OT, I got to drive one of the lexus hybrid sport

[Bill R.]

utlities yesterday for about 25 miles.... Pretty weird just how quiet they made this thing and utterly silent when shut off at lights. Best mileage i could get on the level at one steady speed backing off the pedal until it just maintained speed was about 36 mpg. When you put your foot in it ,its fairly quick though. Handles better than the old rx did, much better turning radius. If you had to have a sport ute and could handle the price i could think of worse ones. The interior on this one got sooted up when a leaking bottle of propane in the back flashed and they just got it back from 3 months of repairs, replacing all the interior that was sooted or smelled up. 26k was the bill.. It was only 3 days old when it happened.

[uscharalph]

utlities yesterday for about 25 miles.... Pretty weird just how quiet they made this thing and utterly silent when shut off at lights. Best mileage i could get on the level at one steady speed backing off the pedal until it just maintained speed was about 36 mpg. When you put your foot in it ,its fairly quick though. Handles better than the old rx did, much better turning radius. If you had to have a sport ute and could handle the price i could think of worse ones. The interior on this one got sooted up when a leaking bottle of propane in the back flashed and they just got it back from 3 months of repairs, replacing all the interior that was sooted or smelled up. 26k was the bill.. It was only 3 days old when it happened.
TMBADQ, but what is the propane for?

That abbreviations thread has affected me. (This Might Be A Dumb Question)

[emw525E34]

Neat. I think hybrids are great for these modern times. It gives car manufacturers a small push towards a fully electric powered vehicle in the future. Good thing the US government is encouraging the introduction of hybrids. No other government is taking such an initiative after the billions they rake in on taxes to vehicles!.

Whats the propane bottle for ?. BBQ ?.

PS: I read about the French Venturi Fetish electric supercar that tested by some motoring journalist in Monaco recently (EVO magazine). It was silent even when moving, so the manufacturer put a large loudspeaker on the dash to make some sort of noise, for the sake of pedestrians, and possibly other motorists at the stop light. Weird but true. One tester was Carl Cancunan, I know that guy.
Oh this car goes for half a million euro! Thats about 600 grand, imagine how many BMWs you can buy for that?.

[Bill R.]

Bush admin did when they got into office is phase out the tax credits for hybrids and put all their eggs into the far off fuel cell car idea instead. The previous admin , Clinton and Gore had started the program pngv (partnership for a new generation of vehicles) back in 93 and government funded research into hybrids,lightweight composites etc, they were supposed to develop a fullsize car capable of 80 mpg. Bush cancelled the deadline for the program pngv and pulled funding and then closed out the program with no final results, It was supposed to be a 10 year research program with the final results due in 2004, it was dropped and replaced by the freedom car program of Bushes which was a fuel cell car program that won't deliver results for an estimated 20 years. Congress has added some tax credits back on the hybrids in the new energy bill but these tax credits only favor new entrants into the hybrid market and don't apply to manufacturers who've already sold over 50,000 hybrids(toyota and Honda) so you have another tax credit not aimed to help the consumer but aimed to help the big 3... I haven't seen the final wording on the tax law yet. This is a link to gm's car that was shown in 2000 , 4 years before the pngv was supposed to have ended.. (http://www.familycar.com/Future/gm_precept.htm)

Here's another link to more info on the precept , it was a hybrid diesel direct injection engine with 2 electric motors (http://www.gmcanada.com/english/gminnovation/precept.html)

And the propane was a small bottle like a little torch uses, it was for some kind of heating device that he used in his work and the bottle was evidently leaking, when he opened the rear hatch something ignited it and it flashed with a big poof... Left soot all over the inside of the car.




Neat. I think hybrids are great for these modern times. It gives car manufacturers a small push towards a fully electric powered vehicle in the future. Good thing the US government is encouraging the introduction of hybrids. No other government is taking such an initiative after the billions they rake in on taxes to vehicles!.

Whats the propane bottle for ?. BBQ ?.

PS: I read about the French Venturi Fetish electric supercar that tested by some motoring journalist in Monaco recently (EVO magazine). It was silent even when moving, so the manufacturer put a large loudspeaker on the dash to make some sort of noise, for the sake of pedestrians, and possibly other motorists at the stop light. Weird but true. One tester was Carl Cancunan, I know that guy.
Oh this car goes for half a million euro! Thats about 600 grand, imagine how many BMWs you can buy for that?.

[Bill H.]

like to be driving that car RIGHT NOW!? I really like the look as well as the fantastic MPG.
Having just paid $3.25 a gallon to fill up the '94 530iA here in Florida, which will soon start running much rougher on the high sulphur gas, that Precept should be in my future driving plans.
Thanks again, Bill...hope all is well with you.
Bill H.

[Jason]

I've been under the impression that it would take a few years for them to make up the price difference. You seem to have done more research into this topic than most so im curious what you've come across. What does it mean for the future of your line of work? I'm pretty curious about that too.

[infinity5]

Hybrids aren't and shouldn't be about saving some change on gas. At least not for the true supporters. It's about the dependence on oil and the pollution. I don't care if it takes me 40years of driving to "make up the difference" in MSRP vs saved gas, I'd rather OPEC go to hell :)

[emw525E34]

Yikes!. That bad huh ?. Since the second term with W, I have ignored everything he said (TV, print, net). Thats my silent boycott.

Well it started well enough and did a change mid-stream, typical!.

In any case, I think humankind's dependences on fossil fuels should be greatly reduced until NIL. This planet can sustain not that many generations at the rate we are consuming and depleting its resources.

Our technologies are too primitive to even allow a single person to live on a long term (> 10 yrs) outside of this planet.

[Tiger]

Right on! Diesel would be instant recovery on cost... Hybrid takes longer and has battery replacement issue... but both tells OPEC to go to hell.

[Bill R.]

country now dropped the pngv program so that let ford gm and chrysler off the hook and they too dropped work on the precept and other hybrid designs that they were working on....
Jason to answer your question if you go back and look at most of the so called car magazine reviews that tore up the prius based on cost.. they were basing their numbers on 1.50 or less gasoline, the situation changes dramatically when your talking about 3.00 gasoline and the thing that none of them (road and track,car and driver etc) took into consideration when determining the payback period for the prius is resale value. As it stands now you can buy a prius drive it for a year , put 12000 miles on it and sell it for at least what you pay for it, since there's typically a 2 month wait to get one, stupid people will pay a premium for low mileage used ones if they can get it now with no waiting...This fact has held true on resale values ever since the 2004 newmodel prius came out... So that really alters the payback period numbers if you have such a high resale value that you lose very little.





I've been under the impression that it would take a few years for them to make up the price difference. You seem to have done more research into this topic than most so im curious what you've come across. What does it mean for the future of your line of work? I'm pretty curious about that too.