The Atkinson cycle produces less power, but the electric motor's troque more than makes up for it. My 2005 Prius had no problems going up the steep hills on my commute. The car may sound like it is struggling because of the eCVT though. The low clearance can be a problem in snow, but I found the traction control to be the real hinderance. It is there to protect the drive components, so was too touchy, and lacked a way for the driver to turn off.

The Prius can't jump start a normal car because its 12 volt battery isn't a starter battery. All it has to do is boot up the computer and flip the switch to the traction battery. It just doesn't have the capacity to turn over an ICE without damaging itself. Hooking a running Prius up to a car with a dead battery may allow that battery to charge up enough to start the car on its own.

Few cars sold in the US actually have any official tow rating. Even ones that have it in other markets. Toyota may just be over protective of the hybrid drive train, because AWD versions of it do have a tow rating, and plenty of people have towed with their Prius for extended miles. 800lbs sounds low for payload, but that is around average for cars of the Prius' size.

Has your AC ever been serviced?Or was the compressor turned off during that time(you could do that on the gen2)? Cars use the AC compressor to dry the air for the defroster. Without dry air, it won't fight fogging as well. As for heat to melt the ice on the wipers, the downside of an efficient engine is less waste heat for the cabin and defroster. Those temps were well below freezing. I recommend spraying down the windshield with winter fluid to soak the ice on the wipers to help thaw it if it happens again.

So we are talking about cars or planes here? ... cause I don't think it really matters if you are in the mountains or in DC in case of a nuclear attack...

Just my 2 cents...

As long as you're at least as far west as Loudoun county, you'll be alright. The prevailing winds travel west to east, so no fallout should travel any significant distance west.

Anyway... sticking to the topic, I must say that everyday since I have I hybrid my fealing is that this was a much better deal than all the other options, car now consumes less and less everyday, and runs better and better every single day so no regrets at all.

I just wish that my next hybrid could have a little better performance in electric mode such as speed and mileage, don't need to be much more but maybe 20k/h more and at least 8 km to 10km of autonomy would be perfect.

Regards,

Most people are still super sceptical about hybrids. They have become quite popular in the big cities, London etc as a way of dodging the congestion charge. But on paper, a hybrid still only offers similar economy to a modern diesel overall, and the C02 emissions (which we are of course taxed on) are very similar, sometimes lower for diesels. So overall "average" for most people, it will be cheaper to buy/run a diesel in the long run, especially when a hybrid can be 50% to 100% more to buy in the first place.

I've heard Toyota's hybrid pricing is ridiculous in the UK, and the others aren't much better. The Mitsubishi Outlander PHV is flying off the lots though.

Sorry but that is not really true, my hybrid costs less than some concurrency petrol and diesel ones in Europe. And in most European country you can find then around 16K till 25K euros

It depends, a small hybrid like a Yaris, when compared to another small car, seems quite expensive. At the bottom end of the market you can get a car that size for between 5995 and 10,995, making the Yaris about 50 - 100% more expensive. One of the main problems is the over the top fuel economy estimates too, as pointed out various times.

I had posted something earlier about this idea. A person can find a 2 year old Chev Volt with approx 90k miles for around $12000 a third of the price of a new one. Is it worth it with the loss of the warranty in 10 k miles when there doesn't seem to be anyplace that a person can find a source for replacement batteries? I have looked. I have also seen some news that some of the hybrids have and are changing the battery pack to a higher voltage. this could mean in a short time there will be obsolete. Any remarks on this ?

The makers of hybrids aren't using a standard voltage or battery chemistry to begin with, so any new systems coming out aren't going to affect their value or ease to find replacement batteries.

Toyota, the Ford Escape and 1st gen Fusion use NiMH, and early Honda hybrids. It is a robust battery chemistry, but lithium ion will soon beat it on price. It also couldn't be used until recently in packs large enough for a plugin due to patents. Toyota is sticking with it because they married to it. They secured much of the sources for it back when the Prius got popular to lower their costs.

Everybody else is using Li-ion in some form. In part, they were worried about losing supply sources to Toyota for NiMH. The other was that Li-ion was really the only thing legally available for plugins. Even the Prius plugin uses it.

A 48 volt mild hybrid system might be coming to market soon. One is made by Continental(yes, the tire company). IIRC, it uses Li-ion, and will likely first appear in a Chrysler product. FCA seems to be the only major company without their own hybrid or EV program. Note that this is a mild, or weak, hybrid system. In terms of cost, complexity, and fuel economy improvements, a mild hybrid is a step up from a start/stop system, which are sometimes called microhybrids. All the currently available systems that I took a look at are full, or strong, hybrids. They have bigger motors, bigger batteries, and a bigger increase in fuel economy. They can also drive the car on pure EV for much longer periods than a mild could, if it can at all.

