Comments on: Reconsidering the Toyota Prius in an Electric Car World

By: Steven

Steven — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 06:25:32 +0000

Now settle down there Pat. Your broken English leads me to believe you’re probably from somewhere other than the US. I’ve driven several Toyota’s, a couple of Honda’s, a Mazda and a Nissan. I’ve also driven a Malibu Classic, Edge, Cavalier, Cadillac CTS, and Mountaineer. I’ve had all of these cars over an extensive period of time in my family, and quality can only come from each individual driving experience and being objective. Of the cars on my list, the worst experiences I’ve had were with Toyota products. Toyota and it’s government have been pushing the quality motion for years. It’s an advertising campaign, and has a bit of brain-washing along with it. The USA used to use this mode of advertising, but it was cut from the budget. Subsequently, it’s budget cut was even used in a movie called “Dave” where the acting President want to cut spending from “a program that makes people feel good about a car they already own”. I can tell you, that once pointed out to owners of similar makes and models, they all agreed they had the same problems. For instances, have you ever noticed the majority of Corolla’s built in the 90′s rarely have all of their tail lights and license plate lights all working at the same time? Civic owners also often share the same experience with having issues with their air conditioner. Even with my experiences with Toyota, I still own a Prius. It’s a good car. It’s not great. My Rx7 was a ton of fun to drive. But of all the cars I have ever owned, the only one I still have is my 1976 Malibu Classic. The engine has 650,000 miles on it and the paint is still there. The Honda, Mazda, Nissan & Toyota all had terrible paint jobs and cheap metal underneath. So say what you will about quality, but each person has their own belief in what quality is. I don’t need to be told, I’ve experienced it. Certainly, fixing some things cost more than a lamp bulb, but nobody ever thinks that they’ve gone through 12 bulbs in 12 months due to faulty wiring because bulbs are cheap and an easy fix. There were plenty more problems, that was just one example. The Volt is a genuine effort, and more innovative than any car on the market because it blends Electric with Extended Range. Lithium-Ion is a proven technology, just not so much in automobiles. I feel GM is making a valid effort. It can be seen in their newest line of Buick and Cadillac products. Nothing beats a CTS-V. In fact, the entire “V” series of Cadillac is a serious improvement to anything that’s ever compare to BMW or Audi. One of the largest fleet vehicles in the world is GMC, far more than Toyota. Companies choose GMC fleet vehicles because of experience and reliability. Dumping Hummer, Saturn, Fiat, Isuzu, Subaru, Suzuki, Pontiac, Lotus, Saab & Oldsmobile and selling to NGMCO prove GM is making efforts to improve their brand. Vauxhall, Opel, Holden & Daewoo are major fixtures in their respective areas and many of those owners are very happy with their products. In fact, Holden badge engineered Toyota & Nissan products and dumped them solely to take on “a superior product in GM”. There are past & present GM employees that have a huge passion for automobiles as well as technology that have forgotten more than any Toyota executive will ever know. Politics and infrastructure within their industry was the downfall that didn’t let those others focus & create. They all felt like they needed to compete with Toyota, and eventually started making boring, lame, geeky cars like Toyota has been making for years. No style, no personality. In the 90′s, there was no difference between a Geo & Toyota. They were even made with the same products by many of the same people. Geo is no longer around. That says a lot about Toyota’s of the 90′s. Furthermore, if you feel the need to get your point across regarding batteries, please don’t mention Taxi’s and follow that up with “extremely reliable”. There is no such thing as extreme reliability. I’m sure I’ve made a few typos here, and some grammatically incorrect phrasing, and I’m sure if I wanted to proof-read this I would catch them all, but it’s 1:30 am and I’m just expressing a few points. The main one being, don’t try to sell us your Japanese propaganda here, we’re all stocked up. If Audi made the Prius, we’d still drive it, we don’t care that it’s made by Toyota. We care what it does, regardless of reliability. The next car that catches my attention is the Chevy Volt or the Nissan Leaf, because they both do more than Prius for our driving needs and we won’t think twice about leaving one company to go to the next because in the end, Toyota does not pay me to drive their cars so there is absolutely no reason for a consumer to be loyal to any brand. Only a stubborn fool would express loyalty toward a multi-million dollar business. If they don’t make an ER-EV soon, they will suffer the loss of business to those companies that do.

By: Steven

Steven — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 05:32:34 +0000

I’m a Prius owner. I know I’m a geek. It’s a geek-mobile. I owned a Corolla before it, also a somewhat geeky car. My Prius doesn’t get as much mileage as most of the posts I’ve read here. Of course, I discovered after purchasing it, I rarely drive below 60 mph. That being said, I’m tired of articles infused to sway people. I have no idea what CEO’s of Toyota have said about American cars or their companies. These articles do nothing for pushing toward using cleaner energy. Look at some of the comments here. Some people seem to be upset, even outraged by his comments. Why? What point does it serve. It’s a slightly controversial comment that only gets people upset because the article is meant to offend. And those Prius drivers that take offense to being told they are driving a “geek mobile” by one guy shouldn’t be driving a Prius or any other car out there that can give the impression of pre-conceived stereo-types. If they drove Hummers, they’d have to deal with people believing that have small genitals.

