference in gas savings. I couldn't figure out the principle. When you pop the hood all I remember unusual there was a large carburetor adaptor with lot of pipings, some axiliary radiator and like 2 see thru liquid containers that bubbles when the engine is running and they adjust the mixture from time to time. There was a lot of difference on the gas for that was a 64 oldsmobile lemans F-85 was better than the four cylinder that "we were driving at that time". But then again. Its all a flash of memories now and I can never tell if its really sufficient in terms of measuring the MPG. That died right then. Man I wish I had a picture of it.

 

I almost bought a new Honda insight back in the day as a high school graduation present to myself. but when i ran the insurance, it was going to be almost $600 more a year because it was a "2 seat-er sport/alternative." thats when bought a used Honda civic coupe that could seat 5, took out the rear seats, and i had my 2 seat-er "sport car"

 

If any of those numerous hucksters ever really achieved something approaching 100 mpg, it would certainly have been under excellent hypermiling conditions, not anything resembling an EPA or CAFE test cycle. And the fuel mixtures were likely seriously leaned out, producing excessive NOx emissions.

So in that sense, our game has been changed, we are there. We now have numerous cars that can be readily hypermiled to 100 mpg and beyond. And while meeting early 21st Century NOx standards.

Don't make the mistake of holding any of those old 100 mpg claims up to today's regular yardsticks.

 

In San Antonio, there was a local Master Mechanic by the name of Steve Gerhlein . His shop experimented with legitimate road-testing of an electrolysis system on his wife's SUV. I had not met the man in any other capacity except for that of a customer at his shop. However he talked about this technology on a radio show. Sometime later I learned that Steve had passed away from heart failure, and so I started looking for any evidence of his research. It just doesn't seem to be out there

I do recall once asking him(as a customer getting his car worked on), how the testing was going. He said it had some advantages but that it was bulky and cumbersome and had problems with rust. He didn't elaborate much further than that.

 

I wouldn't say that the Prius has the absolute best MPG, but rather its the measure by which we compare other hybrids to. The Prius was purpose built to be as efficient as possible while still giving the driver the comfort a regular car offers. my personal take is that if the MPG rating is lower than the Prius, its probably more comfortable/fun to drive while something that actually beat the Prius is probably worse off in the comfort department.

 

any one here ever hear of the Elio? Elio Motors | The next big thing in transportation!

 

Nope but looking at Elio doesn't fill me with any interest. The Prius is a very practical car, the Elio doesn't look up to much from my point of view.

 

The Elio is going down the same path as the Aptera and other small startups. They just haven't pulled the plug and taken it off life support yet. Production was supposed to start eight years ago and keeps getting pushed back a year or two at a time. I think right now assets are maybe a few thousand dollars and debt is in the millions.

The Elio's main attraction would be the price point of about $8k brand new. I could see it as attractive for a college student on a tight budget. It also might have a place as a vehicle for one person for grocery shopping around town or one person headed to the golf course. I don't see it as a mainstream daily driver and certainly not for freeway commuting.

 

You could make a case for various factors. I believe that it is partly history and partly culture. If you look back at the foundations of the car you will find a room full of engineers, scientists, mathematicians, and serious car guys. There were no people from sales or legal, no sheet metal guys, just hard core gear heads (However you say that in Japanese)

They spent years and a considerable amount of Yen, working their way through the question of how does an engine and a car actually work?, and what can we do to make it work better? There were a lot of early tests and projects that no one stateside ever really heard about, 'cause they were failures. This also generated a deep well of state of the art knowledge about the physics of gas engines, vehicles, and how energy works. This was mostly invisible to anyone outside the company (then).

What came out of this was something that was honestly better and different, not in terms of what it looked like, but for what it actually was. This is not something that can be duplicated by throwing together a quick team and telling them you need something for the coming model year.

A lot of the early imitation Priuses had the right buzz words, or some kind of quick imitation of the technology, but lacked the solid physics/mechanics back ground. I ran across a fellow on another car forum who is convinced that start/stop engine technology is crap, because the car he had it in was always jerky when the gasser started back up. It is not that the technology is bad, it is that he bought a cheap copy and it was really intended as a sales feature, not part of a well worked out system.

That was twenty years ago, so what about since then? When the first Pri were bought up for teardown by the big Detroit three, the dissasemblers had no freaking idea what to think about this crazy Japanese stuff on the table. When they tear down one anothers cars they have procedures they use, they measure, weigh, and identify everything in the entire vehicle. They come up with figures for what it would cost to make one and check for anything that looks cheaper than what they themselves do.

When they got the first Prius on the table there was all this stuff that they didn't know what it was and they didn't know what it did. How do you price a yaw sensor? Why would a car even have a yaw sensor? How are you supposed to price something like that? Time has passed, Toyota has been busy eating their market share, and by know they understand what all those little black boxes do. Detroit has caught on that electrons can do the same job as mechanical linkages, do it lighter and faster, and even be reliable if you keep a close eye on them.

Now however, there is a new problem. Toyota has been doing something that translates into English as "Constant Improvement"(?) it is part of their business process. They have taken something that worked, and worked well, and they study how it fares in the real world. They keep finding things they think they could do better, and when they have enough of them they come out with a new model, even though their was nothing wrong with the old model.

The result of all this is that it is hard for some company that is focused on sales for the next quarter to come along and out do them at their own game. Other companies can and have come out with things they can legally sell as "hybrids", but without doing the work and paying the dues, it is pretty damn hard to be the king.

 

hyper mileing can be a hoot .... i hit the roads at 4am - so being in the slow lane on a 3-lane thoroughfare impacts nobody, & I can choose the hyper-mileing speed that I want - weather in the Gen 2 Prius;



or - our new 2¼ tons of weight, mini van;



Electric efficiency beats ICE - regardless of the vehicle that's electrified. And the more electric, the higher the efficiency.
Usually the Prius would yield 60mph - on a yearly cycle, but it's fun to see how you can stretch quite a bit more out of it. Similarly we are yielding 60's mpg in the minivan, but it's fun to stretch quite a bit more out of it.
When the RAV4 plug-in gets here, you can expect good MPGs like this as well!
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