Autoblog

good question. But, nonetheless, the turbo should be more efficient than the supercharger, making the final exhaust temperature even lower.

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About Miller cycle-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_cycle
with a turbo, there's poor low-end torque. Seems that this would be a better match for a parallel hybrid than series.

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Even though there's poor low end torque in the application, wouldn't the electric engine make up for the shortcomming? The electric engine's torque comes on almost instantly.

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G-Meister, that's exactly what Subaru did with their Turbo Parallel Hybrid concept. Miller-cycle 2.0T with an electric motor to provide assistance in the low end. It ended up with great (for a Subaru) city and highway mileage, while still maintaining power and torque figures similar to the current 2.5T's (although the peak torque was shifted up in the band due to the miller cycle, the electric motor would surely provide enough kick in the extreme low end.

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I am sure the Civic and Corrola no matter how beat up or old or even ill tuned can go 0-60 in less than 1 minute.

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The SS designation was first applied to a bread and butter sedan, the Impala. I agree that SS should be used for performance cars only, but not just Camaros. My HHR SS is quicker in the 1/4 mile and 0-60 than a 396 SS Chevelle. Also i doubt the Chevelle would make it around the 'Ring in under 9 minutes.

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The engine isn't a big factor in this car. I think that this car will be simpler than a standard gas hog. No transmission, electrical drive train, electric power steering, electric A/C, etc...

Toyota was crazy to use parallel hybrid technology in the Prius. If the Volt works, then it proves once and for all that Americans still rule the engineering world. Has Toyota ever engineered any new ideas? They only perfect ideas that have already been implemented. If you compare the Prius to a Corolla instead of the Camry, then you can tell that it really isn't much better than any other hybrid out there. I was never sure that comparing the Prius to a Camry was fair.

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Oh yes, Toyota was insane for using a method that would get maximum performance out of the gas engine when called upon instead of buffering half it's output through a battery pack. You just wait until the first time you drive a Volt with a dead battery running completely on the gas motor trying to charge a flat cell and power the electric motors. It'll either be horrifically slow or it will be burning through gas like a Camaro.

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""Has Toyota ever engineered any new ideas?""

Not in living memory.

Toyota lost a major Patent infringement suit to Paice LLC over the stolen hybrid technology they put in the Prius.

Toyota is a very unethical company producing a very substandard product.

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@AngeloD:

"Toyota is a very unethical company that produces a very substandard product."

You clearly don't understand the difference between patent infringement and willful patent infringement. Willful infringement is where you know that someone has a patent and do it anyway. Plain old vanilla patent infringement (like with Toyota, I believe) is where some guy gets an idea, patents it getting patent claims that are substantially *broader* than what he describes. A company then comes along with an *independently* derived idea for doing the same thing, which is usually different from what the inventor described, but which is similar enough to the inventor's idea to fall with in the scope of the claims. Under the law, the inventor is entitled to royalty as a reward for being first. This is not the same thing as punishing a company for stealing a technology.

There are over 7 million issued patents today (a few million of those have already expired). I dare you to come up with a high tech product that doesn't infringe at least a dozen of those patents. Does that make you unethical?

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Agreed tankd0g. And I think that's very likely since this motor is far too powerful for the application, this is probably not only the a rumor, but a wrong rumor.

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Oh. Agreed again tankd0g. The Prius is a very smart design. If you don't mind that it doesn't have any useful zero-emissions range, you gain tons of advantage in that the drivetrain is smaller, lighter and cheaper to produce than a series hybrid. I have no doubt in my mind the 1st and 2nd gen Priuses were the right design at the right time. The future may lead to series hybrids, because people (like me) want to drive at least short distances with no gas at all. But even if that becomes true, it doesn't make the Prius a mistake (in fact it was visionary in my mind).

cheezewiz:
I would modify your statement slightly. The inventor's patent doesn't even have to be overly broad. It can be properly broad, or it can even be narrow. It's just that the other company (Toyota in this case) hasn't even seen the patent and their own invention happens to overlap with the patent.

Toyota will have to pay it seems. And that may be just, or it may not. But it's not going to put them in the poorhouse in this case, so I really can't get excited about it. I'm fairly convinced Toyota did invent the Prius, instead of stealing it from an American company (Paice LLC).

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I think for the people that really do have that 60 mile commute, or the "average American" as GM claims, the Volt, if it lives up to the promises will be the smarter choice. It will be so much cheaper to run than a Prius if used in that way it won't matter if it costs $40,000. In fact GM should offer a 100+ mile EV only model for those type of people. Personally I don't believe this represents the average person because I don't know anyone who drives so little and would spend more than $6000 on a car. The fact is the people worrying about the cost of gas are the people who rack up a lot of miles. (*absent from this analysis: mindless envrironmentals who will buy anything as long as someone tells them it's saving the planet)

For the people who are going to be on the gas engine as much if not more than the battery pack, the next gen Prius is probably going to the cheaper car to run with better over all performance.

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Tankdog,
For what it is worth I drive 22 miles per day on average(11 to work and 11 back). I put on less than 12K a year on my car. My wife drives about the same to 15K per year. I think the average is based on lease numbers. Do you really think most lease holders are driving above the leased miles on the cars 10k, 12k, 15k miles? 40 miles per day equates to a little less than 15k per year. Most people are not driving more than 15k miles per year. You would see it in used cars and in lease averages. I think it is pretty safe to assume the 40 per day is pretty accurate. Yes there are many people that drive 30K miles per year. I did for a few years (mostly for work and not as a commute).

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Blackcanary: you hit it on the head, people who drive so little buy cheap used cars or they lease. They want low cost of ownership and milage is not as big factor as the monthly payment is. The ROI to a person who leases this thing at it's rumored selling price and drives so little miles is practically non-existent. People who have $200 gas bills every week, they are the people who are clamoring for a super fuel efficient car. People like cab drivers and couriers are are only just starting to adopt the Prius, it's ROI is starting to make sense with $4/gal gas, but only because the car is priced right and gets decent economy all the time, not just when the battery is topped up.

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