The New Prius... and the Owners of Them.

[pistolpadre]

And you'll get 200,000 miles out of the TDI. In 10-15 years, you won't have to buy a horribly expensive battery pack, either.

the battery is a major issue with the Prius, i had a conversation with a Prius driver who was in the process of replacing his pack at 65K and had just discovered that the battery pack is a "must replace" and pretty much a guarantee of not making it to 100K, i remember his figures on this were around 3.5K.. which seemed high, but according to the owner was driven by only having one source of replacement.. this was three maybe four years ago so perhaps a better situation now..

 

[breakingcontact]

If I owned a forum I would set the filters to change "Prius" to "Hillary's vagina".

Now i will never get into a Prius.

 

[pistolpadre]

Many prius owners look down on all us thinking they are better because they "care about the environment ". Same thing for those who drive electric cars.
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those folks really bug me Dave, and fact is they cause just as much pollution as any other vehicle.. it's clean when you plug it in, but where do you suppose that energy comes from to charge it.. duhhh the local coal fueled electric plant.. and if they just understood this it would be ok, but in all honesty i think half of these electric car owners think their pollution free.. i think you guys need an electric for next years "hicks".

 

[Younggun]

No. Just stupidity. This should be pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain:

Doesn't say which lane the Prius was in, just that some rich guy tried to pass it in his sports car and couldn't keep it between the lines.

 

[TXARGUY]

Prius Activism!!!

http://www.shockmansion.com/2012/09...rius-guy-what-would-you-do-in-this-situation/

 

[TXARGUY]

Doesn't say which lane the Prius was in, just that some rich guy tried to pass it in his sports car and couldn't keep it between the lines.

Oh, I'm positive you are right. I just can't give the Prius driver a pass. He was, after all, alive, breathing and driving a Prius when the event occurred so...

 

[Texasjack]

It should be legal to run them over.

 

[Skip]

It should be legal to run them over.

You mean it isn't?

"Character is doing the right thing even when no one is watching"

 

[mitchntx]

I didn't read the whole thread, but I didn't see this posted.

NSFW due to language.

 

[Das Jared]

It had been posted.

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[rsayloriii]

those folks really bug me Dave, and fact is they cause just as much pollution as any other vehicle.. it's clean when you plug it in, but where do you suppose that energy comes from to charge it.. duhhh the local coal fueled electric plant.. and if they just understood this it would be ok, but in all honesty i think half of these electric car owners think their pollution free.. i think you guys need an electric for next years "hicks".

They want to get rid of coal as well...

sent from deep space

 

[breakingcontact]

those folks really bug me Dave, and fact is they cause just as much pollution as any other vehicle.. it's clean when you plug it in, but where do you suppose that energy comes from to charge it.. duhhh the local coal fueled electric plant.. and if they just understood this it would be ok, but in all honesty i think half of these electric car owners think their pollution free.. i think you guys need an electric for next years "hicks".

I saw a Tesla the other day...license plate "ZEROCO2" or something close to that.

They dont let pesky things like science get in their way.

 

[txbikerman]

those folks really bug me Dave, and fact is they cause just as much pollution as any other vehicle.. it's clean when you plug it in, but where do you suppose that energy comes from to charge it.. duhhh the local coal fueled electric plant.. and if they just understood this it would be ok, but in all honesty i think half of these electric car owners think their pollution free.. i think you guys need an electric for next years "hicks".

yeah greg, they don't think where the electricity comes from.

 

[F350-6]

What I really aimed to achieve with this post was to find out what new technology is being employed in these types of vehicles, and see if there actually is a need for it. I'd like to find out if this technology really efficient instead of attempts to be efficient. In an attempt to achieve this I'll remove, "and Owners of Them" from the Title.

First off, I don't think you can really remove the owners from the equation because they are part of the problem. I'm not talking about how they all seem to want to drive below the speed limit in the fast lane (or for all I know they have it floored and that's as fast as it can go), but I'm talking about the part that the Prius hybrid isn't the most environmentally or economically wise decision.

