Prius Myths and their Rebuttals

Suggesting Education is not an elitist idea, it's just plain smart. If you reject education I'm sure our Governor has a place for you in his administration. Now shoo.

 

I hate to bring up an old topic but when I was reading this one it occurred to me there's a flaw in your friend's logic, Ryan. Her concern was whether to save money on gas or save money on the car to get a non-hybrid (and thus spending that savings on more gas) because her brother told her the battery is bad for the environment. Problem is, whether the battery is bad for the environment or not is mostly irrelevant because refining and burning gas is bad for the environment.

Your friend was looking at the equation as to whether she would save money on gas, but that's looking at it as though pulling up to the pump in a hybrid means the attendant says "Oh, hybrid? We'll just knock 50% off the price at the pump for you," while you go on and pump the same amount of gas as you would have in a conventional vehicle for the miles you drove.

But that isn't the way it works. The way it works is that you save that money by saving gas because for every mile you drive, you're just not burning that extra gas vs. a conventional vehicle. So the money savings on gas is only a byproduct of the increased efficiency of the hybrid-- or the icing on the cake, in terms of the environment. The true savings is that you're using less gas while doing the same thing as with a traditional vehicle. It's just that doing that also happens to involve saving money.

 

I just found this thread and am throughly enjoying its content.

I would love to make 100K since I am a scientist, but I only make leeetlle more than the median income of 1996DD's town. Dang!

Scientist = Ph.D. in Biophysics from the #4 ranking public university in US (2011).

 

Argh time to move or consider a career change. Have you considered searching? I know recruiters "head hunters" who would steal somebody like you

 

Yeah I know... will see. It is not easy to find a good industry job as a foreign worker. This is the salary range a postdoc researcher gets at a university anyway, it is not that I get less than others.

 

Some one said if you love to drive a Prius, you are "STRANGE". Well that's me! We have a '96 Ford Explorer (for 15 years), '97 Ford F250 PSD (to pull our 5er camper), and my favorite, a 2008 Prius with Nav, etc, etc. It has plenty of power when needed and I love it.

I washed it the other day and told my DH that I was going for a drive to blow off the excess water instead of wiping it off, he said he would drive. We got on a long, straight 4 lane with little traffic. He hit the pedal, jerked me back in the seat and in seconds we were at 93mph. Scared the daylights out of me! I was yelling "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" He slowed down, turned around and headed back home and said, "Just blowing the water off like you said." BTW he didn't want me to buy this car....but now he is sold. Did I say I love this car?

 

Depending on what the other person was driving, it might be an improvement

I don't see too many 80's Chevy's on the road, especially compared to how many were made. I do see a fair share of 80's Toyotas and Hondas still out there. You have to remember that the F-150 and Silverado were the top selling vehicles sold in the U.S for soo soooo long. Way above even the Camry and Accord, the top selling cars for a long time. So you should see more of them on the road, but you don't see them in the same percentages as were originally sold. Even a few years ago when Chevy was doing their TV advertising, saying that they had the highest percentage of their trucks sold in the last 5 or 10 years on the road, which sounded great, unless of course, and Chevy hoped you didn't, you read the find print which was flashed for so short I couldn't get thru the first sentence until I recorded it and could freeze it. Where upon it said that they weren't looking at trucks still on the road at large, but only "full" sized trucks, and then only ones that were designed and built in the U.S. Which meant Toyota was out, until the recent Tundra plant opened in TX a few years back.

I can't even remember the last time I saw a Bronco from the 80's on the road.

I see very few 20 year old domestic cars still out there looking good, unless they are held by a collector or where a premium car. Not many of the cars that were the meat and potato vehicles for working middle class families, like the taurus, or the k-cars or the cavalier. I do see civics and Accords however still puttering along.

Heck, I once traded a 60,000 mile Chevette in on a 80,000 mile Mazda GLC -- and was HAPPY to do it. And the Mazda was two years older. Took that Mazda to over 160,000 miles and spent less to repair in in all that time than the Chevette in its first 60k miles.

My "fun" time car is from the 80's, but it is German, not American. And has been very reliable over the years -- very. Compared to every domestic that I and/or my family ever owned.

OK, so you really are off base on the "sounds like something you'd hear in the USSR" line.
Besides few countries over the last 50 years have perfected the whole "we are better than you" mantra more than the US. That was actually a very common thing we tried to say and show during the entire cold war.

Don't confuse what is clearly your dream, with the dream of every other kid in the world. It isn't even close to what you suggest.

And I pass people every day on the highway, every day I drive my Prius,it is passing cars, trucks and SUVs.

How is being interested or concerned with where the oil is coming from some sort of "liberal theories". There are actually quite a few hard core Republicans that think we need to be more concerned with that. Since it plays into our nations safety and standing in the world, I would suggest it isn't so bad for far more people to be concerned with.

Yes, battery production is not pleasant. Few will argue that point. But then so is almost all manufacturing. The overall impact of the Prius battery production has been shown time and time again to be the overall better option.
However, it is not a silver bullet. It is not the total solution, it is however a step forward. A very strong GIANT step forward. And to deny that fact shows a real lack of total understanding.
And it is certainly for most people the far better choice for every day driving tasks. And it is an wonder you have a 5 passenger car, that is way ahead of the rest of the pack, both in mileage (which has its own environmental benefit) and is way below the rest of the pack when it comes to tailpipe emissions. And does both at the same time.

