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Old 01-25-2012, 10:15 PM
 
Location: Grants Pass, Oregon
109 posts, read 193,951 times
Reputation: 113

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This may not be what you want to hear, but you asked for advise on gas mileage. Get rid of that hybrid elitist Prius that is supposed to "save the world" and get a VW TDI and get upwards of 50-58mpg!!! Just put diesel in it and run. If you absolutely have to be "green", run veggie oil. Your gas mileage will drop some, but still be better than that Prius!!! And only 1 battery to change EVER!!
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Old 01-25-2012, 10:20 PM
 
Location: Miami/ Washington DC
4,836 posts, read 11,948,734 times
Reputation: 2589
Should have gotten a Jetta TDI. Family has one and wow the gas mileage is awesome, and it is a "real" car. Handeling is pretty good and has decent pick up with the TDI engine. Its a nice car to save some gas in compared to my daily driver G500 which is about the complete oposite of what someone who wants a Prius would drive. But I love it.


As for the Hybrid, me driving my one owner G500 for the past 10 years with its 12mpg and 5.0 V8 has saved the environment much more than if I bought a Prius a few years ago. The amount of extra man hours and resources it takes to make a hybrid car completely out weighs its gain in MPG and less emissions it would save in the normal lifetime of a car. And of course Lithium minning is pretty horrible for the environment also.
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Old 01-25-2012, 10:39 PM
 
Location: Grants Pass, Oregon
109 posts, read 193,951 times
Reputation: 113
Fly MIA,
I have heard that in making a Prius the car goes across the pond twice before it's actually for sale??? Is this true?? ( I just can't get the South Park episode of "Smug Alert" out of my head when I see a Prius )
TDI's can be tuned to make pretty good power (torque of course with a diesel), but with cleaning out intake, straight pipe exhaust and some minor mods, guys are getting over 60mpg and over 125-140 ft. lbs of torque ( stock is 90 ).
My gas mileage makes up for my big block Chevy in my boat and big block Ford in my truck!!! It's a wash
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Old 01-26-2012, 06:10 AM
 
Location: Central Maine
4,697 posts, read 6,418,353 times
Reputation: 5046
Quote:
Originally Posted by DomerJen View Post
We just bought one, and have about 300 miles on it now. I'm pretty disappointed w/ our gas mileage so far - we're getting 35mpg. I'm almost exclusively driving it around town (we went on the freeway once - which actually boosted the mileage considerably from what it was).

Any tips for getting good mileage on hilly city pgh area streets? It seems like the gas engine almost always has to be on because we're forever going up hills...
Best advice ... just drive it. You'll figure out how to get the best gas mileage for the weather conditions, route taken, and so forth. Prius Chat is a good forum for reliable information. What you'll find here is predominately Prius-bashing based on ignorance and misinformation - just use the "search this forum" and you'll see what I mean.
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Old 01-26-2012, 10:01 AM
 
Location: MO->MI->CA->TX->MA
7,017 posts, read 14,404,591 times
Reputation: 5568
Quote:
Originally Posted by Drover View Post
I should think "winter driving" means something quite a bit different in southern California than it does in Pittsburgh. It should also be noted this thread used to be in the Pittsburgh forum and daily driving in Pittsburgh means climbing lots of steep hills.
Didn't we cover this already?

//www.city-data.com/forum/autom...r-climate.html
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Old 01-26-2012, 10:21 AM
 
1,106 posts, read 2,866,681 times
Reputation: 417
Quote:
Originally Posted by FlyMIA View Post
Should have gotten a Jetta TDI. Family has one and wow the gas mileage is awesome, and it is a "real" car. Handeling is pretty good and has decent pick up with the TDI engine. Its a nice car to save some gas in compared to my daily driver G500 which is about the complete oposite of what someone who wants a Prius would drive. But I love it.


As for the Hybrid, me driving my one owner G500 for the past 10 years with its 12mpg and 5.0 V8 has saved the environment much more than if I bought a Prius a few years ago. The amount of extra man hours and resources it takes to make a hybrid car completely out weighs its gain in MPG and less emissions it would save in the normal lifetime of a car. And of course Lithium minning is pretty horrible for the environment also.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Malibusurfer View Post
Fly MIA,
I have heard that in making a Prius the car goes across the pond twice before it's actually for sale??? Is this true?? ( I just can't get the South Park episode of "Smug Alert" out of my head when I see a Prius )
TDI's can be tuned to make pretty good power (torque of course with a diesel), but with cleaning out intake, straight pipe exhaust and some minor mods, guys are getting over 60mpg and over 125-140 ft. lbs of torque ( stock is 90 ).
My gas mileage makes up for my big block Chevy in my boat and big block Ford in my truck!!! It's a wash
I'll answer both.

The prius requires certain amount of materials from across the world for its batteries and other equipment just like any other car. The prius gets fantastic mileage I'll give you that, but in short the prius isn't anymore environmentally friendly than your average car if not a bit worse because at the end of the day, it is still a car which means it will still pollute one way or the other.

That being said though not all prius owners are smug. I help out this old wealthy guy move stuff in his storage room and all he needed was a car that was reliable and got excellent mileage. He doesn't do very much highway driving (has a lexus for that) so the prius fits the bill. He's no eco-elitist but just needed something that was reliable and fit his needs.

The tdi's OTOH are great cars to drive thanks to its handling and strong torque.

