Well, I think i'm finally going to sell the 535... I think its

[Bill R.]

time to put my money where my mouth is. I have one customer who's going to buy the van as soon as i fix some of the small details that i want right before i sell and one customer who's been wanting the 535 for over a year, I've been spending more and more time at the various prius sites and think its about time to get one as soon as i do the payoff on the wagon.. so even though i hate to see it go I think its probably time..

[Jeff N.]

oh nooooo..... that means I'm going to now have to buy a Prius toooo.

[bimmerd00d]

Just promise you'll come back to the life of the E34 sedan!!!! I strayed to the e39, but after a few months of owning it i can promise my next car will be a well-suited e34.

[bahnstormer]

a prius? wtf for???
funny story, my friend just bought a mk4 golf tdi and drove it to purdue from nj,
50mpg avg...his dad made the same trip in his prius, 47mpg

heheheh

needless to say, prius owners are idiots. =]

[Jeff N.]

On the open road, the Prius has to use it's combustion engine for the load. In town, it can regenerate energy via braking then appy it thru the electic motor. The Golf TDI doesn't have that advantage.

Moral: Choose your weapon based on where you spend the bulk of your time.

a prius? wtf for???
funny story, my friend just bought a mk4 golf tdi and drove it to purdue from nj,
50mpg avg...his dad made the same trip in his prius, 47mpg

heheheh

needless to say, prius owners are idiots. =]

[93-525i]

The Golf is very easy to fix with any motor issues that may arrise. The prius? Well, good luck after the warranty goes

[Bill R.]

idiot. I talk to 3 prius owners here that all own the 2nd generation prius and they all have lifetime fuel usage averages over 50 mpg, thats city and highway. Most prius owners that check mileage versus the computed gas mileage say that the computer is about 1.5 to 2 mpg on the conservative side. As far as comparing it to a golf tdi, i work on vw's and wouldn't wish one on my worst enemy, they've gone from one of the best cars in my opinion back in the 60's and 70's to one of the worst now. The tdi is better than most vw's but still far to troublesome for me. Toyota's reputation with the prius is unmatched. Even if you keep one for a year only and take the tax credit the odds are good you can get what you paid for it based on current resale values for them. The electric hermetic compressor powered ac makes it worth the price of admission to me alone. The atkinson cycle engine that they use still has a lot more potential for future gains also. Not to mention the number of people now who are making their priuses into plug in hybrids really increasing mileage into the 150 to 250 mpg areas for city commuters.
Plus its a new technology thats coming to everybody and i thought i had better start learning now. The last thing i am concerned with is what happens after the warranty runs out. I think i'll be able to handle it. And the battery and associated hybrid components are warranteed by toyota for 8 years or 100k anyway.

a prius? wtf for???
funny story, my friend just bought a mk4 golf tdi and drove it to purdue from nj,
50mpg avg...his dad made the same trip in his prius, 47mpg

heheheh

needless to say, prius owners are idiots. =]

[ryan roopnarine]

im all for things that can be done NOW without having to engineer things...but i've read two articles and seen one tv spot about the plug in hybrid, all of them say the battery cost in addition is around $10k usd, and all of the bits i saw/read tried to trivialize the power consumption by saying that it only used "as much as a hair dryer" or "as much as a microwave" 1500 watts continuously overnight somewhat subtracts from the 150mpg the inventors tout. do you have any numbers as to the consumption of the plug in bill? me, personally, do not feel as though biodiesel is a good thing in the long run...right now? i hope that as many people as possible convert to it, its a very available stop gap measure that doesn't require extensive engineering, but it will obviously stop being attractive when everybody starts running on the stuff. after driving on the highway friday, and seeing that people were driving FASTER rather than slower on the highway, in spite of current fuel prices, well, i think that one of the smartest things bush could do right now was implement a national 65mph speed limit, before gas hits the magical $3.10 or $3.12 that it was in 1980.

idiot. I talk to 3 prius owners here that all own the 2nd generation prius and they all have lifetime fuel usage averages over 50 mpg, thats city and highway. Most prius owners that check mileage versus the computed gas mileage say that the computer is about 1.5 to 2 mpg on the conservative side. As far as comparing it to a golf tdi, i work on vw's and wouldn't wish one on my worst enemy, they've gone from one of the best cars in my opinion back in the 60's and 70's to one of the worst now. The tdi is better than most vw's but still far to troublesome for me. Toyota's reputation with the prius is unmatched. Even if you keep one for a year only and take the tax credit the odds are good you can get what you paid for it based on current resale values for them. The electric hermetic compressor powered ac makes it worth the price of admission to me alone. The atkinson cycle engine that they use still has a lot more potential for future gains also. Not to mention the number of people now who are making their priuses into plug in hybrids really increasing mileage into the 150 to 250 mpg areas for city commuters.
Plus its a new technology thats coming to everybody and i thought i had better start learning now. The last thing i am concerned with is what happens after the warranty runs out. I think i'll be able to handle it. And the battery and associated hybrid components are warranteed by toyota for 8 years or 100k anyway.

