Edmunds dealer partner, Bayway Leasing, is now offering transparent lease deals via these forums. Click here to see the latest vehicles!
Most popular vehicles
Popular New Cars
- New Acura MDX
- New Acura RDX
- New Audi Q5
- New BMW 3 Series
- New BMW X3
- New Buick Enclave
- New Cadillac Escalade
- New Chevrolet Equinox
- New Chrysler 300
- New Dodge Challenger
- New Ford Edge
- New Ford Escape
- New Ford Expedition
- New Ford Explorer
- New Ford F-150
- New Ford Focus
- New Ford Mustang
- New Honda Accord
- New Honda Civic
- New Honda CR-V
- New Honda Fit
- New Honda Odyssey
- New Honda Pilot
- New Hyundai Elantra
- New Hyundai Santa Fe
- New Hyundai Sonata
- New Hyundai Tucson
- New Jeep Compass
- New Jeep Grand Cherokee
- New Jeep Wrangler
- New Mazda 3
- New Mazda 6
- New Mazda CX-5
- New Nissan Altima
- New Nissan Maxima
- New Nissan Rogue
- New Porsche Cayenne
- New Ram 1500
- New Subaru Crosstrek
- New Subaru Forester
- New Subaru Impreza
- New Subaru Outback
- New Tesla Model S
- New Tesla Model X
- New Toyota 4Runner
- New Toyota Camry
- New Toyota Corolla
- New Toyota Highlander
- New Toyota Prius
- New Toyota RAV4
- New Toyota Sienna
- New Toyota Tacoma
- New Volkswagen Jetta
- New Volvo XC60
- New Volvo XC90
Popular Used Sedans
- Used BMW 5 Series
- Used Chevrolet Impala
- Used Chevrolet Malibu
- Used Chrysler 200
- Used Dodge Charger
- Used Ford Fusion
- Used Ford Taurus
- Used Honda Accord
- Used Honda Civic
- Used Hyundai Elantra
- Used Hyundai Sonata
- Used Tesla Model S
- Used Toyota Camry
- Used Toyota Corolla
- Used Volkswagen Jetta
Popular Used SUVs
- Used Acura MDX
- Used Acura RDX
- Used Ford Edge
- Used Ford Explorer
- Used Honda CR-V
- Used Honda Pilot
- Used Hyundai Santa Fe
- Used Jeep Compass
- Used Lincoln Navigator
- Used Mazda CX-5
- Used Nissan Rogue
- Used Subaru Crosstrek
- Used Subaru Forester
- Used Tesla Model X
- Used Volvo XC90
Popular Used Pickup Trucks
Popular Used Hatchbacks
Popular Used Minivans
Popular Used Coupes
Popular Used Wagons
Comments
A safe, well-engineered 90+ MPG Prius is worth waiting for.
A safe, well-engineered 90+ MPG Prius is worth waiting for."
I don't know, there are limitations to LiIon technology. The NiMH are capable of running a long time, but LiIon seem to be very sensitive to charge/discharge cycles, although they do have a higher charge for the size.
If not, they would never have started down the road with LiON.
If they fail, it will likely mean no one will ever figure out how to us LiON in a car. So let's hope they succeed.
http://www.calcars.org/priusplus.html
Toyota = Tundra = Not Correct! :surprise:
Are you talking about the recent engine issues which affected 20 (TWENTY) trucks?
"Toyota (TM) has reports of camshafts breaking in the 5.7-liter V-8 engines of about 20 Tundras so far. The flaw was due to a manufacturing defect by a subcontractor. All of the engines are being replaced."
And how does Tundra talk get into a " Hybrids - News, Reviews and Views in the Press" forum?
There are plenty of Tundra forums to talk Pickups. Go find one.
I agree they are better off keeping what has worked for them so far.
PS
The jury is still out on the Tundra 5.7L engine. Are all 37,000 engines being replaced? I would hope they replaced the ones that failed.
Not all the Tundras have the faulty camshaft - they know (or are investigating) which ones have the faulty part and so far have overnighted the engines to the dealers for immediate replacement.
