Toyota Prius - it has been about 3 years now - any track record

Seanie M

I'm not in the market for a new car, as I can't afford it! But I was wondering about the Prius. What has its track record been like, now that it has established itself for oer 3 years on the roads now? I'd say if there are any teething problems, this would be a good time span for them to surface? I have seen a lot of them around Tullamore in the past few months, so I think their popularity is rising, most likely due to rising fuel costs.

It is a car I would actually consider. It doesn't look bad at all, it does have its own style. But what of the hybrid technology?

Seanie.

alias no.9

I don't think there's any real issues with the technology but I have read reports of owners being very disappointed with the fuel economy, getting figures that can easilybe matched and even bettered by any of the current crop of diesels.

road_high

I dont buy into this hybrid economy thing- imo it's a sham.A modern diesel car will offer far superior economy than the prius for a lot less cash.
I'd buy a good diesel Golf or Corolla and save the rest for a nice holiday instead!
Read any of the UK car mags, they all say the same.

Eoin

mfitzy wrote:

I dont buy into this hybrid economy thing- imo it's a sham.A modern diesel car will offer far superior economy than the prius for a lot less cash.
I'd buy a good diesel Golf or Corolla and save the rest for a nice holiday instead!
Read any of the UK car mags, they all say the same.

The Sunday Times motoring section (I think), got as good - if not better - MPG from the Merc diesel SUV than it did from the Lexus hybrid SUV. The same article said that many Prius drivers are getting around 40-45 MPG. Probably sounds great to Americans driving cars with huge engines to drop the kids to school, but the figures don't seem as good over here.

Stephen

Why the hell don't they build hybrids with diesel engines? Then you get the diesel fuel economy and the low-speed battery-only operation etc.

Seth Brundle

Yanks don't like diesels.
Not an accurate test but wasn't the Prius was one of the worst handling cars on Top Gear with its Eco Friendy tyres more tree hugging than tarmac hugging?

AlanD

Stephen wrote:

Why the hell don't they build hybrids with diesel engines? Then you get the diesel fuel economy and the low-speed battery-only operation etc.

Peugeot will be doing this at the Geneva Motor Show I think. A diesel hybrid concept in the 307 CC body. Supposedly it can get huge MPG returns. They'll build it eventually.

I like the turn that Lexus has made with Hybrid technology. They haven't made the GS450h a fuel efficient executive car, but a performance executive car. good spin.

Other than that, the Prius is a joke

colm_mcm

Hybrid diesels are on the way from Toyota AFAIK. and the Prius has been around a lot longer than 3 years!

unkel

Stephen wrote:

Why the hell don't they build hybrids with diesel engines?

As kbannon said or perhaps to elaborate: the yanks don't know about diesel. Neither do the japs. The latter (especially Toyota and to a lesser extent Honda) shat themselves though a few years ago when they finally :rolleyes: copped on and got into a frenzy to develop modern diesel engines themselves. In fairness they did quite well in such a short time, but the only modern jap diesels worth mentioning, the Honda 2.2 and the Toyota D-4D range, aren't really up to scratch yet compared to the class leaders, which of course are european. The first common rail in production cars is now nearly a decade ago!

leeroybrown

unkel wrote:

As kbannon said or perhaps to elaborate: the yanks don't know about diesel.

If I recall correctly the lack of diesel uptake has resulted in the quality of diesel fuel in the US being far lower than here and probably unsuited to a lot of modern engines. I think they are starting to offer proper diesel fuel there now.

LegacyUser

everyonehas heard the ads about the Carolla D4D that will 1000km on a full tank....will the Prius do the same??

dubtom

unkel wrote:

As kbannon said or perhaps to elaborate: the yanks don't know about diesel. Neither do the japs. The latter (especially Toyota and to a lesser extent Honda) shat themselves though a few years ago when they finally :rolleyes: copped on and got into a frenzy to develop modern diesel engines themselves. In fairness they did quite well in such a short time, but the only modern jap diesels worth mentioning, the Honda 2.2 and the Toyota D-4D range, aren't really up to scratch yet compared to the class leaders, which of course are european. The first common rail in production cars is now nearly a decade ago!

