"A lot of waste in a Prius"...

A salesperson LIE and pull stuff out of their nice person?

Naw, never happen

BTW: that diesel that gets 55 miles per IMPERIAL gallon doesn't have a hope in hell of meeting our most basic Federal emissions

 

I asked him what their most fuel efficient ride was. He said it was the E class with the Bluetec Diesel. Said it was the most efficient car in the world ...."based on size and weight".

I'm gonna bet he didn't define what he meant by efficient, or which size and weight class he considered the E class part of


Said that the Prius has "a lot of waste", as it takes "so much fuel to make"...Wth??

Actually Toyota has a highly evolved and sophisticated mathematical modeling system that specifically measures and manages fuel production costs. It's called "Bookkeeping" If Toyota burns $5,000 worth of fuel building a hybrid, they add that $5,000 right into the sale price of the vehicle. Pretty sneaky, no?


He then went on to say that Mercedes had a diesel somewhere overseas that gets 55+ mpg, but the U.S. won't let Mercedes bring it over "because it would hurt Ford and Chevy".

Did he mention why Ford and Chevy can't just build some themselves?


I said "why did they let Toyota build the Prius then?"
His response was that the Mercedes was a luxury car, and Ford and Chevy were more worried about the Cadillac and Lincoln divisions......

So they let in the million selling cheap car anyone can own, and got pissy about the Love Boats? Henry Ford Would Not Approve.


Last thing he said was that the Prius was old technology,

If you mean "old" in the sense of carefully proven, widely tested, and tweaked until it's among the most reliable technologies on the market, then yeh, he's right.


and that Mercedes is coming out with a hybrid diesel that gets 100 mpg.

Does it fly? Or is the FAA downpressing them too? I would so switch brands for a flying Mercedes.


"All this "mess" with batteries is just useless, even our bluetec diesel could cut gas consumption by 70% (yep, 70) if everyone drove one....

So does he actually sell this magic flying car, or just whinge about it?

 

My nomination for comment of the week. One of those statements that leaves anyone objecting......speechless.

 

A good salesman selling a good product won't knock the competition. Lies aside, it's unprofessional. And when he feels the need to list the other product's vices instead of the virtues of his own, it makes me wonder, "What's wrong with his?"

 

It may not be a Mercedes, but . . .

"British adventurer and pilot Neil Laughton poses in his Parajet Skycar ... on Wednesday kicking off a 3,600-mile journey from London to Timbuktu ... essentially a dune buggy with a fan motor and paragliding wing attached. Creators call it the "world's first bio-fuelled flying car."" " ... travel by land and air through France, Spain, Morocco, the Western Sahara, Mauritania, and Mali, returning home via Senegal. Joining Laughton for part of the trip will be engineer Gilo Cardozo, the brain behind the Parajet Skycar. The pair has participated in past flying expeditions to the Himalayas, Alps, and Venezuela." Via: ZDNet.com Link

Taken from the front page of Green Technology.

 

Mercedes A-Class. Best, 64.2mpg (Imperial) on EU NEDC test. For comparison, the 2G Prius gets 65.7mpg on the same test - and the 3rd gen reportedly gets 72.4mpg.

These figures are for the 3-door, 5-speed manual A 160 CDI BlueEFFICIENCY, with 185mm-wide tyres at the rear. It manages 0-62mph (100km/h) in 15.0 seconds. The US market would no doubt consider it unacceptably slow.

They've submitted test figures with a belted CVT transmission, which gets 52.3mpg. Acceleration is 0.3 seconds slower than the manual.

The best they can do in a C-Class is 49.6mpg, a C 200 CDI with 195mm-wide rear tyres. That's a 6-speed manual; again, the auto box (5 ratios, this time) drops it to 46.3mpg.

Bring on the hybrid diesels, but right now they're vapourware.

 

Like many others, I'm tempted to stop reading right there. BUT, not all salespeople lie, so I thought I'd read on. Seriously, the salespeople who are around a long time do not lie, do not denigrate competitors, and do not pass along unsupported statements in an attempt to sell a car.

No doubt but that is a fine car (MSRP at $54,200, too!) with a great engine. Of course, if you want to have it decked out like the 2010 Prius, with parking assist, spoiler, split-folding rear seats, LED illuminated entry, 17" wheels, heated front seats, leather, NAV system, satellite radio, iPod interface, keyless entry, headlamp washers, LED lights (oops, not available on a Mercedes!), then it will run you $65,947. And you still don't get lane keeping assist or automatically adjusting cruise control. Well, I have to admit that to get those on a Prius you're likely going to have to pay about ONE-HALF of the cost of the Mercedes!

