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sonoma red, blonde leather, tech package, sunroof, carpet floor mats, kick plates, moonroof wind defelctor.
Dealer picked it up somewhere in NJ where they're being delivered from the factory, and apparently everyone's fighting for them when they get unloaded.
Car is great. Drives great. Perfectly quiet, then engine kicks in, hardly noticable.
It does take little bit time to learn how to drive it in electric mode as much as possible.
Oh, and Nissan offers 3.9% financing for hybrids at the moment.
Best of luck for those still waiting! :shades:
Karol
Does anyone know a site I can track it?
The car is awesome. It takes little getting used to but I've had it for few days now and it's just great.
Everyone who gets in or stands around it is impressed how quiet it is - almost silent. You can comfortably cruise up to around 20+ mpg before engine kicks in, without pressing gas pedal too hard. If you drive on a highway and let the car roll, the engine will shut off at 40mph and below. It's like driving a go cart.
If the engine is cold (I'm in NY and it's around 40-50) the gas engine will probably kick in when you start the car, especially when you put the heat on. Once the engine warms up (couple of minutes) it will shut off.
The battery gets used all the time, if you drive on a highway and floor it, you'll see the battery gauge hit 50kw and up - it's using the battery to give the 4 cylinder engine a boost. When you let the car roll again (or break) the battery needle drops below 0 - now it's charging - back and forth all the time. Dealer said it drives like V6 but I didn't drive Altima with V6 so can't really confirm. Did drive other 4 cylinder cars in the past and Altima hybrid is so much better.
So far I've been getting 33mpg. I don't know how other people can get 40mpg on it. I would say it's a big challenge to get 37mpg+. I did get 58pmg for first few miles driving back from the dealer as I was stuck in heavy traffic and was only using the battery. Now it's around 33pmg which is still pretty good for a big car. Hopefully the engine will wear in little bit and it will get better.
The interior is great by the way. I don't know how people can compare it to Camry - Altima is so much better. Just go to a car show and jump in from Altima to Camry back and forth couple of time and you'll see.
GPS is great, screen is awesome, back up camera makes parking the car a breeze, traffic updates are OK, reads tags from your mp3 files from recordable CD (check manual for detail info). Leather, sunroof are great too... did I mention the car is great?
Oh yeah... truck is on the small side. And make sure you check your tire pressure after picking it up. Apparently pressure is lowered for better grip during transportation. Dealer mentioned it was checked and the low pressure light should go off in two days. It didn't so I checked it, pressure was way too low. Corrected it, the warning light went off in few miles. The engine temperature light freaked me out at first - but it comes on when the engine is cold when you start the car. Goes away in few minutes.
I hope yours coming soon. Let us know!
..but anyway, I don't think it will work on a crowded highway where everyone goes 70-80 and if you start slowing down for no reason you'll have some angry people zooming by. It might work on a long trip highway that's virtually flat over long run and there's no traffic to interfere with 'pulse and gliding'. I might try it on a long overnight trip one day.
Main point is to ENJOY the car and don't go too crazy trying to save every drop of gasoline out of it. Nissan's site realisticaly states that hybrid gets 35/33mpg (I'm getting 33 overall so far) -that's still better then 23/31mpg for a 4 cylinder and 19/26 for V6!
Enjoy the ride.
Also there as been a lot written about the difference between the Camry and the Altima regarding how they respond to the swtich from electric to engine startup and back again. It is said the Altima shuttres compared to the Camry. How noticeable is it when the engine comes on and is it distracting?
Side walls say 35psi for all tires. My tires were 27-30 from the dealer (hence the low pressure warning light). I got them all to 35, warning light is off now.
I did drive Camry hybrid so I can't compare both as far as difference in noise when switching from gas to electric. I liked the overall interior/exterior look of Altima so never bothered with the Camry (but that's only my preference).
If you pay attention to the engine you will hear slight vibration when switching into the gas mode -it's like going over a tiny pathole. After a while you will forget about it. I do still try to drive on battery as much as possible, so I don't accelerate much and don't speed up if I know I will stop on the next block - so the gas engine doesn't kick in just to shut itself off again in next 5 seconds. Once the gas engine kicks in I don't drive that efficiently any more. I'm still toying with the car basicaly.
I wish the car could run on the battery little bit longer but I guess you have to balance out the battery consumption, the heat it generates etc.
