Prius vs. HUMMER: Exploding the Myth

Not in my neighborhood. While gas was hitting the mid-$4 range, diesel was over $5.

Nationally, here are some charts:
DOE gas-diesel
DOE diesel
Gasbuddy gas

 

Um, the highlander hybrid holds 7 and is trailer worthy ... allthewhile getting over 30mpg. As a side note, SUV passengers are 3x more likely to die in rollover accidents due to the higher center of gravity. Those stat's are all over consumer websites. Lugnut count is not necessarily the winner. So be carefull my friend.

 

Hi NascarMike,

If you drove the Prius go get 60 mpg, which is readily doable, and probably similar to the accelleration and decelleration rates you are driving the Excursion, the Prius gets slightly better pound-mpg. 60 mpg times 3060 pounds is 183.6 K pmpg, versus 20 times 6000 , whichis 160.0K pmpg...

 

Why do you get such poor mpg in the prius?
Granted, I have a Gen III but I get better mileage city and hiway when it's 10 below zerow F. The CNW study has been thoroughly shown to be an industry funded "BJ"

 

First - if you're only using the SUV for large passenger loads, kudos. That's what they should be used for. It would likewise make a hell of a lot more sense to use a pickup truck to make 1 run from the hardware store rather than use a Prius and have to take several trips.

Sadly, most SUV and "light" truck owners rarely use their vehicles in this way - the overwhelming majority of the time they're used for normal driving (including solo commutes)...

Second, a Prius with snow tires kicks nice person - and is a lot easier to stop (and turn) in bad conditions than those 8000lb behemoths. Extra weight just makes it harder to turn and stop, and 4WD also increases weight. Every test shows that snow tires beat all-seasons in any kind of snow, hands-down, regardless of what wheel-drive you have.

Yes, the Prius can get high-grounded in extreme conditions, but it takes a lot more than you think (if you have snow tires), and unless you're a rescue vehicle, you should be waiting for the plows anyway.

Longevity? I'll pick Toyota over Ford - and so will Consumer Reports. The diesel engine may last longer, but a lot of other sh*t can and will break... (but I'm hoping you got a cherry, not a lemon)

Last but definitely not least: As for accidents, yes, SUV's are safer - for the occupants... But they're far more deadly for the people you run into (the stats show that if you hit someone with your SUV, you're more likely to kill them than if you were driving a normal sized/weight car). Most SUV owners are blissfully unaware of this and think they're "protecting their family" - while ignoring the fact that they're endangering other families by doing so.

And it's not a zero-sum game - an SUV-to-car collision has more energy than a car-to-car collision, and is more deadly overall. But the family in the car is paying almost the entire price of the extra energy that the SUV adds to the equation.

 

Reported

 

Today in my area 87 regular unleaded is $4.09/gallon & diesel is $4.49/gallon.

 

Yep, regular unleaded is ranging between $4.11 - $4.33 / gal, diesel is almost $4.50. You quoted a post I made almost 2 years ago (4/23/2010).

 

Tom 813 u r right I live in Texas where trucks are king. Just look what people driving them did to my wife's Prius. He came to a rolling stop and then pulled out. She was traveling at about 60 mph. Thank god for air bags. The Prius is a safe car she wants another ASAP.

 

OMG
thats a big hit.

 

On a humerous note - you can STILL find brand new hummers (the big ones) to buy, made by GM back in the pre-bankruptcy days. Hard to believe they weren't all snapped up when they dumped the prices to unload them ... after all ... Spinella insists that they're the bom.

 

i expected that the hummer was again being build? but not..
ok that was a big american way iconic car

 

Oh, good! I was getting worried there, since my 2010 is currently at 111,000 miles! (and not ONE failure of any kind!)

 

Just looked, surprised to see the Hummer H2 (the large ones) still going for a ton of money used, like $40k+. The older "real" Hummers are also $40k+ but older.

 

Actually, what you've discovered here, is what big hummers are NOT selling for ... and that's why they're still sitting there
Knock $25,000 off that $40k ... and then ... and ONLY then would a handful of folks be willing to fork out money for one;

HUMMER : H2 HUMMER : H2 | eBay
HUMMER : H2 HUMMER : H2 | eBay

Go to Ebay Motors, pull up completed Hummer listings and see for your self. The above closed listing is just one of many low ball offer examples where owners take it in the shorts. The 'Red' listings are auctions with unsuccessful listings ... folks thinking they can get a high price for one of the worst land barges ever concocted. Watch and see for your self, that poor fellow thinking they can get a high price for the laughing stock symbol of arrogance - will either lower the price, or it simply won't sell.

Reality is sometimes a hard lesson to learn, in auto price setting. Sure, there are tons of $50k - $60k - $70k ... even $80k hummers for sale ... but I think you can get the point, even from the above examples.

 

Now's the time to get a hummer, with oil going down. Snap em up before gas follows and people are still gunshy over high prices

 

Resale price is also impacted by future support and the Hummer has been discontinued and all Hummer dealerships closed:

But even if one has a Hummer, looking at their odometer readings over the model years compared to the Prius listings shows owners are not putting many miles on them:


In annual milage, the Ebay listings show:

• 2:1 Prius over Hummer, heavily used ones
• 2.5:1 Prius over Hummer, average
• 7:1 Prius over Hummer, lightly used (style)

One of Art's claims in the original report, June 8, 1996, was that Hummer and all gas models would be driven more per year than their hybrid models including the Prius:

	model	Est. Life-Miles
1	Echo	157000 (pp. 39)
2	Prius	109000 (pp. 42)
3	Escape	161000 (pp. 41)
4	Escape hybrid	141000 (pp. 42)
5	Hummer	379000 (pp. 47)

He used optimistic estimates that always showed the hybrids having lower life-time miles. Then he gave the Hummer (and other large SUVs) an extremely high life-time mileage estimate that are not backed up by today's Ebay listings.

Hummer owners:

• Paid a lot at the dealer
• Paid a lot at the pump - every tank
• No resale for those who bought new or high used price
• Half the usage - they sit parked, less than half the annual miles compared to Prius

Bob Wilson

 

i ve seen many priuses go 200 ooo miles with nothing more than tires and wipers blades no suv would do that these numbers are so out to lunch what about the cost to recycle double the weight of the suv in mass .what about the co2 ,my old blazer was 5 times higher .What about the suv s are coming off the roads sooner not later because of the price of fuel.lots of suv in the scrap yards never see prius in them. people are keeping fuel mizer on the road longer .just in gas a suv uses 3 times or more in fuel over a 200,000 mile life which could be up to $20.000 extra thats almost the entire price of the car

 

This is such an old and ridiculous argument, why even give it visibility by continuing to keep it stickied?

Hummers? ancient history that's gone the way of the dinosaur...

 

We still have the occasional newbie who shows up asking about some rumor they heard from somebody else. But I would not mind if someone like 'john1701a' would start a replacement sticky to index and collect all of the BS spread about the Prius over the past decade and a half. It needs to be a thread where the first post is a maintained index. Let me show an example:

Example
In the subsequent posts, members would bring their essays. Then the 'editor' who started the thread would add or put in links to specific posts that flesh out the particular false claim best.

But with Mr. Google and Wiki . . . I could understand why this might not be a project anyone would volunteer to lead.

Bob Wilson