Cars, I mean, not roses or the application of concertina technology to the bodhran.
Does anyone else drive one? I have a Prius, a couple of years old now, and so far a terrific vehicle–reliable, good on the highway, surprising amount of room. But it can get a little lonely out there, surrounded by SUVs. I’m surprised that Toyota hasn’t been a tad more aggressive in making and marketing this kind of car.
JS
I’ve had a civic hybrid for about 5 months now. Not quite as efficient as a Prius but I still love it.
I convinced my folks to trade in their volvo for the Accord hybrid 
I don’t have one, but have already decided that I want a Prius next. (Probably about a year to 18 mos. away from a new car). I saw one on the lot last week, and LOVED it. Plus, the sticker estimates 51 - 60 mg. I can definitely handle that! I am glad to hear that you are so happy with yours, that will put my hubby at ease about buying one.
Very popular here in NorCal. I see them everyday and two neighbors have 'em as do my cousin. Ads on TV say that you don’t have to wait anymore. On this Forum, Herbivore has one but he hasn’t posted a lot lately.
Still pricey but other Weekender wants one bad. WIRED mag did a story about the comparative models.
MSNBC has an article today on hybrids. Here’s the link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7573849/
I was surprised how poor the hybrid Accord’s mileage is. I have a “regular” 2002 Accord that gets about 30 mpg. The hybrid is just slightly better.
I looked at hybrids in 2002 and decided that the gas savings were not sufficient to offset the added cost of the hybrid. I wonder what my calculations would look like today with gas at $2.15?
Did I read this correctly at Toyota.com… ?
The engine puts out just 76 HP @ 5,000 RPM? That’s pretty anemic.
I am impressed with the MPG ratings of 60/51/55 (city/highway/combind) These are provided by Toyota, though I don’t know any actuals, unless you owners want to provide… ??
Considering that the Prius I looked at was in the $22,000 range, and the warranty is good, I don’t think that is pricey at all. I paid $28,000 for my Impala, and only get 28 mpg at best. From my perspective, I don’t see the downside.
My pastor is the only person I know that has one. I just have to share this story. Our pastor is a tiny little lady, probably 60 years old. She is really big on not polluting, saving wildlife, etc. My mom and I rode with her in this car to an event at a different church. She drove this thing exactly 79 mph down the freeway, wearing her collar. That would have been quite interesting if the police would have seen her.
The calculation done when gas was $1.15-ish was that it took 10 years to offset the
additional cost of a new (in 2003) hybrid. I’d say with gasoline prices roughly double
it will take roughly half as long to recoup your investment in efficiency. Which means,
economically speaking, it’s a break-even if you’re the sort of person who replaces cars
when the 5 year warranty comes in. It’s a gain if you keep it longer. Assuming gas prices
remain stable. If they keep going up, the point of making financial sense will come even
sooner, if they go back down, it will be further off.
The price-gap between hybrid and conventional may also be changing which would throw
all these guesstimates back into uselessness, but, y’know. FWIW and all.
–Chris
There are owner-enthusiast sites where people report mileages in excess of 90mpg,
other people reporting on the same make & model 40ish mpg. It turns out, how you
drive - how much you take advantage of regenerative braking, etc., makes a huge difference.
I especially used to lurk on a honda insight site, but I still haven’t gotten myself a hybrid.)
Some people have also done things with attaching the garaged vehicle to solar panels,
windmills, etc., which, of course, improves mileage drastically for short commutes and
town-hopping (because you run on electricity a larger percentage of the time.
I heard a thing on NPR today about how GM and Ford sales are slipping largely due to slow SUV sales in light of fuel prices. Hopefully this will prompt them to push hybrid technology. I’d sorely love to see those gas guzzling obscenities off the road! 
Blimey, a new Prius is £20,000 over here. According to their ‘Prius Savings’ calculator, if I get rid of my diesel and shell out the 20k, I might save a couple of hundred pounds a year in fuel costs.
It’s a nice looking car though, but I think I’ll stick with my diesel for the time being.
I’ve found I average 40MPG in my Honda. Not too different from the sticker MPG on a regular civic.
BUT. Sticker MPG is usually significantly inflated.
That seems a bit hard to believe. I can see the 40MPG figure, but more than doubling the mileage based on ‘the way they drive’ is a wee bit to fathom.
