FuzzBob wrote:Anyone tried a Honda Fit? That seems like the best way to go in a new car. It makes more sense just to downscale

My sister just got one and it gets 35-40 mpg and was $15K new. She absolutely loves it.

This car is good and bad. I had one for a couple of weeks on rental. They are good for in traffic jams as they are silent under 25mph or so. Above that speed they are pretty crap unless you like driving slowly.

The general experience is like driving a PC which you are not familiar with. The whole insert electric key, hold break pedal on, press start button, engage joystick-like gearstick starting experience is a bit off-putting for me. Especially when the car stopped working at the lights and it took me a minute to start up again, resulting in me looking like a complete arse candle.

The only fun I had out of this car was driving it as fast as I could around roundabouts until what we called the Tokyo drift light came on on the dashboard to warn you. That and engaging the foot-operated handbrake on corners.

FuzzBob wrote:Anyone tried a Honda Fit? That seems like the best way to go in a new car. It makes more sense just to downscale

I bought mine two years ago. I love it. The Festiva just wasn't cutting it for reliable transportation anymore so I bought the most equivalent car I could find, with a bit more amenities. I have the manual sport. I can fit a drumset, amp, and two people in the car and get about 32 mpg around town. I haven't done much highway driving but I figure I get around 35 on the interstate. It seems to be really well made. I plan on keeping it until it explodes or parts can no longer be found.

Jon

FuzzBob wrote:Anyone tried a Honda Fit? That seems like the best way to go in a new car. It makes more sense just to downscale

you simply cannot go wrong with a honda.

Hybrid vehicles are, for the most part, a joke. You can just buy a Geo which is thousands of dollars cheaper and get the same gas mileage, if not better.

Chromodynamic wrote:Hybrid vehicles are, for the most part, a joke. You can just buy a Geo which is thousands of dollars cheaper and get the same gas mileage, if not better.

... and you could beat that gas mileage with a motorcycle! or do even better with a lawnmower!

Your post is, for the most part, a joke. Any comparison of a hybrid car with a standard gas version shows either the hybrid gets much better mileage, or the gas car is so much smaller that the comparison is useless, and usually both. This is true even after the EPA adjusted their testing to remove the unintentional hybrid advantages, and even (so far) in comparison with the few diesels that are available here.

Consumer Reports gets better mileage with the Prius than with any new gasoline-only car (Honda Fits, Scions, Versas etc) even though the Prius has more room and is hundreds of pounds heavier.

Plenty of people can't afford a new Prius and aren't going to use the extra room, and an old Geo is a good choice for them. But in any head-to-head comparison of how many pounds and people you're moving per gallon, the hybrid is going to come out ahead.

oxlongm wrote:

Chromodynamic wrote:Hybrid vehicles are, for the most part, a joke. You can just buy a Geo which is thousands of dollars cheaper and get the same gas mileage, if not better.

... and you could beat that gas mileage with a motorcycle! or do even better with a lawnmower!

Your post is, for the most part, a joke. Any comparison of a hybrid car with a standard gas version shows either the hybrid gets much better mileage, or the gas car is so much smaller that the comparison is useless, and usually both. This is true even after the EPA adjusted their testing to remove the unintentional hybrid advantages, and even (so far) in comparison with the few diesels that are available here.

Consumer Reports gets better mileage with the Prius than with any new gasoline-only car (Honda Fits, Scions, Versas etc) even though the Prius has more room and is hundreds of pounds heavier.

Plenty of people can't afford a new Prius and aren't going to use the extra room, and an old Geo is a good choice for them. But in any head-to-head comparison of how many pounds and people you're moving per gallon, the hybrid is going to come out ahead.

Only in downtown driving. NOT on the expressway, and especially NOT long distance. The Metro got 50 MPG highway, the Metro XFi 58. The Prius gets somewhere in the lower 40s in the real world (i.e. not EPA or CU "granny driving" mileage tests). That's only maybe a whopping 5-ish mpg better than my old '95 Sentra with a stick that did 37 on the Interstate.

Moral of the story: hybrid tech is nice and does make a difference (I'm holding out for the hybrid Fit coming out next year) but ultimately the real solution is still hauling around less tonnage.

oxlongm wrote:

Chromodynamic wrote:Hybrid vehicles are, for the most part, a joke. You can just buy a Geo which is thousands of dollars cheaper and get the same gas mileage, if not better.

Your post is, for the most part, a joke.

How Appropriate. You fight like a cow.

More people should ride lawnmowers, like this guy.

FuzzBob wrote:Only in downtown driving. NOT on the expressway, and especially NOT long distance...

Moral of the story: hybrid tech is nice and does make a difference (I'm holding out for the hybrid Fit coming out next year) but ultimately the real solution is still hauling around less tonnage.

Exactly. Hence my mild rancor towards hybrid vehicles, and how they're marketed to the public.

FuzzBob wrote:Only in downtown driving. NOT on the expressway, and especially NOT long distance. The Metro got 50 MPG highway, the Metro XFi 58. The Prius gets somewhere in the lower 40s in the real world (i.e. not EPA or CU "granny driving" mileage tests). That's only maybe a whopping 5-ish mpg better than my old '95 Sentra with a stick that did 37 on the Interstate.

Apples and oranges. You're comparing EPA/anecdotal highway numbers from the cars you favor with anecdotal "real world" combined numbers from the one you don't.

Here's a non-selective comparison: the Metro's 58mpg rating you cite is from an old system, and the EPA's current retroactive figures are 51 hwy, 43 city (compared with the Prius' 48 and 45).

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/FEG/bymodel/ ... etro.shtml

So by driving a much smaller car with less than half the power, you can save 3mpg on the highway... and lose 2mpg in the city.

By the way, you are aware that CU's "granny driving" is consistent across all the vehicles they test, and it stands to reason that it should undercount the advantage of a hybrid, right? The regenerative braking advantage would show up better in more aggressive highway drivers who vary their speeds more.

That could explain what the notorious "granny drivers" at Car & Driver found when they compared two hybrids (the Prius and the no-longer-available Civic hybrid) against the most popular diesel (the Jetta) and a typical tiny car (the Toyota Echo, since replaced by the Yaris). The Prius easily beat the diesel and the much-smaller gasoline car in city and highway mileage.

http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/com ... rison_test

The idea that hybrids only help in the city is a half-true extrapolation from the fact that the regenerative braking system doesn't do much at steady highway speeds. This theoretical idea doesn't acknowledge the reality that part of the Prius' hybrid system is having a smaller-than-normal gas engine. Around town and during hard acceleration, the small gas engine is aided by the electric motor, and at highway speeds (where it's sufficient by itself) its small displacement improves the mileage.

Moral of the story: hybrid tech is nice and does make a difference (I'm holding out for the hybrid Fit coming out next year) but ultimately the real solution is still hauling around less tonnage.

Absolutely agreed on that. But as you point out yourself, why not have both? And the Geo vs. Prius comparisons (aside from being pretty inconclusive) only apply in an alternate universe where people buy cars with no regard to power or size. We're stuck with this world, so short of a decree that no one can buy cars over 2000 pounds, mid-sized hybrids are one of the better ways to decrease fuel use.

My guess is that Toyota plans eventually to roll out the hybrid system eventually to its entire lineup, and had pretty valid reasons not to introduce it in their smallest car. The R&D represented a huge investment that couldn't be paid off with the revenue from a tiny fringe of consumers who wanted Metro-sized cars back in the late '90s. This way, the general public has gotten used to hybrids without thinking of them as austerity measures.