Prius for life....

Likely, most of the improvements will be to the battery and its management systems. Hopefully, the improvements can be retrofitted into older Prii. There's been similar talk of hydrogen fuel cells being retrofittable, although that's likely years away.

 

I keep hoping someone like ACpropulsion.com will offer a LiPo battery add on/replacement. Maybe when these,

http://www.kokam.com/english/product/battery03.html

become readily available and inexpensive, like when the stock pack needs replacement. :idea:

 

Aside from the occasional failure in some individual cars, the HV battery is likely to last the life of the car. Reportedly, a taxi driver in Canada drove a Classic trouble-free for 200,000 miles, until Toyota bought it back from him to study a real-life high-mileage case.

 

I can't imagine buying a sub-hybrid at this point. The only question would be whether the next car is a hybrid or fuel cell (well, the prius should last me 10 years, right?)

 

I agree with runeridr. Ever since I was a boy scout (many years ago) and as a scout leader now, I have always been someone who tries to clean up the environment where possible. Recycling, trash pickup days, park cleanups, etc are a normal part of my year. Even so, I can't say that cleaning the environment was even a small factor when buying previous cars that I have owned. But I have to admit, when I'm sitting in DC or Baltimore beltway traffic and the car is creeping along on battery as all of the cars around be belch huge amounts of pollutants in the air, you really see what a difference the hybrids can make. It makes me feel good!

Rick
04 Salsa Red BC

 

Agreed - I'm a hybrid (or better) owner for life.

In that aspect, it's kind of like TiVo, or XM radio. Once you have it, no way in hell you're going back.

-m.

 

Okay, I'll go a bit off-topic. What's the pitch for why XM radio is in the same category as Hybrids and TiVo? Is it just a "you'll never listen to radio the same way again" thing? Right now, I leave it on one station and there's almost always something acceptable as background music, with the occasional commercial break. What does XM gain me? No commercials and no need to fill up that CD changer with my own stuff?

 

At the risk of diverting the topic too far off track, the point of XM radio, aside from having the same stations available regardless of location with virtually no deadspots, is signal clarity. If you love your CD changer and obviously the high fidelity of your discs, then why would you settle for a limited mid-range analog sound from your FM? Every song on XM sounds like you have a CD playing with lows and highs with no distortion that you will never get off an FM signal. If that doesn't matter to you, than you don't need XM.

Other perks I won't wont to give up are instantaneous traffic and weather reports as well as XM versions of CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg, etc. It's completely changed my commute into something a little more personally enjoyable.

 

Thanks. Probably not right for me, then. I've never been a radio-focused person, and my commute is within the range of the stations I listen to. If I were a travelling salesman, XM would probably be indispensible...

(And yes, I've been a TiVo owner for about 3 months now )

 

Well, for me, the biggest benefit to XM Radio is the diversity in the channels and the ability to drive long distances without having to change the station.

Example: If I'm going to be taking a trip to New Hampshire for skiing, I can keep my favorite XM stations tuned in the entire time. "In the days before XM" I used to scan the channels once I hit the mountains searching for something to listen to--almost always reverting back to a CD (because there's only crap channels in NH).

Another thing I really like is that there's stations I can listen to that are *far* superior to what's on the air here around Boston (which is the radio capitol of the world I might add). If I want to listen to rock music without XM, I have two channels I can pick (*maybe* a 3rd depending on the time of day). With XM, if I want to listen to rock, I have like 10 channels to choose from. All of them commercial-free and no annoying DJs blabbering about the latest promotion every 2-3 songs.

However, my favorite aspect of XM is simply the channels that I can't get over FM. Especially the News and Comedy channels (and the three techno/dance stations, hehe). I spend more time listening to the BBC and CNN than anything else lately.

Then when I'm sick of news/music I can throw on something like Comedy XL or The Discovery Channel.

As an alternative note, my girlfriend loves XM for a completely different reason: The 80s and 90s stations.

 

Hmm.. now I'm actually starting to think about it

Mostly because, like everyone else here, I'm a bit gadget-oriented.

$400 + $7-10/month.. Wonder how my stock options are doing today..

 

haha...It's well worth it. Actually, you'll find what's worse, is it's as addictive as tivo-ing. With tivo, you probably watch more tv than you used to - and with xm, you listen to more radio than you normally would. I have the one unit in my old car, then I have the skyfi tape adapter (temp solution until I come up with the $500 for priusxm or coastaldave's kit), and a skyfi boombox at work where I play either the 40's or one of the new age channels just as background music.

Yeah, some of those companies out there focus on us gadget-techie people, and it usually makes them a lot of money.

-m.

PS - the skyfi runs $129, car kit is $69, home kit is $69, and boombox is $99, so it might be a better idea to 'test' it for a month to see if you like it with the skyfi/car kit instead of going full out and installing the factory kit.

 

XM. I'm another convert. I got sick and tired of FM radios 20 minute commercialthons. I don't know what it is, but I somehow managed to turn on the radio - JUST IN TIME - to catch the last 30 seconds of a song, and then go straight to the commercial BS. Once that's finally been endured, you then get to listen to another 10 minutes of blabbering by the DJ's in a failed attempt at being funny. My WORST complaint, those assenine, stupid, and just plain obnoxious morning audio assaults called morning shows. Once I installed XM into my vehicles, I've never turned on a local radio station since.

I didn't drive the Prius to work today. I drove my brother's car instead to insure that it'll be ready for his road trip when he comes down Friday to pick it up and take home. Man, I missed the XM, especially after having almost half of my commute being bombarded by commercials. I hate commercials. Driving a "regualr" car sure is unpleasant as well. I missed the silent passing through the one small town I pass through on the way to work, as well as the period of peaceful, quiet, rest that the Prius goes into when sitting at a light.

 

Judging by their web site, even XM radio does not have the music I want to hear. I love the CD player in my Prius.

 

Bolivian polka music.

(Excuse me, synthasized Bolivian polka music.)

 

The only reason I would get sattellite radio is so that I could listen to Howard Stern when/(hopefully not) they kick him off the air.

I don't see anything that big about sat radio. I've had something similar when I used the service for background music at my house. It's nice, but not mindblowing like... the starting and stoping of a program or ICE when you want to.

That is the only reason I would put Tivo and Prius in the same category. It only does what YOU want to do when YOU want to do it. (Alas, if we had the EV button standard, it would be more of an arguement.)