Does anyone get a mild dizziness...

no - not in my honda civic.

maybe it's spinning from such a clean machine?

actually there might be something like a condition response where all your life you drove around in noisy cars and now you're in something pretty quiet. it's messing up your rooted expectations of what a car sounds like?

turn up the stereo!

see ya

steve

you know, a rumour that driving a hybrid will extend your life from exposure to *good* electromagnetic waves would be a cool way to increase drivership!

i happen to also be a potter & noticed that a lot of formal potters live to hit 100 years old!

maybe BOTH hybrid driving & pottery will extend my life?

enough of a reason to keep up BOTH habits...

see ya

I haven't noticed this dizziness in my insight, but I have noticed that on highway driving I seem to be ideally positioned to pick up a lot of diesel truck exaust in cold temperatures. You might want to try putting your vents on recycle, in case it is the carbon monoxide/fumes issue raised above.

My wife bought a 2007 Prius, and is planning to sell after putting only 5K miles on it. She complains of a light-headed, dizzy feeling when driving that takes an hour or so to dissapate after she gets out of the car. The feeling comes over her after only 30 minutes of driving. A couple of friends borrowed the car for a day, and told her they felt the same way. Driving with all of the windows open helps, but does not aleviate the problem.

The dealer can't find any problems with it. But she is afraid of driving it, thinks she might pass out. Sounds to me like she has the same problem that you do.

New cars also emit lots of chemicals from materials used, and some people are sensitive to that. Maybe the dizziness comes from that...?

I'm feeling sleepy in my 2 week old 2008 Prius. I drive 35 miles to work -- and was always alert and enjoying NPR enroute in my 1999 Volvo. Since driving the Prius I find myself bored -- and getting sleepy. Yesterday, driving 60 miles to our weekend house, I found myself almost nodding out -- more than once. This never happened in the Volvo. What evidence/information is there on sleepiness caused by a hybrid?

I own an 06 Civic hybrid and have found that on my 50 mile drive to and from work, I feel an intense sleepiness even in the morning after a good night of sleep. I also have trouble focusing my eyes on traffic around me. I am very worried that I will crash from nodding off. I have nodded off several times and found myself running off the road or in the lane of incomming traffic. I have even been to a sleep specialist to try to find out if I have some kind of sleep disorder. After two different types of sleep studies my Doctor found no problems with sleep but did put me on Provigil to keep me from falling asleep while driving. Provigil is a performance enhancing drug used by the military to keep long distant bomber pilots from falling asleep. It is also used to treat narcalepsy. Even with this, I have nodded off while driving. Something is happening while driving my hybrid that I have never experienced driving my conventional vehicals.

I am feeling weak, and lethargic, my eyes want to roll in the back of my head, it seems like it happens when i am driving my vehicle, i do let it warm up and even if i drive a short period of time, i feel like a person feels when they are put under for surgery, it scares me, i keep thinking possible carbon monoxide poisining, help

The sleepiness is likely caused by the electromagnetic fluxions emitted by the hybrid system. The Insight is the worst for this, of course, because it has the most aggressive hybrid system, giving over 70 mpg economy in routine use if you're careful and not sleepy.

Unfortunately, there's not much that the automotive engineering community can do about this problem. As the intensity of the current in the cables between the battery and the motor increases, more fluxions are emitted. They interact with the cells in your nervous system because the wavelength of the fluxions is similar to the length of the cells which causes a resonance. Even with aluminum shielding around the various electronic components there is some leakage. They could improve the situation by using lead shielding, but this would increase the weight of the car.

Some people have found that adding a fluxion absorber can help. This consists of a small antenna with an effective length comparable to that of the wavelength of the fluxions, connected to an energy-absorbing reactance. Basically what you do is assemble a 32 cm long aluminum rod (the calculation of this length is somewhat complicated because you have to take in the end effect) with a 10k ohm resistor at the end, and connect it to the body of the car. If you put it right behind the seat it will reduce the fluxions in the area of the seat and thus reduce your sleepiness.

When I drive short distances and for up to 30', I just get the 'eerie' feeling.
But at longer distances, going up and down on mountain slopes etc (having to "step on it"), the eerieness becomes more intense and I do feel dizzy, sleepy, forgetful... Then, after having done 12 miles in an hour or so and steping out of the Insight, I find myself feeling dizzy again and again... for more than 3-4 hours! And the next day, I was sleepy the whole day.
OK, you won't believe me if I tell you that this sleepiness vanished on the other (the next of the next) day! Seems like the melatonine levels were boosted, the pituitary over-energized or something.
(Mind that I've trained myself to be able to drive safely under "fatigue-to-falling asleep" conditions... But in a non-hybrid car.)
Oh: Not to forget the "cervical syndrome", which became worse for days (stiff upper spine etc).