The toyota d4d isn't up to scratch? compared to what.Who are the class leaders, please don't say mercedes, fiat or ford.I had a 96 camry diesel, when I got it with 70K it was queiter and smoother than some petrol engine cars I had.It had faster pick up than my brother laws merc e200 petrol and it was pre d4d.I would love to know what actually makes a class leader in diesel technology because some of the diesels i hear clattering around are by no means top notch technology, mondeo's sound like tractors, fiat's likewise. The only mercedes diesel worth mentioning is the old 300. Is fuel consumption the yard stick that all diesels are measured by or something else? I just find that statment about toyota not measuring up amazing tbh, I think they are far superior to our european cousins.

maidhc

dubtom wrote:

think they are far superior to our european cousins.

I'm with that. I have a Ford Focus TDCi, and often drive a 06 Passat 1.9 TDI. The D4D is the superior engine of both. It pulls straight to 5.5k RPM, so there is no need to keep the needle between 2-3k like the Passat, it is so smooth compared to the VW and Ford. It is also inaudible most of the time.

And I'm just talking about the normal 2.0 116bhp one. I'd love to try the 2.2 180bhp version!

Also the old 1.8 normally aspirated engine the the AE80 Corolla was away more lively than the VWs of the time!

unkel

dubtom wrote:

Who are the class leaders, please don't say mercedes, fiat or ford

FIAT

FIAT was the first to bring to market a common rail diesel with the 2.4 5-pot JTD. BMW was also working with Bosch and introduced the 2.9 6-pot in the 530d shortly after. Both manufacturers have been the class leaders in diesel ever since

maidhc

unkel wrote:

Both manufacturers have been the class leaders in diesel ever since

People on boards seem very underwhelmed by the BMW engines though.

bazz26

unkel wrote:

the Honda 2.2 and the Toyota D-4D range, aren't really up to scratch yet compared to the class leaders, which of course are european.

BMW use the same 1.4 D4-D in the Mini. so it must be ok.

The reason the Japs have not been class leaders for diesel in Europe is simplely because they don't have a large market share in Europe up to recently so it didn't justify the investment at the time. The diesel market in Europe has exploded in the last 5 or so years, yes the Japs were a bit slow getting in on this but they are catching up now. The Honda 2.2 is amazingly quiet and the new Toyota 2.2 D4-D available in 180bhp in the Lexus IS220 is getting quite good reviews.

I remember driving my cousin's old 1990 Carina II 2.0 diesel many years ago and could not believe how much torque it had, it was a bit clattery but no worse than a VAG of the same age.

Whatever else can be said about Jap cars they don't make crap engines, petrol of diesel imo.

unkel

bazz26 wrote:

BMW use the same 1.4 D4-D in the Mini. so it must be ok

There is a reason a mini does not have a BMW badge. Apart from that, using the Toyota D4-D in the mini has proven to be a big mistake. BMW is switching over the mini diesel to the french PSA diesel which is a lot less, eh, japanese. Anyways, the market for a mini diesel is tiny. No way would BMW spend billions to develop a suitable engine themselves just for the mini

bazz26 wrote:

the reason the Japs have not been class leaders for diesel in Europe is simplely because they don't have a large market share in Europe up to recently so it didn't justify the investment at the time

Bollix

Market share in Europe was not significantly different 5 or even 10 years ago compared to now

bazz26 wrote:

yes the Japs were a bit slow getting in on this but they are catching up now

They were very slow. They completely missed the bandwagon. But in fairness, they seem to have finally copped on recently with adequate diesel offerings

Surely anyone would recognise the typical asian competence: study a(european or american) innovation to death until you fully understand it and then do the ultimate copycat: build the very same thing that will last a lot longer. Time delay differs, but anytime between 5 and 10 years would be typical. Don't get me wrong, cheap competition from the far east is great imho!

maidhc

unkel wrote:

Surely anyone would recognise the typical asian competence: study a(european or american) innovation to death until you fully understand it and then do the ultimate copycat: build the very same thing that will last a lot longer. Time delay differs, but anytime between 5 and 10 years would be typical. Don't get me wrong, cheap competition from the far east is great imho!

Common Rail engines available in D segment cars:
320d came in 1999
The 406 HDi came out in about in around 1999
The Avensis D4D came in 2000.
The Ford Mondeo TDCi came out in around 2001
VW borught out the PD in around 2000/2001, but still don't have a proper common rail.