Now on to my comments about these vehicles. I’m more excited about the Volt than I am about the Leaf. A lot of reasons come to mind, and one of them, admittedly is style. Some others include the 5 years free directions & connections On-Star feature w/ XM/NavTraffic/Weather and all its features including engine cut-off & vehicle slow down and personal concierge, as well as the Ultra-Energy-Saving Bose surround system w/ 60 Gb of storage and voice recognition. The 2 7″ HD screens touch-screens, the center console touch control switches. This is, in my opinion, bringing back sexy to geek mobiles. The On-Star feature alone lowers the price of insuring this car. I rarely see the features of each car posted when I read these articles, and none of them ever include estimates of insurance costs. In the end, I’ve done extensive research on all of the above cars. Since two of them won’t be sold in my area any time soon, I’ll be able to do even more. But at this point, the Volt is ahead – far ahead. And yes, style has something to do with it. I’m still a geek and proud of it.

By: KurtJax

KurtJax — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 16:42:29 +0000

In case you (John K.) haven’t got this yet, it looks like “Enginer”, not Eniger.
http://enginer.us/

By: pat

pat — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 16:41:19 +0000

VOLT is just a product that GM uses it to make the public thinks GM is still worth saving from going out of business. VOLT never intend to be mass produce or make money for GM. The battery being use on the VOLT is not proven for it reliability yet. Can you afford to replace the battery every 3 years on a battery running car? The reason GM get into trouble today is because its cars are not reliable. It costs a fortune to keep!
On the other hand the Prius’s battery is being used by taxi company (Most heavy user) in the last ten years, and it proven to be extremely reliable. If Toyota not dare to put a Lithium ion battery powered car on the road, I will not buy any make of car power by Li ion.

By: John K.

John K. — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 07:21:09 +0000

kempf42: You wrote, "1) I had my 2008 Prius converted to a plug-in using A123's system. At the time, it was the only one available and was expensive ($10K) but now there is a system from Eniger that costs half the price."

I looked online for Eniger but was unable to find a website for them. Do you (or anyone else) know their contact info?

Thanks!

By: Laszlo

Laszlo — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 21:24:02 +0000

I must congratulate you all for the professional level of discussion. Yes, this is a good debate.

For now I will stick with my Gen II Prius. Even considering extending its EV range by adding a battery pack under the trunk space. Until some better than the current best energy storage method - Li-Ion batteries - is commercially available long distance motoring is not practical without the support of an ICE on board. According to some articles this will take between five to ten years. The beauty of a plug-in-hybrid is that some, if not all, daily drives can be done in EV mode. For the immediate future the PHEV is the only practical way to reduce our carbon footprint.
As for market size, one would think that clever marketing could target the millions of downsizing, retiring baby boomers with one family car and put many of them into PHEVs. PHEVs will allow these folks to visit their grand kids in a neighboring town/state and drive themselves to Florida in the winter. Commercial volumes of production will reduce the cost of the batteries as well as increase the EV range.

By: Libertarian Don

Libertarian Don — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 18:02:01 +0000

All three cars have merits. My favorite in concept is the Volt which is the first practical electric car. Unfortunately, it is made by GM with a boastful CEO better suited to a low class reality show. The most important environmental step humanity can make is the elimination of oil dependency because the money from oil is being used to fund an intolerant and hateful ideology. This ideology is going to drag the world into another world war, send us back into the sixth century, or both. A Volt or Leaf running off of electricity generated from coal will have far less environmental impact than a global war or a sixth century lifestyle for 10 billion people. I just wish the Volt was being made by anyone but GM.

By: Antonio Cabeza

Antonio Cabeza — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 03:43:44 +0000

It is comments like GM's chief executive Dan Akerson's that are stupid and without any basis with reality.The Toyota Prius is not only a much,much better car than the GM's Volt but you could buy 2 Prius with the price of 1 Volt. No wonder The U.S.A. is in such a bad shape financially when we have people, like the above mentioned, running the place.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:54:22 +0000

Walt, you might enjoy doing a search on ‘Shai Agassi’, he’s a guy I saw interviewed recently. His wrinkle on electric vehicles and the associated infrastructure, at least what I saw, is to have electric “filling stations” where you could quickly switch out your battery pack for a fresh one. You might make an analogy to the way we handle propane tank refills now – leave your old one, get a full new one. Anyway, your letter made me think of this, except you wouldn’t have to carry your own extra battery pack.

By: jdm

jdm — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:30:26 +0000

my prior comment was related to – family guy’s – comment above