One of the big reasons the values on used plugins have been dropping is because of the rapid improvements Li-ion batteries have made since plugins first came out. The third year Volt got a different Li-ion chemistry that improved range and EV efficiency. There was another change in the battery between then and now. GM didn't bother to recertify it for EPA, but reports are it also improved range. The new 2016 is reported to have a 50 mile range with a battery pack that is smaller than the current one. Tesla offers a new pack for the Roadster that increases its range by 50 to 100 miles.

As to a Volt with 90k miles going for a third of its original price, I think many cars with that many miles have nearly the same amount of depreciation. As for the cost to replace the battery. If it does fail, GM will likely eat much of the new pack's cost in order to get a hold of the old one to study. GM parts catalogues are just listing the battery casing for about $3000.

When deciding to get a hybrid for my wife to drive, one benefit that out weighed the gas mileage was the range between fillups. We knew that it would take a long time to recover the difference in price between the comparably equipted gas version and the hybrid version, but the difference in the time & distance between fillups was a real draw for us. With my wife's old car (V6 engine), she was filling up every 10 days or so & going about 200-240 miles. With her new car, she goes 3-4 weeks easily & up to 600 miles between fillups. She really appreciates that, especially when the lines @ Costco could be 10-20 minutes long. The only thing I am a little concerned about is that I hope the gas doesn't go stale between fillups. That time in line to fillup isn't counted in the price difference, but is a benefit of the hybrid or any plugin/electric vehicle.

It would be a similar story if you bought a small diesel, although I appreciate the market isn't as broad for diesels in the US. I too used to fill up every 10 days in my old gas car, getting only 250 to 300 miles per tank. Now my current car only has a tank two gallons bigger, yet it gets over 700 miles per tanks and lasts 4 to 5 weeks.

I wouldn't worry about the gas going off, it would take a minimum of 6 months for this to happen I think.

The fuel tank of a car is also much better sealed than the one used to fill your lawnmower. So the car gas is losing less of the more volatile fraction and getting exposed to less air. Those are the main causes of gas going bad.

Hybrids are not all the same. As a comparison, check out the 2015 Audi Q5 3.0 V6 turbo diesel compared to the Hybrid, powered by a 2.0 inline 4 turbo gasoline engine. EPA ratings place the diesel as more fuel efficient except in the city, where the hybrid is only *slightly* better.

In real-world use, where gasoline engines don't do as well as EPA numbers and diesels do noticeably better, the V6 diesel is more powerful, more fuel efficient, less polluting, and considerably less expensive!

My Q5 diesel is expected to arrive at the end of May '15. I can't wait to see what kind of fuel economy it'll deliver.

My take on diesels is that they are a better choice for steady rate usage (i.e. freeway drives) than stop & go city drives. VW's diesels gave a 600 freeway mile range, the hybrid gave 600 city mile range. Since my wife's daily drive is 10 miles each way to/from work on city streets only, a hybrid seemed a better choice in our case. Ideally, a plug in EV would have been the best option, but since she occasionally drives a freeway trip on the weekends, the EV anxiety of running out of juice was a real possibility. The plug in hybrids we looked at seemed to be a possiblility, but the best balance between our usage, performance, and price made the conventional hybrid our choice. The last factor was that most of the diesels that we would have considered came from manufacturers that had spotty reliability records, VW/Audi being the front runners in our choice of cars. We waited for Mazda to put out their SkyActive-D engine last year, but they delayed it indefinitely. Trunk space was never an issue. Except for the occasional road trip in the past, we never really filled a conventional trunk to capacity in our entire driving lifetimes (once we got out of college). If we take road trips that require a larger trunk, we rent a vehicle now.

And you're right about the diesel market here in the US, at least here in Calif. Within 3 miles of home, there is only 1 gas station that carries diesel, so there isn't any incentive to keep diesel prices down. It's usually more expensive than premium gas around here. On the other hand, within 2 miles there are 3 Arco stations and a Costco (plus a couple of independants) that all compete to keep gas prices low. So diesel access also factored into our decsion.

As far as the gas stability issue, my concern is the Ethanol factor. I've heard it separates out over an extended amount of time and I'm not sure what that does to the overall health of the engine/fuel system. We have 10% here with some places going to 15%.

Ethanol only separates out when enough water gets into the fuel for phase separation. The normal amount of water that gets into a tank through condensation isn't going to be enough. There needs to be a leak letting in rain or car wash water, or it comes in during refueling.

Gasoline sitting in a properly working fuel tank isn't going to spontaneously phase separate.

Plug in hybrids that have a large ratio of EV miles are the only cars that might have to worry about gas going bad with regular use, and then the manufacturer took that into consideration in the design.