Woodruff, Jason P said:
>
> I rebutted one hybrid bashing last week. I own a new Toyota Prius, it
> gets an overall gas mileage of 47mpg for my wife, 50mpg for me and cost
> $24K one step below fully loaded (mine has a nifty GPS system and keyless
> ignition). It gets no special treatment.
Sorry if you feel that you (or your Prius) are being bashed. If it works
that well for you, then more power to you. I think we're all just
expressing personal opinions on the topic. I read your message last week
with interest, although it didn't change my opinion that hybrids are too
complicated to make for a practical long-term solution for my needs. Like
I said, everyone has different priorities and opinions, and I'm glad that
your Prius works so well for you.
> If anyone wants to talk about the real pluses and minuses (not what you
> hear in the media or on the net),
My perception is that there's a lot of positive hype in the media
regarding hybrids based too much on their EPA mileage estimates, and not
enough on real world results. However, if your experience is more
typical, maybe it's more justified than I believed.
I get asked about them from time to time by people at work who seem to
have decided that I'm some kind of automotive expert (far from it, but I
do work with a bunch of computer geeks who think their Accords qualify as
performance vehicles). Usually they seem to be under the impression that
they'll get about 90 MPG, and I haven't been able to figure out where
they're getting that from. All they can say is "I heard on the news that
they get three times the mileage of other cars", so I suppose the news is
picking a Suburban for comparison or something.
> we can do so on the DML off topic board.
Actually, I do think this is on topic. DC was planning quite seriously on
making a hybrid Durango at one point. I think it's only a matter of time
before they try something like that again with the Dakota or Durango,
whether it's a hybrid, fuel cell, Mr. Fusion or whatever. Personally, I
hope they don't forget to make it waterproof, as I don't think today's
hybrid technology would survive being doused in The Mud Pit :-).
-- Jason Bleazard http://www.bleazard.net Burlington, Ontario his: '95 Dakota Sport 4x4, 3.9 V6, 5spd, Reg. Cab, white hers: '01 Dakota Sport 4x4, 4.7 V8, Auto, Quad Cab, black
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 01 2004 - 00:15:16 EDT