Featured SPOTTED! *UNWRAPPED* 2016 Prius spotted this morning!

Here's why I won't consider a Volt. Look at the floor space between the front and back seats.

2016 Volt:



2015 Prius:

 

So, Jeep Wrangler drag coefficient: 0.495
, I bet you can't go back! Compare Side-by-Side

 

Great photos, Lee Jay. Not much leg room at all. My daughter's '14 Corolla has lots more than that, even with the seat a the way back. What happened with the Volt? Based on the Cruze, I'll bet.

 

Ah geez, quoting myself. Anyway:

Further along on that same walk, noticed a few late model Hyundai's and thought: THAT'S where they're getting their styling cues (for the 2016 Prius), and I HATE the look.

 

The funny thing is, the Volt is 4 inches longer and 2 inches wider. Yet, the Prius is classed as a midsize while the Volt is classed as a compact.

That's an amazing thing about the Prius - small on the outside, big on the inside, compared with similar class models. That's one of many things that attracted me to it in the first place.

 

But Chevy says there is a 5th seat!

 

There is - for a double amputee with a 24 inch waist.

 

Volkswagen does a great job of packaging its cars. A friend of my bought a new Jetta. Check Engine light came on so to the dealership he went. One bad coil, replaced it and he went on. He ended up replacing all four coils and had to BUY the fifth. Boy was he upset.

We used to have VW's anout thirty years ago. The car we had just quit running down the highway. The entire gas tank rusted from the inside out. I felt the rust, told my wife I don't trust it anymore. I gave the car away, thinking the entire fuel injection system was full of contamination. Rustfish do exist.

We bought a Japanese car and we drove it for 150,000 miles with zero problems. Yes I had exhaust put on, brake pads replaced, oil changes, coolant changes. But no real problems did I ever have. That sold me on them and now that's all my family will lease or purchase.

I would be hard pressed to say who has the best styling. Acura has the nice looking LED headlamps but I don't care for the SHEILD grille.

Dodge Charger has the racetrack taillamps that look really nice, especially at night. It almost screams Police Ahead, but they lose their value very quickly.

My daughter thinks the Lexus CT looks pretty awesome. I told her its just a Prius in a different wrapper. She still wants one.

Styling is so subjective. What appeals to me may Not appeal to you and vice versa.

Remember the BMW's with the Bangle "butt" and the flame style on the sides? I thought it looked rather nice but nobody else seem to like it.

So Toyota's design language for Gen 4 is similar to many cars but different enough for everyone to still see it's a Prius. If you're a manufacturer, isn't this what you want?

 

Now that's funny. Remember the Equinox commercial, the girl saying she's a big girl and she want a real seat. Seating for five? They better all look like Taylor Swift.

 

Another thing wrong with the Volt is the 8.9 gallon gas tank. That's fine if you get 80mpg, but not if you get 40.

11.9 gallons * 52mpg = 619 miles
8.9 gallons * 41mpg = 365 miles

 

In redesigning the Volt, seems like the only goal was 50 ev miles. It gained 0.6" in rear leg room, lost 0.2" in rear headroom, sort of a 2+2.

 

We can use that same argument for the hydrogen tank considering the high pressures it has to contain. Entropy is not exclusive to batteries.

 

Not really.

Because, for safety, the burst pressure has to be a lot higher than the working pressure, the fatigue these tanks endure isn't much. They have rated lifetimes in the many tens of thousands of cycles. Remember, 10,000 cycles at one cycle per day is 27.4 years. So tank fatigue is not a real issue. Battery life (both calendar and cycle) is a real issue.

 

Let's wait until they've been on the market a few years before declaring victory. I'm not interested in sitting atop a tank of highly combustible gas anytime soon anyway.

Heat is a battery's worst enemy, which is why the Leafs aren't faring well. A good cooling mechanism preserves range remarkably well as has been shown in the best EVs.

 

COPVs (the general term for these tanks) have been around for many decades. They've been used in application from cryogenics to hot gasses. Even though they continue to improve, they are a pretty well-known technology. Hydrogen, with its small molecules and metal-altering properties poses some special challenges, but that really only applies to liner materials and plumbing.

 

And I'm sure they are replaced at regular intervals (like batteries) and not intended to be incorporated into moving vehicles (practical weapons). The maintenance costs (to say nothing of the inspections) should be a fun exercise.

 

They were used, for example, on the Space Shuttle, and never replaced during the lifetime of the program. They are used on most large liquid fueled rockets, and often endure enormous vibratory, acoustic, and g-loads (over 5 g's) while sustaining much lower safety factors than would be used on automobiles.

 

The whole process was controlled by rocket engineers (and there have been many rocket mishaps resulting in explosions over the years). I don't see how that necessarily applies to a consumer vehicle with nowhere near as many safeguards in place. Lee, I get it that you hate batteries used exclusively to power vehicles, but when do you suspect Denver will get a hydrogen infrastructure to support Toyota's pipe dream?

 

A consumer vehicle has way, way more safeguards in place. For one thing, they are human-carrying whereas very few rocket applications have that limitation. They are also designed to survive a crash whereas rockets are not. Finally, when manufacturing in mass, you have to be able to control your tolerances well and to make them reliable without having to have a massive amount of NDE on every tank. That means larger safety factors and more robust designs.

You "get" wrong. Batteries are the way to go for short trips and massive bursts of power. Fuel cells are the way to go for long duration, low levels of power. I favor a roughly 20-60 mile plug in hybrid with a 10-15kw fuel cell as a range extender for longer trips.

We have a hydrogen fueling station here where I work. While that's unusual, the number of H2 stations in Denver is twice the number of Supercharger stations. They are quite easy to install as well.