I recently came to the realization that there is yet ANOTHER big Prius advantage. This car starts in cold weather like no other: In Dec, I picked up my skating coach and took him to where he had left his car the night before. We were going to drop it at a Park and Ride, then continue to a skate shop in Canada. It was -9F. I waited in the street and he cleaned the snow off, started it, then came over to say it needed to warm up some. When we got to the P&R and started north in the Prius he said his car finally felt 'nomal' after he had been driving about 10 minutes. So, 5 minutes of warm-up and 10 of driving to be 'normal'. The many memories of 'crank, crank, crank, errr, errr, errr. Give it a little more gas and try again' came to mind. At that point it dawned on me: The Prius had just started. No cranking ( it can't anyway ), no slow turn over, no rough idle because it was cold. I LOVE THIS CAR!!!!
Bruce: Tell me about it. Even at -40 the thing starts instantly. Have to thank 200 VDC worth of starting power for that.
Almost every morning, the people across the street have their SUV idling in the driveway, presumably warming up. I knock the night's snow / frost off Priapus, hop in and away I go.
Reminds me of a favorite old (air cooled) VW ad. It starts with the view out a windshield, in the pre-dawn dark, wipers pushing off the snow, headlights shining on a snow-covered, untracked roadway ahead. Silence, save for the frap-frap of the wipers and the occasional revving of the motor. Thirty seconds of this, no voice, no graphics. A few turns later, still looking out the windshield,the car is seen to be pulling into a driveway, next to a huge snowplow. The voice-over: "Ever wonder how the snowplow driver gets to work?" Then the VW logo appears at the bottom the screen. Fade out.
I did notice something the other morning when it was pretty cold out (single digits). Instead of the normal delay between the time I push the Power button and then the ICE actually started, the ICE started almost immediately. Has anyone else noticed this? I wondered if the car decided that it was too cold to worry about the stored coolant heating the head before starting.
If I park at the mall for a few hours at -40, when I get back to the car and press Power, there is maybe a 5 sec delay at most and the ICE starts. I think it's normal.
Good grief. It has been years since we have had snow on the ground here. Chicago is closer than Orlando Florida from here. Due to being on the bank of the Tennessee, we have weather closer to that of Birmingham than Nashville, and each is about 100 miles away due north or south. You can see some snowflakes for a couple of minutes about every winter if you are outside for it. There is no salting the roads or oceanside salt spray. Engines wear out long before the body even starts to rust. Out of 100 cars on the road, five will be 70's builds, large detroit iron chugging right along, headliner in shreds, seats shot, no body rust. No state inspection here either and it is a pretty normal sight to see light vehicles on the road that burn out a quart of oil every ten or so miles. Some raise enough clouds of smoke that they can be seen for miles. Oddly enough, they are usually midsize or compact cars of Japanese design. I bought a Crown Vic new in 1985, we put 240,000 miles on it, sold it to a guy I do business with, zero body rust. He drove it for years until an illegal immigrant from Mexico hit him and totaled it. The engine never had major work done on it either. What rental car companies do is bring here the fleet resales from up north to sell, and that makes them not really good long term values. I bought a fleet resale once that came from Montgomery, it was a great car. I bought another one later that came from up north. The clear headlight covers were scarred from road salt, it never looked clear. I know its going to rust, I sold it. Someone else I do business with has a '92 Vigor, zero rust. Tranny is going out, engine strong. Supposedly everything else works. She was thinking of selling, I said fix the tranny right.
Remember the second episode of Futurama? The moon farmer has an answer to the F vs C question that left me ROFL: "First one, then the other."