And where have you seen them say the next gen will not have LiON? I have not seen that statement.
Actually, now I have seen it:
link title
The Wall Street Journal confirmed today that the next-generation Prius will not use lithium-ion battery technology -- at least for the first few years. The lithium-ion batteries that were to be used in the Prius would have been provided by Panasonic EV Energy Company.
The Prius will instead continue to use nickel-metal hydride batteries -- albeit in a higher capacity form to boost mileage over the current generation vehicle.
Toyota's decision to not use lithium-ion battery technology could be a big break for General Motors. GM has long been in Toyota's shadow when it comes to hybrid technology, but the company is looking to reverse its fortunes in the coming years.
SO, if that is REALLY TRUE, it's not a good sign AT ALL for the progression of battery technology for automobiles.
The Chevy Volt will be delayed, the next gen Prius will not hit 94MPG, and the PEVs will likely be postponed.
Mark down 6-15-2007 as a bad day in the Hybrid timeline.
Toyota has been excoriated for growing too fast seeming not to be putting the effort into the initial manufacturing. I think you might have made this point once or twice yourself, Gary
The internal 'official' word on the camshafts is that they caught the bad batch but 20 units slipped thrugh. As in the 'snap ring' issue on the Camry they have given the owers the options..
..keep and repair
..return and replace
..return for full credit
payments are extended until the repair or replacement is finished at no penalty. A similar replacement is offered in the interim.
The Chevy Volt will be delayed, the next gen Prius will not hit 94MPG, and the PEVs will likely be postponed.
Mark down 6-15-2007 as a bad day in the Hybrid timeline.
Most of the big players are trying to develop their own Li-ion batteries somewhat in house. I don't think that you can assume that they are all at the same level of development or even approaching this technological hurdle from the same perspective. I know that GM has contracted with A123 systems to develop the Volt's battery pack. While it is still considered Li-ion there are some significant differences in it's chemistry that overcome problems other Li-ion chemistries have. Most of the press releases seem very optimistic about them making their 2010 production date.
Toyota owns a pretty decent chunk of Panasonic. I suspect that's where their battery development is taking place. Panasonic seems mainly focused on maximizing the energy density of it's Li-ion batteries. That's nice for laptops and cell phones but when you are talking about large format batteries there are other issues that have greater importance. Safety, longevity and price to name a few.
Old technology does not mean static. Li-ion has been improving tremendously over the past 10 years. Hybrid technology is old. Diesel engines are even older.
and doesn't buy much other than smaller batteries with higher storage density.
The wording of that statement gives the impression that you consider this characteristic to be somewhat trivial. Why is that?
I'll use your rational and argue with someone advocating diesels. Diesel engines have been around a long time and really don't buy you much other than more miles out of a gallon of gas.
*WILL*
come up with a battery solution which works.
It's not IF but only WHEN it will happen.
The sooner the better.
Apparently not enough improvement for Toyota to make the switch.
Funny how cut and paste makes it easy to take little pieces of a statement and take them out of context. Of course I don't consider smaller size and higher density trivial. My point was that battery technology hasn't gotten significantly better. And I can say that because Toyota dropped it from their next gen Prius.
I'll bet Toyota is really pissed at Panasonic right now.
wouldn't look at it as bad. Li-Ion is actually rather old technology and doesn't buy much other than smaller batteries with higher storage density. There are other non-trivial trade-offs
So apparently you consider smaller size with higher energy density to be a trade-off. If you worked less hours for more pay would that be a trade-off?
Advances in silicon, magnetics, and other materials has been steady (much better than batteries)
State of the art battery cells can hold more than 4x as much energy per mass as they could 12 years ago. They also can last for over 2x as many cycles. That's a pretty significant improvement in my mind. Apparently silicon and magnetics have improved "much better" than this. Do you care to quantify that statement? BTW, what kind of battery is in your laptop? Despite the Li-ion recalls last year I don't see any computer manufacturers stepping away from these batteries and going back to NiMH or NiCad. I'm also seeing more high end power tools using Li-ion batteries. Maybe Toyota knows something that everyone else doesn't.