It is unfortunate, too, that you can achieve these good things in the Mercedes only with ultra-low-sulfur diesel. It's also pretty zippy for a diesel, with a 0-60 of 6.6 sec. Pretty sippy, too? EPA est: City: 23 Highway: 32. If you could have the disclaimer up on the screen long enough to read it, you'd probably learn other things as well. If anyone knows how to do a screen capture or find another way to catch the disclaimer, please do so and post here. Here is the info on the engine as provided by Mercedes: Follow this link.

I haven't yet found where Mercedes makes these claims. Perhaps they do, but you'd think it would be shouted from some nearby mountaintop. And -- how much fuel does it take to make a Prius? Or any other car, for that matter? And how much fuel does it take to build, transport, market, sell and use any of those cars?

Yes, well there are a number of companies that have things overseas that aren't allowed in the U.S. Factories that emit uncontrolled pollution. . . Toxic waste dumps that continue to collect hazardous waste even when they have no control over what they took in yesterday. . . Diesel-powered cars that emit huge amounts of particulate matter. . . (I think you get the general drift.)

So you dropped the basic logic of the innocents on the poor man. Shame on you!

Do you remember what Archie Bunker called his son-in-law (and anyone else he felt was dead from the neck up)? Meathead!

There's some intelligence for you. Hopefully, you are saying this guy made two different statement here. Otherwise, I'd be faced with him saying Mercedes is going to come out with a great hybrid, but "all this mess" with batteries is useless. Hmm. A hybrid without batteries. How about a hybrid without an ICE?

Sounds like a bit of "would have, should have, could have" to me.

 

I feel like they have the technology to make all cars get 100+ mpg but they won't do it because it would make gas consumption go down.

 

Hi All,

Does anybody seem to see the contradition of the salesman's boast that MB will be coming out with a 100 mpg HYBRID (you know, with batteries), and then the comment about "battery" "mess".

 

deleted -- already covered by others.

 

Actually a year ago I heard about Mercedes working on hydrogen power.
It is possible that the salesman was referring to a hydrogen/diesel hybrid.
However, since he seems so clueless about everything else, I doubt it.

 

Hmmm. Let's see . . .

Yep! It takes someone else from Chicago to wonder about such things:

 

Why do these car companies want to keep us dependent on foreign oil?
It;s time for another source of fuel and a clean tech car.
Diesel is NOT a "clean" fuel.
MZB will say anything to get you to buy one of those overpriced pieces of crap!

 

Everyones views of diesel are seeing a 1978 Peterbilt shoot thick, black smoke out of 5" exhaust stacks and then having acid rain melt them. Modern diesel engines are among the most clean and efficient engines ever created. Theyre no longer noisy and obnoxious either.

 

"Slow electric car"

So, just how insecure are you that you need a car that is 0-60 in 6 secs? I do know that when I'm stuck in traffic, I'm going the same speed as all the other cars around me: 0

I frequently travel to Europe on business, and there is no way in hell I'd want their air quality. They're pretty late to the emissions control game, only requiring catalytic converters on cars in the early 1990's with Euro1 emissions standards

Remember that for diesel emissions, they are concentrating on "regulated" emissions. Diesel engines are a proven source of dioxin emissions, which currently are *not* regulated.

Is the BMW diesel engine an impressive technological feat? Sure it is. Would I want a diesel engine in a cold winter climate? No way.

As far as the "savings" of a diesel engine, consider that at the refinery level, the energy input to refine a given gallon of ULSD is quite a bit more (Catalyst steps that I covered in my thread about how an oil refinery works) than for a given gallon of regular unleaded

So not only are you paying more at the pump for a gallon of ULSD, the energy input was higher too. Yes, some folks can claim they run their old diesel engine on waste vegetable oil. Good luck doing that with a modern common rail diesel with piezo injectors

For mass production biodiesel, say from rapeseed crops, you generally need all sort of cosolvents, such as potassium methoxide, eg to complete the transesterification process.

 

Mercedes is serious about fuel economy???

Some facts:

Yes, they do have efficient diesels available overseas and they also have 45MPG 4 cylinder gasoline engines available there with the power of the 6 cylinder cars sold in the States, but Mercedes stopped selling fuel efficient 4 cylinder cars in the States.

70% of European Mercedes are 4 cylinder models and they use the US as their dump for their gas guzzlers.

Mercedes North America management are a bunch of dinosaurs.

 

There is no doubt that Europe has many fuel efficient models that could rival the the Prius. Volkswagon, Ford, GM all have cars that get around 50 mpg in Europe. Bring them here and they get 30 mpg. Diesel vs. Unleaded Gasoline. Lower emission standards vs. higher emission standards.