Does anybody know approx what mileage the Prius would get WITHOUT the hybrid system?

If you removed the hybrid system, it wouldn't run, so you wouldn't have any fuel consumption. :madgrin:

Some other points:

Electric A/C draws kiloWatts, so is not really practical without the large battery and generator(s).

Atkinson cycle without the traction motor (MG2) would really suck because of the low amount of torque from the ICE.

 

Since the car was designed from the top down as a hybrid, you really can't seperate the parts out like that.

It's not like a civic or fusion hybrid which has a sibling that is a non-hybrid to compare to.

That being said, without the hybrid bit, I sure it would lose the MPG compition to lots of cars, both gas and diesel. You are asking it to run on half it's power plant.

 

i think what you're asking is same car with 4 banger, typical for it's size and weight. it's hard to say, probably less than a corolla because it is larger, not sure about weight.
best i can say is we got an average of 28 mpg in 3 camry's over 10 years. hycam gives us 42. that's a 14 mpg or 50% increase. if that were the case, prius might go from 50? to 32? or 60? to 40?

 

Just look into an Echo.

 

You answered your own question. At steady state the battery isn't doing much, and regenerative braking is certainly not a factor. Steady cruising is the only condition where the hybrid system is not heavily in play.

As others have pointed out, it's not really a reasonable question, since the HSD is the very heart of car. How much are you willing to sacrifice before the comparison becomes unreasonable? Without the hybrid system, the Prius with its ICE and a normal transmission would be a real performance dog. We could use a much smaller engine and limit the top speed to 15 mph and get even better mileage. It's very hard to come up with an apples to apples comparison.

Tom

 

I think it's a good question. A new Ford Mustang V6 rated at 300 HP claims to achieve 30 mpg and Ford says they get the mileage from aerodynamic improvements. What would the Gen III get if it only had to rely on its aerodynamics?

My thought as I'm planning a summer road trip, if I exit the freeway, fill up, and then drive interstate speeds over 70 playing the game of going as fast as I can without getting a ticket and then pull off to fuel up when the low fuel light comes on, wouldn't this simulate apples to apples with my old 1.8L Matrix when I drove it in a similar manner?

Realistically, I doubt I could pull off such an experiment. With the Prius, I would probably have to drive over 8 hours straight, which is an unhealthy amount of time not getting out, stretching your legs and the logistics of drinking water and needing to go to the bathroom.

 

You can eliminate the battery from the scenario, at least, by
going steady-state interstate speeds. Very little battery current
in or out, and only part of the engine's output power takes an
"electrical hop" before coming back into mechanical power to
the wheels. That's good for what we call "60 @ 60", or 60 MPG
at around 60 MPH on average. That's just how efficient the engine
is. Plant it at 1900 RPM across the flatlands of Ohio, and that's
what it will deliver all day.
.
I did an experiment one night where I deliberately disabled some
of the hybrid operation -- threw it in Neutral for braking, so
no regen; idled in a drive-thru while getting food, etc. Still
seemed to be in the neighborhood of 50 MPG, just eyeballing
the 5-minute bars.
.
_H*

 

Hi All,

As Hobbit has pointed out at highways speeds one can do the comparison. But the issue then is that without the hybrid system, the Prius could never get up to highway speeds, or at least within several minutes get to highways speeds. I believe Hobbit accelerated very slowly to avoid the electric toque-converter mode, and battery assist in his test.

The battery/motor torque fills in for the very low torque output of the Atkinson/Miller engine.

Use of that efficient engine is predicated on the availability of the torque from the battery/motor.

So, one cannot really divorce the hybrid from the Prius drive-train comparison to a car with a traditional drive train. Because eliminating the hybrid , would require eliminating the efficient engine, for a fair comparison to vehicles with similar accelleration performance.

Now, one can compare a Prius body to a similar car, like a scaled larger version of the Matrix. Take out 120 (?) pounds for the battery sub system, and extra weight of the motor/inverter, and compare the .25 Cd to the .3X (?) of the Matrix, and the difference in rolling resistance of the 215 versus the 195 tires. For the tires alone, we know that knocks about 10 mpg off the Prius, for people have gone that route. There is some rule of thumb hypermilers use for weight, something like 1 mpg per 100 pounds at 35 mpg? Cd makes little difference below 40 mph airspeed (although, I have been up at 80 to 90 mph airspeed lately with the car just doing 40 to 50 mph ground speed). The rule of thumb for aero drag is 1/2 the effect in Cd improvement in mileage. Improve the Cd by 30 percent, and one gets 15 percent better mileage.

One good on-line resource regarding these ideas is http://www.aerocivic.com . In mostly rural 2-lane highway driving, he gets Prius hypermiler perforamance, without the hybrid system, albeit with a much lighter weight car, with less modern mandated safety systems, and special lower-accelleration gearing.

 

Using the EPA vehicle class sizes for: midsize sedan

	Column 1	Column 2	Column 3	Column 4	Column 5	Column 6	Column 7	Column 8	Column 9
0	2010 Prius	2010 Nissan Versa	2010 Chevrolet Malibu	2010 Ford Fusion	model
1	94 ft{3}	94 ft{3}	95 ft{3}	100 ft{3}	passenger volume
2	48 MPG	34 MPG	34 MPG	34 MPG	EPA highway mileage
3	51 MPG	28 MPG	26 MPG	23 MPG	EPA city mileage
4	. . .	. . .	. . .	. . .
5	4	512	3	196[/B]	3	230	3	400	passenger ft{3}/gal highway
6	4	794	2	632	2	470	2	300[/B]	passenger ft{3}/gal city
7	. . .	. . .	. . .	. . .
8	41%	0%	1%	6%	Highway efficiency over least
9	108%	14%	7%	0%	City efficiency over least

EPA mileage tests are consistent across all models allowing a head-to-head comparision. Note Chevy Malibu hybrid is less bad, never the worst case vehicle.

So on the highway, the hybrid advantage shrinks to just 41% better than the worst. In the City, the hybrid advantage is more than twice the worst.

Bob Wilson