Li-Ion batteries are well suited to small electronic devices. They do store more energy in less weight. In a laptop the do not present as much of a threat of fire as they would in a larger concentration of cells. They have enough shelf life to satisfy the short warranty on most electronics. That may be the key to Toyota pulling back. They have a known short life span no matter the times they are charged and discharged. Any car with batteries will be required to give a 10 year warranty. At least if they want the ZEV or PZEV rating from CARB.
Again, battery technology is not standing still. It is improving at a significant rate.
There are traditional ICE, non-hybrid vehicles that receive a PZEV rating. Why should the battery in a hybrid be required to last 10 years to receive this rating. Simply test its emissions when running the ICE, which is equivalent to the battery pack being completely shot. If it can meet PZEV then who cares? The only person that should care how long the battery lasts is the person that going to have to pay for the replacement.
Longevity is a huge factor in batteries for a car. Who would have bought a Prius if they thought the battery might go bad in 4 years. With Li-Ion even more so than NiMH, as they are so much more expensive. Even with the massive amounts of batteries being sold for laptops the price has not come down as the electronics have. The battery for my new Dell laptop is $143. About the same as my 4 year old Dell laptop.
I think when the smoke settles on this latest set back for the Toyota hybrids, it will be the fact that Li-Ion batteries are not much better now than 4-5 years ago. They still have the heat and shelf life issues going against them. I just hope someone has something new brewing in their garage that will be the breakthrough that is needed for an all electric vehicle.
That's pretty expensive but I suspect that the new battery is rated at more watt-hours than the previous battery. When your talking about EVs what matters is the cost per kWh of energy storage. That is going down, abeit not that rapidly.
They still have the heat and shelf life issues going against them.
The shelf life is improving. Whether today's batteries can last for 10 years won't be definitively known for 10 years. How did CARB determine that the battery packs in the current hybrids will last 10 years? Does CARB require that O2 sensors last 10 years? CARB has not proven to be the most enlightened of agencies. They, at times, seem to be getting in their own way. This is one of those times.
8) Manufacturers commented that the ARB had previously agreed to a shorter warranty for the battery pack of a HEV, in order to reflect uncertainty in the lifetime of this component. As a result, any corrective action involving an extended warranty for battery packs should not exceed its warranty period. After reviewing HEV-certified vehicle warranty requirements, staff agrees and regulatory language has been added that limits the extended warranty time and mileage period for propulsion battery packs to 10 years or 150,000 miles (whichever first occurs) (See proposed Section 2166(j) in Attachment A.)
http://www.arb.ca.gov/regact/recall06/supisor.pdf
Also I am not impressed with my laptop batteries. They don't last very long (relative to what I would expect in a hybrid vehicle) and get too hot. If my laptop battery grew big enough to run my hybrid, and it produced that much heat...not good.
Maybe you need to figure out a way to run your laptop with an ICE. I'm sure that would be much cooler.
No I don't know that. He says things like silicon and magnetics have improved "much better". I don't even know what that means, but then I don't design power supplies.
The Prius electronics keeps the battery in the 30% to 80% charge range. That would not get it in an electric vehicle.
There are RAV4 EVs on the road today with over 150k miles on their original battery pack. This is a pure EV with no requirement or mechanism to keep the charge within a tight range. How do you explain this?
One of the reason that laptop batteries don't appear to be improving that fast is that they keep adding features that consume more power. Faster processors, faster graphics cards, wireless network cards, bigger/higher resolution displays, DVD players, etc., are some examples.
The sooner the better."
There are limits to technology, it is always well to remember this.
It is an important subject, since hydrogen fuel cells vehicles also depend on batteries. However, if HiMh works very well for longevity, it may well be the option for a long time.
My personal bet is on ultra capacitors rather than battery technologies. The LiIon has been around a long time, and they have been attempting to improve it. Yet we stil have the innate problems of longevity and heating.
Are the RAV4's using NiMh, lead acid, or NiCad technology?