Car companies make them because of government subsidies and the feel good press stories about taking money away from those evil oil companies by not always having to run on gasoline, or no fossil fuel burning means you can single handedly stop global warming and so on.

We've already had factual comments in the thread about why the hybrid prius isn't the most economical or environmentally friendly vehicle. So that leaves the question, what kind of people are not capable of figuring these things out for themselves? The internet is full of answers, so why buy a car that has a higher cost per mile to drive, is more harmful to the environment, and doesn't have some specific purpose or reliability factor that makes these sacrifices worthwhile?

To me, the answer seems simple. They fell for the hype and the feel good stories instead of knowing what they were doing, but they feel good about what they're doing because they believe the sales pitch.

 

[M. Sage]

Im no physics expert. I know the Prius has technology to capture some energy under braking but to me the biggest loss of energy has to be the heat generated in combustion. Unless they are trying to capture that heat energy and convert it back to stored electrical energy i think they are losing a lot of their efficiency.

They go to some lengths not to let it go to waste, though that energy isn't really recovered. That would take more effort than it's worth, frankly. IIRC, BMW did a concept car that powered a steam turbine with the heat of the catalytic converters (talk about a wasteful thing - around 10% loss of MPG/HP to cats).

The Prius also runs on a different, more efficient cycle than most cars (which are usually Otto cycle) called the Atkinson cycle. The problem with it is that it only works over a limited RPM range (where Otto works over a wider one), which isn't a huge problem with the Prius, since the engine is mostly just there for generating electricity.

Certainly most Prius owners would be doing better for the environment if they bought a small gas only car for $15,000 then planted $10,000 worth of trees but then they couldnt be conspicuous in their environmentalism. Better yet they could be like cool hippies and actually drive a veggie oil powered car.

Hell no, avoid the veggie oil. It eats up injection system parts. Seen it happen.

I worked in a couple shops in San Francisco (I used to joke that the only straight thing you could find in "the City" was the alignments I did) and had to deal with Priuses or whatever the plural is and home-made biodiesel run through VW TDIs. The VWs went through injection pumps, and the Priuseses were usually owned by people who'd do maybe 3,000 miles a year. Pretty sure those people would have been better off renting a car for when they actually needed one, but the Prius was a status symbol...

I also worked on cars that were actually cool, like a couple of one-owner '68 Mustangs, a '58 Plymouth (yes, like Christine!) that was still owned by the original old lady. That Plymouth was a trip. Steering wheel was like 3 feet in diameter, no seat belts, front bench seat as flat as a pool table, and every time you turned left I expected to slide into the passenger seat and well out of reach of the car's controls. That seat was so wide, I swear I could have laid down on it and fallen asleep without touching either door.

Environmentally, id imagine all of those batteries and the nickel or whatever they are made from is horribly damaging to the environment but the latest enviro craze is CO2 emissions so the rivers and ground water be damned. Theyve got a statement to make and are more virtuous than you or I because of what they drive!

Look up the environmental conditions in China, where a crapton of the nickel used in Prius batteries comes from. Disaster.

 

[mitchntx]

those folks really bug me Dave, and fact is they cause just as much pollution as any other vehicle.. it's clean when you plug it in, but where do you suppose that energy comes from to charge it.. duhhh the local coal fueled electric plant.. and if they just understood this it would be ok, but in all honesty i think half of these electric car owners think their pollution free.. i think you guys need an electric for next years "hicks".

~30% of Texas' potential power supplying the ERCOT grid is from wind power

 

[M. Sage]

~30% of Texas' potential power supplying the ERCOT grid is from wind power

Wind is apparently not "green." Wind kills birds. Enviros have sued to shut down wind farms before, expect it again. Even solar has been blocked on enviro grounds.

Electricity in general is "not green," and humanity should just die already, apparently.

 

[TX69]

 

[TXARGUY]

Billy Bob needs to put in a little more range time so he can learn how to handle his M2.

 

[TX69]