Is it just me,
 

or are those new Prius commercials freaking everybody else out too?

They make me want to be one with the Earth and stuff.

what confuses me is the prius commercial that keeps saying "honda insight".

lol, new insight is totally a ripoff. they must have hired chinese engineers.

yeah. odd isnt it?!

honda is always 1 step behind toyota with the hybrid technology. The older insight was actually really nice in that it actually got 60+ mpg. The new one is low 40's, which is pathetic for a car that looks that ugly. My wife has a 2005 civic hybrid and we regret getting that car almost every day. Ton of problems, which is so unusual for a honda (catalytic converter went out twice, and now the transmission is dying, there is a recall on them actually) and it gets 48mpg only on constant highway 55-60mph driving. Around town its like low 30's while my parents and brothers prius' get 45's in the city easy.

fuck honda hybrids

Hybrids are silly. Small turbo diesels ftw.

Not to sound like a tree hugging flamer, but I'm on gassavers.org and I have done about $16 worth of mods to my daily (1996 saturn sl2 automatic) and I have reached all time high of 46.7mpg highway. The best part, the engine was running this whole time and the transmission was in gear the whole time, none of that engine-off coast crap, or neutral coasting down hills.

I average about 30 in the city right now too. Car has 149k miles and drinks 2 quarts of oil every 300 miles.

Hybrids are a joke.

Is the insight still around? I thought they just went quietly into the good night.

Yeah, I had to LOL when last night on FOX there was the "Flower people" ad for the Prius, followed immediately by the VW commercial where the talking Beetle and the fellow who just bought a Jetta TDI are making fun of the guy next door with his hybrid.

Used to be that folks in the traffic dept. would never allow that sort of conflict to get scheduled into a break. These days, I don't know what they're thinking.

Did you factor this into you gas mileage calculations?



This.

Honda IS way behind. Most of their hybrids are only electric assist, and don't have kinetic energy recovery systems (like Ferrari in F1 YEAH!!!....oh and Toyota slackers). This is kinda goofy to me...but oh well.

Atleast Ford (wtf right) is pushing the way to more widespread turbo use stateside. They have been planning for years, and their current take on it is "lop two cylinders off of every current powertrain in the lineup and add turbo." This means full size trucks with turbo V6s instead of V8s etc.

One can only logically assume that they (and hopefully others) will soon pick up Vin Diesel's torch.

"Hippies say they want to save the earth, but all they want to do is smoke dope and smell bad" -Eric Cartman

Fuck the green movement. It makes me want to do burnouts and donuts.

No, because I'm not that darned ---- about it. Used to be crazy about saving gas, as the car began using more and more oil, I essentially abandoned any hope to increase MPG as the impending engine rebuild was sure to come. Still hasn't, and I'm still cruising 55mph getting 40+.

Wish I had the SOHC 5-speed, I'd be 55+mpg highway.

Without going into detail, my only mod is a HOT air intake.... that and learning to drive the (any) car a little different (easier).

I'm not sure that will be any better. From the July 09 Car and Driver.
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first off, car and driver is heavily right wing biased and anti-environment. no surprise they'd try to suggest that turbocharged cars get better mileage than big motor cars.

joe p: the insight did die a quiet death back when it was a 3 foot wide flower power machine with rear wheel arch covers. now that it's a prius with an H on the front, it's back for the baby boomers to fit their fat asses into.

six: I think the green movement should save resources only when NOT doing burnouts. is that acceptable?

lmao

Umm, did you even read the article? The article says that turbo charging smaller engines ISN'T any better then big motor cars. At least with the cars they tested.
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I'm just tired of the worn out "going green" advertising gimmick. It's like the 1950's "jet age" advertising gimmick where everything from your vacuum cleaner to your outboard motor was "streamlined" for no apparent reason. The "jet age" stuff looks art-deco cool as we look back on it. People are going to look back on the overpriced, poison-filled compact fluorescent bulbs and say "WTF were they thinking?" And the same will be said of the Toyota "Pious" that is more expensive per mile than the less complicated, and less environmentally damaging Corolla.

I'm opinionated.

I wasn't clear. the title suggests that we are looking for smaller engines to be more fuel efficient but anyone with a little car knowledge understands that horsepower is horsepower and requires a certain amount of fuel. the turbo is there to increase the specific output (VE) of the small motor. perhaps they just have never heard of the concept of BSFC?

And I totally agree that people are better off buying the corolla.

though a diesel electric hybrid would be pretty sweet from an "well to wheels" efficiency standpoint since diesel requires less energy to produce...

The Chevy Cruze (I think that's the one) will have a 1.4L turbo gas engine when it is released stateside. I think that is a step in the right direction. It makes 140hp, plenty for your average driver that doesn't even know what a turbo is. I would be very disappointed if the Cruze doesn't pull off some stellar ratings from the EPA (it is a fairly heavy car, though).

Like I mentioned earlier, the best engines out there for mileage are turbo diesels. I've seen a 2005 Jetta TDI (1.9L) hit 55-60mpg in the summer driving ~75mph average. We really need to take a page from Europe on this one and start manufacturing turbo diesel cars. Manufacturers need to put out advertising that will help get rid of the stigma that diesel has here for being smelly and bad. The other benefit is if more people drive 50mpg+ diesel commuter cars, that's more gas for us! :)

sorry if this is the same as the one above... I can't see youtube videos at work