Now, if some folks are getting mileage (I assume it’s combined city/highway) at 40 MPG, I don’t see that much of an upside. My SAAB gets 30 MPG combined, and has hit 36 on the open highway. So now I’m wondering what the fuss is all about… ?
Oh - and the SAAB that I have is rated at 180 HP compared to the 76 HP of the Prius.
I’ve found that 60 is around the high end of what we’ve gotten (my wife uses the Prius for a morning commute involving three clogged-up expressways, and that seems to be what the Toyota hybrid system likes best), and it depends a lot on roads and road conditions, snow tires (they really lower the mileage), A/C use. I’d say highway performance is fine for the non-maniac or those not completely surrounded by maniacs–I’ve driven cars that felt dangerously underpowered, but the Prius has quick responses and plenty of pickup, really good braking as well.
Oh, and you can crank up Planxty on the cd player and it sounds really, really good.
When we bought it, NY was offering a generous tax credit that somewhat offset the price difference. Don’t know if that’s still the case. I think that the low emissions are another reason to consider hybrids, apart from the issue of at-the-pump savings. And then there’s “stealth mode”–the strange feeling of driving slowly around a parking lot making almost no sound at all.
JS
As Weeks noted, I have a hybrid Civic.
My mileage varies considerably, depending on how much attention I pay when I drive. If I drive a bit aggressively, or without thought to efficiency (lots of acceleration, which really burns up gas, etc., as opposed to nice steady driving), I get about 40 mpg. If I actually pay attention, though, it improves to about 50 mpg. I get about 50 mpg – sometimes better – for long trips on the freeway, as well, if I keep the thing at a reasonable speed.
Once, having gassed up at a high-ish altitude and driven mostly downhill for many miles, my gas mileage was something like 97 mpg. That was pretty fun, but nothing like typical.
I got the Civic before the redesigned Prius came out; I hated the older version of the Prius in almost every way. The new one is apparently a much nicer car to drive. I still find the styling and that TV screen in the dashboard to be weird and distracting, but then again, under my tree-hugging, tax-and-spend liberal exterior, I’m pretty much a conservative traditionalist . . .
With gas around here as high as $2.60 (or more!) for the lowest-grade stuff, I’m really appreciating the efficiency. The super-low emmissions are nice, too, for us greenies. The newer model standard cars are improving a lot, though, on both fronts, which is awfully nice.
A nice effect for the music lover is the lack of noise at long stops, when the gas engine turns off. Perfect for a little whistle practice, or listening to your CDs/radio with no engine noise at all. . . ahhhhh.
It’s about time we heard of some priorities here! 
Just a cautionary note - I’d pretty much settled on a hybrid for my next car, but I’ve seen news stories recently (as in, the last couple of weeks) that show that most of the hybrid’s in-town milage advantage is an artifact of the way that the EPA was testing.
This is mainly due to the fact that the “in-town” testing was’t done on the road, but on rollers. This method seems to be reasonably accurate for conventional cars (at least, it seems to be consistant for conventional cars) but gives an artificially high number for hybrids.
Turns out that - in actual, town driving situations - hybrids get about the same actual MPG as a similar-sized car with the same power & acceleration. The EPA Highway numbers seem to be pretty accurate, though.
Given the still-present price differential, I’m not certain that it makes sense to buy a hybrid for mostly in-town driving. I probably would for mostly highway driving, though. And the situation may change noticably, in either direction, with next years models.
Any thoughts on repair/maintenance issues with hybrids? I assume when the battery dies, you just can’t pick up a $75 Die Hard at Sears. I seem to remember reading way back that battery sytem needs to be replaced at some point and it’s not inexpensive.
This makes sense to me, since my in-town mileage has never been as good as mileage during longer trips, despite the manufacturer’s claims that in-town mileage is supposed to be better than highway mileage. Think I can get some kind of rebate for that misleading claim? (Wouldn’t be a good American if I didn’t sue somebody 
. . .)
That said, my in-town mileage is usually around 40 - 42 mpg, which ain’t too bad; the lowest mileage I got was 38 mpg during a particularly hectic time when I didn’t pay attention to my driving at all for a while.
With the weather getting nice, though, I’ve been riding my bike to work; now that’s fuel efficient (coffee and a banana’ll get me there; you don’t want to know about the emmissions, though…).