Comments on: May 2010 Dashboard: Hybrid Car Sales Rebound

By: Steve in Washington

Steve in Washington — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 11:52:39 +0000

My experience with the Fusion Hybrid is the only change in driving habits needed to meet the EPA numbers is earlier and gentler breaking (which maximizes energy regeneration rather than squandering it by friction braking). This has the added benefit of greatly reducing the risk of rear-end collisions, both to the guy in front of you and the numbnutz who's on his phone texting behind you.

I'm a lead foot by nature, and a life-long driver of high performance luxury cars. I absolutely love the power off the line in the Fusion Hybrid. Without changing my jackrabbit-starting ways, I easily meet the 41 EPA city MPG with gentle breaking alone. Note that in very cold or very hot weather, the Fusion Hybrid MPG drops to around 36 MPG (heating and cooling loads).

Enjoy
Steve

By: mdensch

mdensch — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 01:05:44 +0000

My experience with our ’08 Escape Hybrid has been that you can fairly easily meet the EPA ratings by just driving normally. You can exceed EPA ratings by a comfortable margin by adopting hypermiling techniques and it doesn’t involve keeping your foot off the throttle, just learning to use it judiciously and learning to modulate your braking to recapture as much energy via regen as possible.

By: Nelson Lu

Nelson Lu — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:17:55 +0000

tglaze, if you drove a hybrid — any hybrid — you will have to modify your driving a little bit, not really for the gas-saving reason but for safety reason, for this reason alone: the hybrids’ torque curves are different. If you press on your gas peddle as hard as you do your non-hybrids, you will accelerate far faster. That, however, doesn’t take much effort to adapt to.

By: Yegor

Yegor — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:33:59 +0000

Biggest Japan May sales (Still higher than USA):
Toyota Prius: 27,208
Honda Insight: 3,156
Honda CR-Z: 2,573

Japan top sales list includes only top 30 sales cars, unfortunately Mitsubishi i-MeEV is not in top 30 yet

http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.jada.or.jp/contents/data/ranking/index.php&ei=HhsJTKzrE8X_lgevqZ3cDg&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.jada.or.jp/contents/data/ranking/index.php%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DG

By: Dom

Dom — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 13:41:20 +0000

I find it interesting that these charts show the Jetta TDI is the second most popular "green" car in the US after the Prius, not another hybrid. Without it's addition to these charts I wouldn't have guess that. Go TDI.

As for Honda, I'm interested to see how the CRZ will sell, but I wish they would bring back their diesel plans as well. A two-pronged approach with hybrids and diesels sounds like a good idea to me. That's what VW is planing to do in the next few years.

By: Charles

Charles — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 01:01:07 +0000

Looks to me like Toyota is running running full speed with Ford and VW at least moving forward. Time for Honda to rethink its IMA and for the others to get off of their fat butts and start something. OK, maybe Nissan has started something with the Leaf, but the others really need to get going.

By: tglaze

tglaze — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:46:27 +0000

I was in a Ford Dealorship today asking questions about their Fusion Hybrid. I asked him if I would have to change my driving habits to get the stated mileage. He said I would have to keep my foot off the gas as much as possible our I wouldn’t be able to get the mileage stated. I really do not like having to drive like my grandma to get good mileage. I have in the past owned diesel cars that averaged 45-50 mpg and changed nothing in my driving habits. I’m really sold on diesel cars because of their drive-ability along with their great mileage. Most people do not realize just how good diesels are. I’m not a road racer but whenever I need or want to push on the gas a little I do not want to worry about my mileage going through the floor! With a diesel you don’t have to worry about it, just knowing with the great torque on tap that comes on about 1700-1900 rpms. Those of you who haven’t drove a diesel car, go drive one so you can see what I mean.

By: JakePDX

JakePDX — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:30:00 +0000

Thank you for putting this data together in a very readable and usable format. It’s great to check this out every month. Go Toyota, Ford and VW!

By: Yegor

Yegor — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 19:04:33 +0000

As usual thank you very much for the for the Dashboard numbers!

Ford sales acceleration is very impressive!