There is no evidence of a 5/10yr time delay here. In 1998 BMW also still fitting an utterly crap 1.7 diesel to the 3 series!

You are incorrect about the market share of diesels:

http://www.dbresearch.com/servlet/reweb2.ReWEB?rwkey=u9183563 wrote:

The diesel share in new car registrations touched the 50% mark in Western Europe (EU-15 and EFTA) in 2005. The segment has thus grown by over 35 percentage points since 1990. In absolute terms, over 5.3 m more cars with diesel engines were sold last year than in 1990.

Eoin

maidhc wrote:

Common Rail engines available in D segment cars:
320d came in 1999

Sorry for going OT, but was it available over here in '99? In my search for a 320D, I have yet to find one older than a 2000.

colm_mcm

maidhc wrote:

In 1998 BMW also still fitting an utterly crap 1.7 diesel to the 3 series!

Oh yes, the aptly named TDS



On the subject of Toyota engines,

The D-Cat (Diesel Clean Advanced Technology) engine has the smallest combined NOX and PM emissions among all diesel engines on the market. However, the unit boasts segment-beating levels of power and torque (177 DIN hp and 400 Nm between 2,000 and 2,600 rpm), combined with the lowest Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) and, on average, 20% lower fuel consumption among engines of equivalent power (combined target fuel consumption of 6.1 l/100 km for Avensis Sedan).

That's hardly backward

unkel

maidhc wrote:

You are incorrect about the market share of diesels

Ah looks like I misinterpreted bazz26 there:

bazz26 wrote:

The reason the Japs have not been class leaders for diesel in Europe is simplely because they don't have a large market share in Europe up to recently

I thought they referred to the subject of the sentence, as in "the Japs". The market share of Japanese cars in Europe hasn't changed much over the past decade I would have thought. If bazz26 meant that they referred to diesel cars in Europe, than he was right!

maidhc wrote:

In 1998 BMW also still fitting an utterly crap 1.7 diesel to the 3 series!

The 318tds with 90BHP and a 0-100km/h time measured in minutes rather than seconds

I doubt if they ever sold more than a handful of '98 318tds in Ireland as the (early '98) E46 never had this engine. And in the D-segment in early '98 there was no common rail. So tractors galore. Except the FIAT JTD of course

eoin_s wrote:

Sorry for going OT, but was it available over here in '99? In my search for a 320D, I have yet to find one older than a 2000.

Not sure about here, but the 320d was available on the continent in early '98. Usually there is a time delay of a few months, presumably because of RHD

what_car

unkel wrote:

There is a reason a mini does not have a BMW badge. Apart from that, using the Toyota D4-D in the mini has proven to be a big mistake. BMW is switching over the mini diesel to the french PSA diesel which is a lot less, eh, japanese. Anyways, the market for a mini diesel is tiny. No way would BMW spend billions to develop a suitable engine themselves just for the mini


Bollix

Market share in Europe was not significantly different 5 or even 10 years ago compared to now



They were very slow. They completely missed the bandwagon. But in fairness, they seem to have finally copped on recently with adequate diesel offerings

Surely anyone would recognise the typical asian competence: study a(european or american) innovation to death until you fully understand it and then do the ultimate copycat: build the very same thing that will last a lot longer. Time delay differs, but anytime between 5 and 10 years would be typical. Don't get me wrong, cheap competition from the far east is great imho!

i can give my opinions on this topic as i have actually owned a few toyota D4D cars.... also having owned cars powered by PSA engines also here are my observations...

1. 2.0 D PSA engine 136bhp found in s40 etc , from my experience gave crap fuel economy, sounded rough and harsh.. 40-45mpg avg at best.

2. the toyota engines, sounded more refined, and the curent 2.0D4D is consistantly returning between 49-51 mpg average over the tankfull using the top up and manual calculations method...

in my opinion having owned both types of diesel the toyota 2.0D4D 125 bhp engine is more refined, returns better fuel economy, is not as noisy as the PSA engine..


toyota is way up there with diesel engines, look at the corolla D4D 1.4
i have tested this car numerous times and have regularly returned 1000km per tank. this is one of the current best sellers in the small diesel range.

erm tell me this, why is it that toyota is the number one make being sold in ireland?

unkel i think ur talking through ur (cough:D ) but ur entitled to your ideas!

ninty9er

I have stated here many times before that I know of someone getting a combined 57 mpg from a Prius.