My Grandpa who was born in 1910 would have been floored by many standard, everyday technologies like cell phones and computers.
What I meant was that SOMEHOW, SOMEWAY, either GM or Toyota will find a battery technology that works for the Volt and the later-generation Priuses which will produce north of 100 MPG vehicles.
My guess that by 2017 there will be vehicle technology in place that will stun all of us with it's effectiveness.
Some very bright someone will scale that Everest for us. I have 100% confidence in human accomplishment.
The ones that I was referring to used NiMH battery packs made by Panasonic. This was a very good battery and superior in terms of energy storage per mass to what GM was putting in the EV1. In fact it had a higher energy density than the NiMH batteries that are currently in the Prius. Unfortunately Toyota and Panasonic were sued by Cobasys and prohibited from producing any more of this type of battery. The good news is that most of Cobasys' NiMH patents expire in the next couple years. So even if Li-ion isn't perfected you should start seeing some better NiMH batteries.
Glad you are so positive. I am not; there is no rule that says this (or any other) technology must progress.
IMO the state of science is so bad that progress is getting difficult. It is difficult for anyone to propose revolutionary changes and get their work published and recognized. The "peer review" process has become a straight jacket to progress. Most of the tech we use today has roots log ago. Example - Fuel cells? First used in the Apollo program - 40 years ago.
Sorry for the rant, this is really a bit off topic. But it does slightly touch battery technology.
Although I did mention ultra capacitors as a possibility... but then this is an extension of current capabilites, not a new technology.
Honda's latest fuel cell Civic is a vast improvement over the prototypes introduced just 5 years ago. I'm not sure why it's relevant or makes sense to say that fuel cells existed 40 years ago. There's no question that batteries have been around a long time. There's also no question that they can store a lot more energy than they used to. I agree that there is no law that says that technology must progress but in the case of batteries they have been progressing steadily for years. There's also no reason to believe this progression will suddenly stop.
In the case of Li-ion the material and chemical engineers believe that it has the theoretical potential to store 1 kWh per kilogram. Currently the best cells can only store about 200 Wh per kilogram, or 1/5 their theoretical potential. These same engineers are confident that they can get this up to 300 Wh per kg before progress really slows. What does that mean for EVs? It means a 100 kg battery could store 30 kWh, enough to power a car for over 100 miles. For comparison the 27 kWh battery pack in the Toyota RAV4 EV weighed over 400 kg. IMO, that's a pretty big improvement, yeah but it's old technology.
In the hybrid's early days — around 1999 or 2000 — consumers and automakers were hesitant to latch onto the trend in part because of the fear that the battery would die every so often and be expensive to replace.
But the oldest hybrids are still running on their original batteries, 100,000 miles or more later.
Robinson believes hybrids will one day become so common and so widely used that they'll just be another feature drivers can choose, rather than a totally different animal, the way they still seem now.
"We're going to stop thinking of hybrids as distinct vehicles," Robinson said. "Eventually it will probably be as common on the order sheet as air conditioning and automatic transmission."
Something I'VE been saying since day one.
Whether or not that happens might depend a lot on whether GM can deliver the Chevy Volt. As I'm sure you know, this is not a hybrid. It's an EV that carries along its own generator for recharging. It will leapfrog what current hybrids are capable of in terms of fuel savings. Since that is what most hybrid buyers top concern is this will quickly become the preferred technology. It should ultimately end up being cheaper and easier to maintain since you only have a single drive system, i.e. not a hybrid.
New technology would be better because it would represent vastly new potential for transportation.
The principles of the hybrid have been around a LONG time, both for around 100 years (electric motors and ICE). I agree that we are making incremental improvements in battery storage capacity. In some ways, the focus on improvements must be taking away from any urgency in finding alternative power sources.
I will believe that when I see it. People have been claiming they could make such a system work for at least a decade, and so far no one has come up with a practical solution.
TANSTAAFL, "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch". Th energy potential stored up in gasoline (or diesel) is not sufficient to run an electric motor for constant use. I understand that they will use Regen braking and other tweaks, but (as I said), I'll believe it when I see it.