Uhh, just need a toolbox to fix my Prius too. It just has different tools. And the really nice thing, is it just doesn't need to be fixed as often. I just had my first repair a few weeks ago, at over 120,000 miles.

Yes, for a while departments were shying away and even refusing to buy the Crown Vic. Yes, it was the standard, with the Caprice for many many years. That doesn't mean that at the end of its life, it hadn't fallen out of favor. The two are not mutually exclusive. And it isn't although most departments would even be allowed to consider a "import" car for their police departments, as many, if not most, have rules/regulations/laws demanding they buy only from the "domestics". That right there makes it not an level playing field.

It went fleet only, because it was no longer selling in sufficient volume to people to warrant continuing the product.

Uhh, where do you go that you get a choice in the country the oil that made your gas comes from? And most Americans wouldn't pay 10 cents more a gallon for "domestic" gas. Look at all the products that are sold at Wal*Mart and how many are made here -- a small percentage because people overall gravitate to the product based on price, as in lowest.

 

I don't trust anything Consumer Reports puts out after what they did to Suzuki over the Samurai.

 

Optimist interpretation? I think it means that it takes 109k miles to get that cost per mile? That means you would need to go 271k for the Yukon XL to get that price per mile, but only 109k to get that cost from your Prius.

 

My wife and I love our new 2011 Prius, we consider it a luxury car. It gets great gas mileage, smooth shifting from electric to gas and rides great in the Wisconsin snow.
I am glad I purchase the Prius, you have to be careful who you buy it from. Some of the Toyota dealers are crooks.

 

Welcome to the forum, and glad you like your new car.

The same comment can be applied to GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Nissan, Audi, <and so on and so on...> dealers too. :rockon:

 

Is it possible to reduce the life of a Prius II battery in normal driving by trying to get the last bit of energy from the battery. (Deep Cycle)?

 

Not really since Toyota limited the amount of discharge and recharge possible. You cannot go below 40% or above 80%. This is why the batteries generally last so long.

 

On the other hand, there isn't any good reason for "trying to get the last bit of energy from the battery." You just end up hurting your mileage. New owners often erroneously assume that battery operation equals good mileage, while in reality the opposite is true. Try to drive your Prius like it doesn't have a battery.

Tom

 

Heard this just a couple weeks ago. Ignorance is eternal.

 

Hi all--

One thing that drives me up the wall is how people say you'll never get the $ back by paying a premium for a hybrid vehicle. Although it's a much closer-run affair if you compared a Prius to a basic econobox on the highway (I've been behind the wheel of both vehicles, and under some contrived situations you'd be better served with the econobox), the Prius saves gobs of gas $ over the lifetime of the vehicle, often greatly exceeding the premium associated with getting a hybrid.

Haven't owned a Prius for long, but I ran some numbers on my old vehicle after I sold it. Assuming an estimated 45 MPG and $3 per gallon, I spent $5,800 in fuel over ~87,000 miles in five years of owning the old vehicle. If I'd had a regular V6-equipped car getting half that, my expense on fuel would have doubled - $5,800 is more than the hybrid premium.

And in getting a Prius that's getting 55+ MPG instead of the 40-45 I had been getting, I'm stretching my dollar even further. I fully expect to save well north of ten grand over the next five to seven years vs. a regular car (and even more if I'd bought a jeep or SUV).

(Disclaimer: My tightwad-ness is the overriding principle behind why I bought a Prius: environmental benefits, etc. are cool, but they play secondary fiddle to saving $ on fuel.)

 

What 'premium'? The Prius is cheaper than the average price of a new car. Therefore, at least half of people could buy a Prius and save money on BOTH gas and the car.

How many of those people actually drive a car cheaper than the Prius?

 

Hi Corwyn--

A quick scan of Toyota's webpage says that a Camry starts at $21,955 while the hybrid version starts at $25,900, or about $4,000 more. A third gen Prius starts at $24,000, which is 2100 more than the Camry and almost $8,000 more than a Corolla.

A fairer comparison may be the Prius c to a Corolla or a Yaris, but you're still looking at $3,000-$5,000 difference. The question, if you're looking purely at economic cost, is how much $ on gas you'll save by buying a more efficient vehicle (especially if you're already in the market for, say, a Camry - you'd want to know if adding a hybrid system is worthwhile).

In the vast majority of situations, the hybrid makes economic sense with gas prices doubling in the past three years and still near all-time highs. By my rough calculations, you'd make the money back sometime between the 60,000 to 100,000 mile mark - and anything after that is $ being put back in your pocket. So the question becomes, Will you put that many miles on the car over its lifetime? (In my case, the answer is 'yes' and then some.)

I can't speak for people that plop down $40,000+ on SUV's though - I really wonder at times how people come up with that kind of cash plus spend the enormous amounts of fuel to keep them going? Maybe I'm just a tightwad and I've surrounded myself with similarly-minded people.

 

Yes, I know. But most people are not only choosing between a Prius and a Corolla.

Just compare cars based on their price, mileage, and other attributes. The 'hybrid premium' is FUD. If the overriding concern is economics, buy the car with the lowest (Price + Maintenance + Operating Costs) - Resale value.