Last edited by rsh56; 01-26-2012 at 10:56 AM..
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Old 01-26-2012, 11:03 AM
 
Location: Summerville, SC
3,382 posts, read 8,605,326 times
Reputation: 1456
Quote:
Originally Posted by SteelCityRising View Post
I just bought a Honda Civic Hybrid and am also having a strong case of buyer's remorse due to my trailing fuel efficiency being far less than promised. I average in the mid-20s for city driving and have only reached a peak of 42 miles per gallon while trying every trick in the book on a highway road trip. I specifically paid a premium to buy a hybrid figuring I'd be filling up my gas tank less when in REALITY I'm getting comparable fuel efficiency to my belated Mazda3.

Hybrid vehicles suck.
I average 23 city in a 11 year old v6 camaro I bought for $2k.


Hybrids are overated. The money saved in gas usually doesn't justify the premium price, and there are cheaper cars that actually do a little better on gas.

Top gear proved a BMW m3 can get better gas mileage. In a car like a hybrid you have to drive real conservative, or gas motor kicks in. You gain some by shutting down at stoplights and such, but GM had systems like that, that never caught on.

I hear you really have to learn to drive it and hypermile to get better mileage, but if you learned better driving techniques and hypermiling you would do better.


It is basically a status symbol for a different group of people.

Sent from my autocorrect butchering device.
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Old 02-01-2012, 11:09 AM
 
Location: SW MO
662 posts, read 1,219,994 times
Reputation: 695
Quote:
Originally Posted by Caladium View Post
By the way, I bought one a few years ago after we had a big snow storm down here. I work for a small company that handles vital deliveries, so we don't close for snowstorms. We had a kid with a pick up who was supposed to do our deliveries, but he called in and said he couldn't come to work due to the snow. My boss owned a Prius, and she not only handled all the deliveries, she then drove over to the kid's house to make sure he was ok. I couldn't believe some of the snowy streets that car handled. After that I decided I had to get one too. I love it, but then again down in my neck of the woods we have ideal weather for a car like that and we have hills that are gentle rolling bumps rather than steep Pittsburghian hills. And to be fair, when I drive up to Pittsburgh I usually take our Maxima.
That's pretty much the opposite of what I see here in Snowy South Dakota. The Priuses get stuck or simply left home when it snows more than about an inch, which is frequently. They are the one vehicle more than any other I have seen that is most likely to get stuck at a stoplight furiously spinning one wheel while standing still or going at the blistering pace of six inches a minute. The combination of narrow, hard, low-rolling-resistance tires with shallow tread, lack of ground clearance, and front-wheel drive with an open differential is just about the perfect recipe for getting stuck in the snow. Guys in Mustangs and Vettes with summer rubber would get stuck too, but they have the sense to put it away in October and drive the Yukon to work. The Prius owners refuse to admit there is a use for larger, heavier 4x4 vehicles and insist on driving their roller skate in all weather. However, the Priuses do end up getting to their destination sooner or later, when the diesel 1-ton 4x4 tow truck hauls them there

Quote:
Originally Posted by scottrpriester View Post
I hear people complaining all the time that their cars don't get the mileage stated. And it's funny we are talking about Prius......I've laughed so many times while commuting, where I'm going along at say 65 to 70 mph, and I get passed by a Prius doing upwards of 80. My first thought is "what's the point of having one if you're going to drive it that fast" and my second thought is "I can just hear that driver bitching that their Prius isn't getting good mileage"
I have seen ONE Prius going above the speed limit, ever. It absolutely shocked me silly. Priuses in the Midwest are invariably the vehicle driving 5-10 under the speed limit, fouling up the flow of traffic. Priuses, late-model land barge Buicks, and Smarts (which are probably physically unable to go above 55 mph in any wind) are the chronic clogs in the right lane.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Haakon View Post
As an extreme example did you see the Top Gear episode where a Prius got worse gas mileage than a M3 BMW? They raced the Prius around their track as fast as it could go and followed it in the M3, which of course was loafing. End result Prius 17 MPG, BMW 19 mpg.
That's disappointing. I thought the M3 would have gotten better than 19 mpg at 75 mph
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Old 02-01-2012, 11:22 AM
 
Location: BNA -> HSV
1,977 posts, read 4,181,983 times
Reputation: 1523
Hybrids are over-rated...Diesel is where it is at.
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Old 02-05-2012, 12:12 PM
 
Location: Twin Lakes /Taconic / Salisbury
2,256 posts, read 4,465,731 times
Reputation: 1869
Quote:
Originally Posted by FlyMIA View Post
Should have gotten a Jetta TDI. Family has one and wow the gas mileage is awesome, and it is a "real" car. Handeling is pretty good and has decent pick up with the TDI engine. Its a nice car to save some gas in compared to my daily driver G500 which is about the complete oposite of what someone who wants a Prius would drive. But I love it.


As for the Hybrid, me driving my one owner G500 for the past 10 years with its 12mpg and 5.0 V8 has saved the environment much more than if I bought a Prius a few years ago. The amount of extra man hours and resources it takes to make a hybrid car completely out weighs its gain in MPG and less emissions it would save in the normal lifetime of a car. And of course Lithium minning is pretty horrible for the environment also.
Wow.. you know alot!.. not. There is no lithium in a prius... Mpg is all up to you and your right foot. I can get anywhere from 35 to 65 when I drive our company car prius... Drpends on how much of a rush Im in... Ive also gotten anywhere between 8 and 32mpg in our company Vipers... As I said.. its all in your right foot.. learn how to use it properly for the conditions..
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