[Bill R.]

station so diesel falls even further behind... Also the clean running diesels that they have in europe won't run on our high sulfur diesel until we finally clean up our diesel. Either way hybrids aren't going to be a stopgap they are going to be the way that all cars are in the fairly near future, the amount of energy recaptured with regenerative braking ensures that no matter what we end up with its going to be a hybrid powertrain. Whether its gas or diesel it will be hybrid.
Battery costs are falling all the time and energy density is increasing all the time. There are a number of sites on the net that give you specifics on cost to charge as a plugin typically 1kw will get you a minimum of 3 miles and here its .10 for a kwh, so that translates into 30 miles for a buck but that doesn't take into account that most utilities will give you a discount for off peak usage and averaging your monthly bill , since your hybrid would almost always be charging at night during off peak hours then you could get the discounted rate which would be even cheaper.So even if it was run on straight electric it would be equal about 75 miles to the gallon based on gas costs now.. There's a guy in california who has solar collectors on his roof and they supply enough power for his house and his 2 electric cars, a toyota rav 4 and a gm ev1 that he had to give back.. he gives specs for his daily commute of less than 40 miles on each car every day... So i would imagine that it wouldn't take many rooftop collectors to keep a plug in hybrid charged up. They never charge to 100% typically only 80 %, its designed that way and rarely would you let it discharge completely on the drive home. Toyota has already announced that they will have 10 hybrid models within the next 24 months so they plan on offering a hybrid model of every car currently in the lineup... As far as performance cars the acura prototype that they have tends to indicate that hybrids will be a natural for that as well.. all wheel drive with a electric motor at each wheel individually controlled And what Jeff mentioned about mileage and handling not going hand in hand is true but tire manufacturers are coming up with new designs all the time stressing fuel economy and handling.. The first generation prius required special low resistance tires to achieve the mileage numbers, the second generation doesn't require special tires so I imagine you could put whatever tires you wanted on it as long as you didn't increase the width and not harm mileage much. The same oil guy that predicted 3.00 gas by now( which it is in places on the west coast) also predicted 5.00 gas in about another year. Toyota has also announced that they are going to increase hybrid production to 500,000 units annually or roughly half of all the cars they sell. Tomorrow i get to go drive a lexus hybrid for an hour or so , so I'll see what they are like.

im all for things that can be done NOW without having to engineer things...but i've read two articles and seen one tv spot about the plug in hybrid, all of them say the battery cost in addition is around $10k usd, and all of the bits i saw/read tried to trivialize the power consumption by saying that it only used "as much as a hair dryer" or "as much as a microwave" 1500 watts continuously overnight somewhat subtracts from the 150mpg the inventors tout. do you have any numbers as to the consumption of the plug in bill? me, personally, do not feel as though biodiesel is a good thing in the long run...right now? i hope that as many people as possible convert to it, its a very available stop gap measure that doesn't require extensive engineering, but it will obviously stop being attractive when everybody starts running on the stuff. after driving on the highway friday, and seeing that people were driving FASTER rather than slower on the highway, in spite of current fuel prices, well, i think that one of the smartest things bush could do right now was implement a national 65mph speed limit, before gas hits the magical $3.10 or $3.12 that it was in 1980.

[Zeuk in Oz]

Diesel is about 10% dearer than low octane (91) petrol (gasoline) here in Oz, but about the same as 98 octane.
The driveability and economy of these new turbo charged, common rail, direct injections diesels is phenomenal.
The other side of the coin is that servicing is cheaper, basically oil and filters, and that the engines still seem to last much longer than petrol (gasoline) engines.
Us far as the sulphur content is concerned, it was reportedly BMW that blackmailed our federal government into legislating for much lower sulphur content, threatening legal action if they didn't. It worked and so we now have all these wonderful new engines from which to choose !
The best thing about them, IMHO, is that they produce so much torque and many are now auto as the torque curves seen with diesel engines seem to be best mated to an auto box. All I can say is that it works !
My ML270 CDI gives me V8 - like torque out of an economical 5 cylinder.
The BMW 6 cylinder diesel engines have a similar exhaust note to the petrol (gasoline) sixes.