That's a pretty wild statement. Can you provide an example of what would be new technology? I doubt it because it hasn't been invented yet. Maybe not even imagined yet but you state that it will have vastly more potential. You've also previously stated that you can't force progress. Can you force discovery of new technologies? Maybe instead of trying to make batteries better we should be focusing on the flux capacitor or transporter beams.
Who said anything about a free lunch?
Th energy potential stored up in gasoline (or diesel) is not sufficient to run an electric motor for constant use. I understand that they will use Regen braking and other tweaks, but (as I said), I'll believe it when I see it
I suggest you do some research on series hybrids. You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. The only engineering hurdle that GM's Chevy Volt faces is developing a battery that's robust enough to last 10 years of almost constant charging/discharging. It has absolutely zero to do with the potential energy in gasoline or diesel. Where did you come up with that anyway?
From the fact that the concept has been around for about 40 years, and has not come to fruition in a production passenger vehicle. The Volt is a concept car; I hope it is actually produced in some form. I just don't see it as living up the hype that it seems to generate.
But I will acknowledge that I am speaking of a pure series hybrid, not a plug-in with some kind of backup generator.
There is a reason that Toyota uses the ICE above certain speeds - too much electrical current is required. The problem is not just coming up with a system like the one proposed; the problem is making it small and light (necessary for good MPG) and affordable (batteries are expensive - the higher storage density, the more they cost).
Yup, that is the point. New is just that... new. An example is the late 1880s, when people discovered the internal combustion engine. Until then, steam was the power of choice.
In the "energy generation" field, other than the discovery of nuclear energy, and possibly the photovoltaic circuit, we are basically just using scientific principles that are at least a century old. Come to think of it, atomic energy is actually being used the same way that a steam engine worked in the early 1800's.
My point was that there are limits to what can be done to stretch current tech (of any sort).
Civic driver who averages 32 mpg in city and highway files class-action suit against carmaker that claims 49/51
quote-
Facing $3-a-gallon gasoline prices in California last year, John True decided to stop driving his Mercedes-Benz E320 and bought a Honda Civic Hybrid.
Impressed by the gas-electric hybrid's advertised mileage -- 49 miles per gallon in the city, 51 mpg on the highway -- True plunked down $28,470, at least $7,000 more for a comparable nonhybrid Civic EX.
But after 6,000 miles of driving, True said he averaged 32 mpg in mixed city/highway driving. So in March, True, an Ontario, Calif., professional jazz piano player, filed a class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Riverside, Calif., in what appears to be the first legal challenge of the mileage claims of hybrid vehicles.
-end
Honda Civic MSRP is
$22600 w/o Navi
$24350 w/ Navi
according to Edmunds here.
Since he allegedly came out of a MB E320 he probably opted for the one w/ Navi. But why did he pay a $4000 premium?
I think his first course of action would be to sue his grade school for dereliction of duty. Then his wife should sue him for lack of shopping ability. Then he should really consider doing some ancestral research to determine how many generations removed he is from his vine-swinging predecessors. There is the possibility that there is some truth in the GEICO commercials. :shades:
IF, and it's a HUGE IF, he had paid the maximum MSRP and he is eligible for the Fed Tax Credit of $2100 on the HCH then his net difference should have been $1000-$1200.
I have very little sympathy for those who should be still peeling bananas on tree limbs filing class action suits. Seriously he may not be smart enough to drive a hybrid. Not joking.
If his other car is a MB he may be in a tax bracket with AMT applied, so no tax credits allowed.
If Honda is advertising the car will get a certain mileage, that is not the same as the requirement to put the EPA figures on the window sticker.
The only thing that surprises me is this is the first class action suit filed against an automaker for false advertising on mileage.
Not our numbers...the EPA's.
I will agree if Honda always indicates in their advertising that the mileage is that specified by the EPA, they will probably be protected from this suit.
Civic LX auto $17,760
The premium is closer to $5,000 than $4,000.
Question- Is the $2100 tax credit given at time of purchase?