Today I drove the future.

As for my Internet persona, it works for me on this forum.

And once it stops working, you can always get it deleted from the history of the internet, huh?

Fwiw I don’t think these hybrid things are the future, they’re just a half arsed stopgap that just shove the dirtyness further down the line from the end use

I’m in relatively uniformed agreement with that. Road Trip tells me I get 44 mpg from my old estate (v little time on motorways, mostly country roads and towns). The new Lexus RX450h gets 32mpg, but low emissions make it cheap as a company car, apparently.

Slow is relative, it seems adequate to me, same top speed as the Prius and only 2s slower to 100kmh:

The three cyclinder Clios are the latest Clio IV TCEs which go rather well.

Vitesse max 182 km/h
0 à 100 km/h 12,2 sec.
Conso autoroute 3,9 litres / 100 km
Conso mixte 4,5 litres / 100 km
Conso ville 5,5 litres / 100 km
Poids 1009 kg
Moteur 3 cylindres
Cylindrée 898 cm3
Carburant Essence
Puissance 90 ch à 5250 tr/mn
Couple 135 Nm dès 2500 tr/mn
Puissance fiscale –
Boîte de vitesses Mécanique 5 rapports
Transmission Traction
Dimensions (L/l/H) 4,06 / 1,95 / 1,45 m
Réservoir 45 litres
Capacité coffre 300 dm3
Emissions CO2 104 g/km

Slow is relative, it seems adequate to me, same top speed as the Prius and only 2s slower to 100kmh:

2s is quite a bit. Seemed more like the 1l cars I grew up with, 0-60mph around the 15s mark. It may have been an older model than the current one, certainly didn’t feel anything close to 90bhp.

However slow is not relative when you are merging with traffic. I’m not talking about driving thrills, I’m talking about not having to pull into motorway traffic at 50mph.

Fwiw I don’t think these hybrid things are the future, they’re just a half arsed stopgap that just shove the dirtyness further down the line from the end user,

Well depends on the hybrid, there’s two types of use here. There are plug-in hybrids with large batteries where you’re intended to charge them up and drive using electricity for some of the way; and there are non-plug-in ones where the battery is pretty tiny and is just used to store energy that would otherwise be wasted and use it to move the car when the petrol engine would be least efficient.

The latter is simply a way to improve petrol (or diesel) efficiency, not a shift to a different power source.

And that Lexus 450h is a huge powerful SUV with 300bhp, so it’s hardly a like for like comparison. It’s much more efficient than similar powerful SUVs, but it’s still just as stupid of a car.

It’s the CO2 claims for the plug in hybrids that I consider misleading/lies. 2.1L/100km and 49gmCO2/km for the plug in Prius with no mention of the CO2 emitted in generating the electricity to charge the batteries.

The numbers for the old Prius give a good idea of what the car really uses and emits: 3.9l/100km and 89gm/km. Good figures which mean the car still makes sense even when you consider built-in energy for high mileage town users.

It’s the CO2 claims for the plug in hybrids that I consider misleading/lies.

Agreed. It’s not at all clear what those figures represent either. The plug-in battery charge is limited, so when they do the standard govt test pattern are they using up that charge? So when that charge is gone it must surely revert to 89g/km or whatever. I don’t think the test takes this into account. The EPA in the US have developed a test that does, apparently.

The numbers for the old Prius

I should just point out that the plug-in model is just a version of the new model which is also on sale without plug-in capability, for a lot less cash.

If I had the money and were shopping for a car (which I don’t and I’,m not) I’d be tempted by a plug-in model because I could drive to town and back, say, or to school on electric only power. Which would probably be less CO2 than using petrol. Then again, the Vauxhall Ampera would be better still for that reason but I’m not sure I’d want to buy anything from GM. And I’d have to do some proper research on battery technology. I’ve not found anything that actually explains how batteries are made, it’s all just handwaving and supposition as far as I can tell.

RE binners pic, Fiat and Lancia tried that in the seventys, after twelve months the floors rotted away and you could touch the road and scoot along with your feet…

Biggest problem is the price of these things. I looked at Ampera… bargain at €45,000 compared to a 5-door Astra at probably about half the price for a pretty decent spec.

€20,000 difference in list price equates to more 200 tanks of 98 octane! That’s a tank per month for so many years that I’d have considered the car worthless, run in to the ground, and/or sold on by then. 17 years worth of fuel at today’s prices – so call that 10 years assuming the price will go up quite a bit.
edit: and those calculations assume the hybrid of any variety use 0 petrol/diesel, and the recharge costs are nil too.

Now if you use a tank per week, then things are a bit different.

For that reason, I think I can wait a bit longer.

Yeah the Ampera definitely does not make sense on economic grounds alone. Which is a shame.

I’ve driven the future,
It’s called a, bicycle…..

