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Toyota Highlander Hybrid

3943 messages, Last post on Nov 02, 2009 at 9:19 AM
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| would promote high MPG, not performance. Performance is for it's cousin- the RX400H. | |
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> I am hoping that Toyota will continue to partially > subsidize the price in order to increase popularity > of the HSD systems. TOYOTA MADE A PROFIT WITH PRIUS. Your information is grossly outdated. At one time, Prius was subsidized. But that is now ancient history. The classic Prius earned money halfway through it's life here, it didn't cause a loss. And since HSD is a propulsion system, not a specific model. The new version of Prius should be in the "profit zone" shortly, not really that much different from other new vehicles. Look at it this way... Toyota will be building 300,000 systems per year starting in 2006 (according to their original plan before they realized the 2004 Prius would be so popular). Do you really think they would want to subsidize that many? JOHN |
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| Toyota is making a huge profit on every Prius sold. How they're doing it I don't know, but they're making money, and now we can have our cake (Environmentally Friendly) and Toyota can eat it (Higher Profits) | |
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The profit equation isn't magical. Here's food for thought... People are under the assumption that the CVT is more complicated than an automatic transmission. (That's because it is so different.) In reality, it is actually quite a bit more simple. That simplicity costs less. The engine itself is smaller than usual. That results in a lower cost too. The front-end of the car is shorter than usual too. That's an obvious rather large savings. The speedometer likely represents a savings as well, believe it of not. No self-contained high-precision moving parts required like in a traditional design. It's just a dumb LED (that looks really impressive via optical tricks). The dashboard is an obvious cost reduction. Eliminating all the mechanical parts and using just by-wire interfaces instead is cheaper. (You can thank the computer & music industries for that!) I wonder what else Toyota did. Hmm? They allowed their engineers to build components from scratch, sparing no expense during the research phase. That's rarely an option with normal new vehicle design. Automakers like to reuse parts. But with HSD intended to replace the current infrastructure, this was a special case. Creating entirely new parts for reuse later is viewed upon as a way to save money in the long run too. Needless to say. Toyota had lots of opportunities to help them achieve a profit with Prius (and HSD). JOHN |
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Well... glad to hear they are making a profit! That just ensures that they will put more HSD models into production. Any thoughts on the design of the 2005 Hybrid HL. Do you think it will look like the standard HL or they going to do all the futuristic "tricks" that they did with the Prius? If not, will the cost be significantly more? |
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| I think you can look at the RX 400H to see the variation in the normal vs. hybrid model. You can tell the 400H is based on the RX 330, but it has some additional styling characteristics, surely to differentiate it. | |
| This 2005 HL is exactly what I've been waiting for. I wonder how early Toyota will begin accepting orders for them? | |
| a few months before official launch for current Prius owners to "buy up" into the next Hybrid line. I'm predicting a late summer introduction in 2004. | |
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Go to http://www.wieck.com Click on "Public" Type in "Highlander" for the search and you should get a good collection of photographs. Here's information that Toyota has provided on the new model. http://www.toyota.com/about/news/product/2004/01/04-3-hibridhighl- - ander.html Looks like in "early 2005" the hybrid version will go on sale with about 270 hp and "significantly better" mileage than a compact sedan. |
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It seems that a 19 gallon tank getting 600+ miles (I used 625), yields HWY (I'm sure what they mean by 600+ miles) of almost 33 MPG. Too get 2 MPG over 27.6 combined, the City MPG MUST BE at least 26MPG! 26/33 MPG 270 HP 0-60 in less than 7 seconds? DrFill |
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