Found this page with nice pictures of red hybrid.
35 psi for maximum pressure listed on the side wall seems would have expected the side wall to say something between 45 and 50 psi. What type and brand of tires are on your Altima? Sorry if I am making you look.
:shades:
Frankied, how do do you find the switch between electric and gas? Is is noticable as some of the mags have suggested?
The switch is noticeable, but not dramatically so. The car doesn't make major jerks when it turns on or off, but you can usually feel it. Frankly, I prefer it this way--coming from driving a manual prior to this car, it lets me keep "in tune" with the car similar to how shifting did previously.
The complaint I do have is more when the car is stationary (ie, at a stoplight), particularly when the car is warming up. Sometimes, the engine will turn on (again, often when the car is warming up) and it seems like they didn't do a good job of engineering the switch when the car isn't moving; it feels like the car wants to start going immediately and doesn't realize for a split second that it should be in "neutral", so the car jerks briefly. It's a fairly minor complaint, I guess, but it'd be one thing I would hope they'd improve in the 2008 or 2009 models.
I'm overall extremely happy with the car. I've averaged around 33-34 mpg, with a range of 31-36, while generally driving normally (not pulsing and gliding or similar tricks). I love the feature set the Tech package comes with. If I had to make my list of complaints, I'd say the one listed above, the common complaint that the trunk is too small and also that the build quality on the interior roof is sub-par, as I've gotten a number of occasional rattles from the roof area. That's really about it, though.
Agreed that the inside looks a lot nicer than the Camry and that the leather quality betters Camry as well. Have been reading many posts and reviews which indicate that its ride is much more to my liking than the Camry as well.
I don't fault people for going with the Camry hybrid. It too is an excellent choice, but for me, if I go hybrid, I'll probably go in Nissan's direction. Then, we'll be an all-hybrid family as my wife owns the Prius.
Your review was excellent and made me more excited about the possibility.
The 'rattle' is hard to notice once you drive. I often look for the 'EV' sign if the car is going electric or gas.
Car is so quiet you can sneak up on people around you. I did it to a friend today, he was amazed.
I think the 'rattle' (which you can't feel 90% of the time anyway) is a small price to pay.
my chairs squeaks but my car never rattles
the hors does sound when locking the car. However, as I discovered, if the car is running it will lock, but will not give the horn sound.
My sunglasses (when in the cubby above the center console) do also rattle occasionally, but not to the point where it's an annoyance.
The shudder is really, really nothing of any significance. It probably wouldn't spill a brimming cup of water in a cup holder more than a drop or two. It's just something that's odd for people who are used to feeling vibrations of an idling engine at a stop. If a full-on gas engine did that bump, you wouldn't even pay attention to it. It's just weird to go from dead silent (other than the quiet whir of some cooling fans, to a slight vibration.
The sensitivity of the gas pedal (we were used to drivng a big, V-6 SUV) just took some getting used to. At first, when we were driving, the car was constantly surging, until we realized it was our driving style. Keep a steady foot on the gas, and the car stays steady as she goes.
Overall, the only complaint we have (a minor one) other than the shoe-box sized trunk, is the environmental (cooling/heating) system for the car. It tries to be too smart, and sometimes does things you don't want it to do, and can't figure out how to stop. Not really sure if that's a bug in the controls, or if we're just stoopid.
We went to a party the other night. Pulled up at friends' house to find a brand new BMW 5 series sitting there with the dealer tags still on it. We traded sitting in each other's car. I'll take the Altima, thank you very much. The beemer drivers were oddly silent after sitting in our car. The only thing they could say is they liked the lines of their beemer better. OK. I'll give them that. They're styled very well. But the NAH is no slouch. Looks pretty cool. My only wish is that they'd extended the wing on the trunk over the headlights like the old 80's era Supra wings. The short wing makes the car look kind of clunky from the rear. I actually like the Altimas WITHOUT the wing, better, but you get the wing when you get the tech package, so eveyrone knows you've got the top drawer stuff, I guess...
I have the Vin number.
Your last few lines wree the most encouraging I have heard. I am going to contact the dealer tomorrow as he said that he still thought the car would be in by the end of November. I will just tell him "Guess what? It is the end of November."
Almost 6 months of waiting.
Has anyone by driving slow been able to move the Altima up to 40 MPH in EV mode only without the engine coming on? does it say in EV mode about the same as the Camry?