Yeah for them to tempt me seriously, the Hybrid premium has got to be of the same order as speccing an auto box instead of manual (eg around the €2000 mark more than the petrol manual equivalent).

Even then, plug in is useless for me. I’m not gonna dangle a 50m cable out of a 4th floor window. And I’ve never seen a single public charge point anywhere either. So it’d have to be petrol/diesel hybrid where the sole input energy source is from the pump.

Well, I reckon the best (non-plugin) hybrid on the market is the normal Prius, but there’s no direct ‘normal’ equivalent to compare with. However the Auris hybrid is only £1.5k more than a petrol auto and £1.5k over the manual diesel, both in the same spec.

The hybrid version has the same MPG as the diesel manual, but 50% more power.. nice 🙂

Would be nice to see some more interesting use of hybrid tech.

I’ve got a pretty quick hot hatch. Overtaking is a breeze in it, put your foot down in 3rd or 4th and what was in front is now behind.

But the extra power is absolutely no use when cruising along the motorway at 70 or when driving in towns and stop start traffic.

What would be good is a car with say a 1.4 petrol (good ecomnomy and around 100-120bhp (plenty for urban driving and cruising) with a hybrid system that could deliver 70-80 bhp. The battery weight could be kept down by only needing enough power to provide the extra power for a small amount of time.

KERS for the road if you like

KERS for the road if you like

That’s basically what the Prius is, but with more benefits. Mine is a 75hp petrol engine, with an extra 30hp of electric power. When cruising, the battery does nothing. The battery in the standard version is pretty small really and is used for extra boost when you floor it, but also when crawling in traffic and sometimes when trundling at 30mph – both of which are less than efficient ways to use a petrol engine. If you have a long straight unbroken 30mph run, like a suburban road, it runs on battery for half a mile or so, then the engine comes on. But instead of using the throttle to limit the speed, it slows the car by taking the extra energy into the battery. So in another half a mile or so that fills back up and the engine goes off.

It’s extremely clever and superbly thought out!

Those Lexus mentioned earlier use hybrid power for performance, really. Except they already have lots of performance from the petrol engine, they just get even more from the battery.

What I’d like to see is more ways of recovering wasted energy. Inductive dampers on the springs could generate electricity for the battery, and you could put a turbine on the exhaust attached to a generator, for example.

The A3 E-tron is looking interesting has some good performance figures but being Audi price could well be silly.

http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/audi/a3/62836/audi-a3-e-tron-unveiled

I know hybrid isn’t the answer but it’s a steppingstone until another technology is good enough as an everyday car rather than for popping out to see Grandma.

I think hybrid is quite possibly essential for extracting as much as possible from any internal combustion car. Even hyrdrogen powered cars would still benefit from a battery to capture energy lost in braking.

Yeah I’m aware the Prius pretty much does all this. What I meant was a similar concept but more optimised to performance – think Golf Gti rather then Ferrari.

No reason why they couldn’t modify the Prius model a little to use a smaller / lighter hatchback body, with a bit more base petrol power and a punchier electric motor. It doesn’t have to be as economical as the standard Prius but a lot more economical than current hot hatches

I get 28mpg in my petrol hatchback – getting 45 mpg with similar performance using hybrid tech would be a big selling point

EDIT – Looks like the Audi E-tron is pretty much this idea

What I meant was a similar concept but more optimised to performance

BMW did something like that, not sure if it was in production. You’re quite right of course, but I guess Toyota really want to be seen as being eco rahter than sporty.

I think the Peugot 3008 job has a goodly amount of power, as does the Volvo that started this thread. That Audi posted above does too, of course. And even the Auris hybrid has 136bhp which is fairly warm for a smaller car that does 70-odd mpg I think.

I’d like a Honda CR-Z though. 150bhp or so, not at all fast (9s 0-6?) but aimed at being fun to drive (which it is apparently) and still 50mpg.

Mind you, plenty of fast diesels around that could get 45mpg.

Also this from VW.[/url]

Mind you, plenty of fast diesels around that could get 45mpg.

I’d been sending mine to be looked at if it dropped that low.

EDIT – a UK review

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/volkswagen/jetta/first-drives/volkswagen-jetta-hybrid

I’ve driven the future, It’s called a, bicycle…..

Yes indeed!

I’ve driven the future, It’s called a, bicycle…..

motorised private transport, specifically the way it is currently used, is the problem. Shifting energy sources and carrying on as normal doesn’t seem like a very big leap forward to me.

Mind you, plenty of fast diesels around that could get 45mpg.

my 10yr old audi gets 45mpg and goes plenty quick enough…

Shifting energy sources and carrying on as normal doesn’t seem like a very big leap forward to me.

No, it’s a very small one though.

Restructuring society could end up being significantly easier than finding the ultimate power source, but no-one will make much money from it sadly.

Big problem with capitalism that.