Add to that that emission cust and not MPG cuts are it's aim and with a tonne less per 25k kms than a similarly sized new diesel(IIRC) they have achieved this

Del2005

ninty9er wrote:

I have stated here many times before that I know of someone getting a combined 57 mpg from a Prius.

Add to that that emission cust and not MPG cuts are it's aim and with a tonne less per 25k kms than a similarly sized new diesel(IIRC) they have achieved this

But when you take into account the extra energy required to make and dispose of it then it doen't measure up.
Also the huge battery banks from the first models are coming to their end of live and I'd like to see how they deal with these. Then there is the cost for the owner of replacing them!

The yanks have sticter emission standards, specificly particulate emissions which rules out most diesel vehicles excepts trucks. Sulpher in their diesel is only a small part of it.

Newer diesels over there have particulate filters which has started to see more diesels coming on the market.

The primary reason the prius was not diesel is because it was designed for the American market. And if you have ever been to the states you will know there are very few diesel pumps outside truck stops.

maidhc

Del2005 wrote:

But when you take into account the extra energy required to make and dispose of it then it doen't measure up.
Also the huge battery banks from the first models are coming to their end of live and I'd like to see how they deal with these. Then there is the cost for the owner of replacing them!

People should just keep what they own until the end of its economic service life. Nothing annoys me more that people who change their prius/Focus FFV every 24mths lecture people who drive an ageing diesel 4x4 about the environment and climate change and their "carbon footprint".

Somehow a lot of "green" "environmentalists" seem to be very careful to come across as being englightened rather than poor.

Del2005

@ Maidhc ; Sorry I meant replacing the batteries not the cars. But your point is still valid. I was watching a green program on TV a while back where they where rating how green people where. This elderly couple where bragging about how green the where cause she had a Prius and he had a 430h. The person doing the show told them they where just wasting energy as keepiong their old cars where greener then going out and buying 2 new cars.

Balfa

leeroybrown wrote:

If I recall correctly the lack of diesel uptake has resulted in the quality of diesel fuel in the US being far lower than here and probably unsuited to a lot of modern engines. I think they are starting to offer proper diesel fuel there now.

That's absolutely true. It's not that the consumers don't want them, it's that there's feck all for sale here. There are two volkswagens & two mercs (and NONE of them are legal in california and new york, two huge markets with stricter emissions controls), along with a sprinkle of american pickups.

This is because until very recently, US diesel contained I think about 1000 times as much sulfur as eurodiesel. That means two things. First, the extra sulfur pollutes more and is heavily linked with acid rain. Second, sulfur kills catalytic converters so they can't be used in the cars on the market here, making emissions even worse overall. So loose quality controls at the pump along with very tight regulations on emissions at the exhaust pipe make it technically and economically quite difficult to sell a diesel here.

However all this is changing as Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (with similar levels to that of eurodiesel) has been introduced in October of last year and I'm excited that Diesel market share and choice for consumers like me will increase dramatically over the next decade.

It's a LOT more expensive at the pump, too (~$2.45/gal vs ~$2.00/gal for unleaded). I don't know why that is

kevpants

Totally agree on the made up "Green cars" theory. The emmisions from the factory that came from manufacturing the car are more than that car will produce in its lifetime. I will never feel guilty for driving a gas guzzler as motoring makes up a tiny % of carbon emmisions. Industry is the resounding highest polluter. Really ticks me off when government talk about taxing cars based on emmisions. Another scam and a cance to screw us over again. Do companies coming to Ireland with their billions of euros get asked to cut down on emmisions. I think not.

Makes me want to buy a 6 litre V8 with built in oil powered central heating and upholstery made entirely from baby panda skins. That'll learn em.

colm_mcm

the beauty of hybrids is that they reduce urban air and noise pollution.

maidhc

colm_mcm wrote:

the beauty of hybrids is that they reduce urban air and noise pollution.

Horns are optional, and the radio only goes up half way?