Other times I feel a mild yet clear sense of heat going up my spine and spreading around my inner brain. The heat lasts from a couple of hours to a few hours.
Another aftereffect which I've noticed: some kind of vision blurriness -- just a hint of that.

OK. I had to do something!
I used a simple device named "RAC" that is supposed to neutralize the effects on the body of the occupant. Such devices are being used to help counterbalance the effects of geopathic stress and emf/esmog stress.
These simple devices don't affect the emf itself, but they "change the polarization of the emf rays (radiation)". I bought this one ("RAC") that is provided with some serious certifications from a German Institute -- and it does, seem to work quite well in a PC-lab. (Many of such devices turn to be a waste of money!)
The effect is much better now: No more sleepiness, no more diziness. Still, the eerie feeling persists.
And the next time, a weird "tightness" in my circulation occured, as if my blood pressure was going higher. I also felt the "currents" in my feet, this time.
So I guess, it is how I was explained by the lady who sells the "RAC" (and knows things on Reiki etc):
The emf itself, "weakens" the body's field. So a person who is already kind of frail will definitely feel the difference (weakness, lower blood pressure etc).
And with "RAC", the emf will "stimulate" the body's field (aura, they call it) -- effects are reversed.

But even so, I don't know if I like to have a (sort of a) "magnetic spa" every time I ride a steep slope or anything slightly stressing the car!

So I searched the possibility of insulating the high-voltage cable (the main cause of the emf).
The problem is the part of the cable that is invisible from outside (underneath), hidden behind the panel and going from underneath, up to the electric motor. There is no way to reach that!...
And although the electric field (even the LF of that component) can be insulated even from the cabin (with cheap and effective screening textiles), the magnetic component (mG) is said difficult to handle.

The fluxion absorber is a solution I have never heard before.
I would like some more specific information on that, if available. Like: How can I (or someone else) construct such a device?

I have just bought a Toyota Prius T_Spirit and my wife as a passenger who is normally very well & healthy recently experienced a feeling of dizziness, weakness and the sound of other passenger voices in the car becoming distant as though she was passing out. She then began to hyperventilate. We took her to hospital, who initially thought she had symptoms of a stroke, but after a thorough examination all the results were 'normal'.

Apart from the possible impact of electromagnetic fields etc generated by hybrid cars we wondered if a further contributory factor could be the dashboard display showing an image of the car with constantly moving wheels and arrows which could somehow have affected her balance etc? Has anyone experienced anything similar?

I just bought a 2010 Prius 10 days ago and every time I get in the car I feel a pain in right ear. I traded in a 2008 Toyota FJ Cruiser. I did not have this issue with the FJ. Has anyone else experieinced this problem? Arethe EMF's causing this? Help?

I used to drive Insight one year ago and I felt the same. I think you might feel it because of the electric cars noise( it is relevant to a toy plane or robot-mosquito)) it is very hard to explain but I am sure you know if you have ever sat in it. Therewith insight is very light, and takes off after 130 km/h. Everyone knows that light cars cause a travel sickness. And all those dashboards lights are more like sony play station

Does anyone get a mild dizziness...

Created December 28, 2004, at 1:20 am by Anonymous

I am an engineer and an Insight owner. I fully embrace the technologies that are found in this wonderfully engineered vehicle. But I do notice one thing that may not be so apppealing. I drive 200+ mile a day in my insight. When I am in the car and even after I leave the car, I feel a mild dizzeness the same kind of sensation one gets from talikng on a cell phone for a long period of time. I was aware of the electrical magnetic field that is generated by the electrical system. But I never thought it could auctally have an effect on me. Does anyone feel the same?

YES. I own a 2010 Honda Insight. I am getting very dizzy headche every time when I drive my car.
I believe my car generates very high EMF that gives me a headche.

i personally felt it has very strong magnetic field as i had used the measurement meter for magnetic field...i also sense that my chest and neck area has some pain...pain in a sense like it's heavy...and also while i use my handphone with speaker phone, some times, i have to cut the caller and call back later becoz i felt that the magnetic wave surround the car, plus my kids get headache while i was driving and used the phone for more than 10 minutes..

We cannot avoid it, but try to use our mobile phones less frequent.

You are experiencing motion sickness. I have the same problem when driving or riding in hybrid cars. I'm trying to determine why hybrid cars lead to more motion sickness. Is it the curved windshield, differences in speed due to braking, etc. But it's definitely motion sickness.