Thanks,
Steve
We test drove the Camry Hybrid, and we feel that the EV mode is the same. As far as getting the Altima to 40 MPH in EV mode, it could be done in the following conditions:
1. There are no cars behind you at all.
2. you are not in a rush and have got all day
3. Accelerate ever so gently that barely touch the gas pedal.
In simple practical terms, no you can't get it to 40 MPH on EV mode. On the other hand, we average on the car close to 40 MPG.
On the rare occassions I get to drive the car (my wife has claimed it as hers) I try to make a game out of it, and see what speed I can get to before the ICE kicks in. I've actually briefly gotten it over 40 (milliseconds, it seems like) but getting it to high 30's under the right conditions (flat road or slight downhill) is not uncommon.
The other thing we've noticed, which doesn't take a physics major to figure out is that the faster you go on the freeway, the worse your gas mileage gets. The car WILL go quite fast (I've had it over 100 on desert roads). The gas mileage seems OK up to about 70 or a little over, but you get above that, and your computer will start calculating gas mileage numbers that are a little less than you'd like. We recently charged all the way up the I-5 from LA to San Francisco at about 75, and our gas mileage was in the 34 MPG range. Not bad, but not the best the car can do.
EV is where this thing shines. I actually LIKE sitting in stop-n-go traffic, now, because I know I'm getting mid-40s gas mileage. Unfortunately for us, we live in a semi-rural area, so we don't get much in the way of traffic snarls, and rarely see the really, really good gas mileage.
I will report. I will have a nice 60 mile local highway trip back to report.
At the time we bought the car, you couldn't find them for any price and people in this area were paying as much as 3K over MSRP to get them at other dealerships. It seems like everyone is calming down now, and people are getting some pretty good deals, especially when you consider that gasoline is headed full-tilt to $4.00 a gallon soon.
We have no regrets, though. The car is a fine car, and in the land where Priuses travel in packs (San Francisco area) it's nice to have a hybrid that's NOT a Prius (at least on the outside). The car is comfortable, has enough buttons and knobs to sate the techo-geek in me, performs well, and looks good (and I don't feel like a total tree-hugging, tofu slurping, hemp-clothed geek when I drive it.)
My wife DID try to sneak a "Hillary 08" sticker onto the bumper, to complete the package, but I replaced it with a National Rifle Association "They'll get my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers" stickr and a Nader 08 sticker under that. Neither currently visible sticker reflects my politics particularly; I just like to give people something to ponder when they're behind us in traffic. I'm expecting new stickers to appear very soon....
Did you consider picking it up & driving it back?
Each company is a bit different in the way they handle this. Some companies, like Isuzu, for instance, have a set up where the factory owns the vehicle until it's sold. Their dealerships aren't as motivated to move cars and you may not get as good a deal. For dealerships that have to buy their inventory from the factory, the motivations to move hardware are much higher. But then, like I said, there's all kinds of incentive shenanigans going on in the background that put buyers at a disadvantage in the negotiations, without them every realizing it.
Next time a dealer puts "their invoice" under your nose, just smile and say, "OK, now let's talk REAL money."
When our old SUV finally started making "I'm going to retire soon" noises and we started shopping for new cars, I wanted an Xterra or a Pathfinder. My wife wanted a NAH. We comprimised and got the NAH. HAHA. At least I have motorcycles to ease the pain....but that's a discussion for another forum.... Actually, I was reluctant to get a hybrid at first. I don't really like the looks of Priuses, and I literaly couldn't fit in a hybrid Civic. We had heard that Nissan had come out with a hybrid, so we went to the dealership. I was fully expecting another geeky looking little shuttle pod like the Prius. When they told us that the Altima was the car, I was pretty happy. We took the thing for a test drive, and I was sold immediately. In hindsight, especially now that gas is pushing 4 bucks a gallon, I'm pretty glad we didn't get another SUV. Now if they'd just make an Altima with 1 foot ground clearance and 4 wheel drive, it would be perfect
but anyways, i understand all of that. for nissan's, there is a 3% holdback so the actual cost for your 30000 invoice car is actually 29100. you can't factor in how much the dealer is making from incentives and stuff, they need to make their money somehow. but i think that paying that close to invoice on a car that is pretty hard to find isn't that bad. it's not about how low you can get the numbers, but more like not getting ripped off.