I saw this article this morning on the USA Today web site. It starts out like a normal "Hybrids are not worth the money" article, but gives information about a test drive the author had. I thought I would share.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/...c-hybrid_x.htm

Billy

 

Hi Billyt1963:

___Isn’t that the second 06 HCH article you have linked in almost as many days? Sounds like someone is thinking about a new ride

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net

 

Is there a picture for Crying in your Beer?

This USA Today article is the final stake in my heart about the demise of the Manual Tranny HCH. It's the first place I have seen that definitely states in as many words "there will be no manual transmission" and it says it twice.

Let's have a moment of silence for the 2003-2005 manual tranny............................................ .................................................. .................................................. ......................................

(sob sob Gulp Gulp...BURP)

 

Cool. Article. I thought the demographic profiles were interesting. Anybody read yet if the key fob is going to have a trunck release?

 

Well now I'm super gald I bought a 05 HCH with a M/T! Death to Automatics! (Only for me, though)

 

THANKS for the article. So im hearing MSRP from 23-24K with navigation or about 21.5K without. Not too bad considering a nice tax break. I hope to see real quotes that people pay for the HCH by next month.

 

One thing that surprises me is the MPG they received after their 166-mile test drive. They got 36.3 MPG in mixed city/highway driving. I'm not surprised that they received this mileage; what surprises me is it is *less* than what they received in their 2005, which was 38.9. "Driven similarly" is what they said.

I was hoping that the new 2006 would receive mileage closer to the stated MPG when driven "normally", meaning "without care." I guess I assumed that the increased horsepower of the 2006 would make that so. Perhaps not.

 

They probably stopped at a fast food drivethrough this time around.

 

"The other averages 50 years old and $85,000." Wow, I'm definitely not in that class!

 

Re: the realized mpg of the new car... how many miles are on this engine ? Not many, I'll bet...maybe just a couple thousand miles? The article states that it's a pre-production car, with a couple of tweaks to make yet. Given the (admittedly) small delta between the EPA rated mpg of the old / new car, I'm not entirely surprised to see the writer's actual in both cars (he drove them 'similarly', as you note). Also, take into account that the '05 was probably well broken in.

What we're looking for, I believe, is increased *potential* - and we're only going to see that when the first owners get their cars, break in the engines, and report back to the community-at-large. We know what the potential is of the old car, from reading the owners' experiences. The true test will be when one of them takes an '06 for a test run or purchases one - they know how to tap the potential, and then you'll have an 'apples for apples' comparison.

Increased HP alone isn't going to improve FE. A majority of the time, the inverse is true. 'Normal' driving isn't going to get you EPA rating - we know that by now - even in the case of electric-only mode vs. a regular ICE (not many achieve that 60mpg city rating in the Prius II, do they ?)