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Hybrid Vehicles Hybrids - News, Reviews and Views in the Press
567 messages, Last post on Oct 30, 2009 at 9:21 PM
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Replying to: gagrice (Apr 17, 2007 9:26 am) He could just as well written about proof that Elvis is alive in Sudbury because aliens had moved his remains and resurrected him ( proof: National Enquirer ). If you watch vehicle sales, as I do, you will see many Prius being offered that look fine. Yet they carry a Salvage title. Why is that you may ask? It costs more to fix a minor accident in a Prius than to just total it. That would account for a longer lifespan in a larger stronger built vehicle such as a Hummer. This is only supposition on your part. I know this for a fact because my own Prius was been hit 3 times - just this year!!! Even while waiting for the body shop to open a slot for the repairs I drove it damaged with no loss whatsoever in FE and no effect on the driving except the alignment was out. The last accident was a woman hitting the rear door/quarter panel right where the battery pack is located. Result: $5000 in damages from three separate events within 60 days. This includes 10 days of shop labor time ( ~40 hrs ) at $75/hr. Your contention fails in the light of actual fact, Gary.
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Replying to: kdhspyder (Apr 18, 2007 5:30 am) LARSB you are assuming also that your cost of replacement parts is less than the cost of the whole. I dare say it would be easy to put $50k in repair parts, for the Prius. The only mention I remember on the HSD/PSD transmission alone was $11k. if not covered by warranty. 10 years ago my wife paid over $2300 to have the AC pump in her Lexus replaced with a rebuilt from Lexus. How much do you think that little part would cost for a Prius today? To you my friend KDHSPYDER. I do not pretend to understand this study. I have gone over the document lightly and found it very confusing. It would be nice to have an unbiased dissemination to read. If you were in a Hummer1 when hit 3 times over the last few months, do you think the damage would have been as expensive to repair? Or would you even be able to tell that you were hit? I have seen many accidents where the crumple zone was severely damaged while the truck bumper was still in good shape. Cars such as the Prius are designed to protect by folding under impact. This is good for the occupants and the body shop. Not the pocket book. I think this study is trying to say just that. Not very clearly for sure. |
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The CNW report makes one assumption (that i haven't seen any mention of yet) that severely tips the scales out of the Prius' favor. This assumption is that hybrids will not catch on, and that all money spent in developement, advertising, and dealership training must be amortized over a small production run of a single model of vehicle. whereas the hummer technology can carry over to different vehicle platforms. I guess that they would have been right, had hybrids not caught on and had the technology not been carried to different models and even been licensed to other manufacturers. I read every word of the dust to dust report (to make sure i didn't overlook any good info), and it is filled with wild assumptions like this. The report is even worse then useless, because a completely ignorant person would have a better grip on reality than a person who believed every word of the CNW report. |
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Replying to: gagrice (Apr 18, 2007 6:18 am) It s-t-r-a-i-n-s credibility to think there might even be ONE Prius in the entire world in the history of the Prius name which would EVER require 50 thousand dollars of repair work in it's life. Let's not waste any more time on that ridiculosity. On the Hummer issue, I assumed you knew the press articles were talking about the American gasoline-powered H2 and H3 Hummer as the vehicles comparing to the Prius, not the old-school diesel H1. I'm not saying the diesel can't make 300,000 miles, but I am saying "Ba-Ha" to the thought of the gasoline model making that many miles.
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Replying to: larsb (Apr 18, 2007 7:23 am) You are probably correct that no one in their right mind would spend $50k to keep a Prius going. To say that you could not spend that much replacing parts is not being realistic. If added up I imagine there are at least $50k worth of parts not counting the labor to install them.
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Replying to: gagrice (Apr 18, 2007 7:58 am) OF COURSE there are $50K worth of repair and labor POSSIBLE on ANY CAR. But no car is going to break that often without falling under Lemon status !!! |
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Replying to: gagrice (Apr 18, 2007 6:18 am) It might be even higher. Repair items: #1) 2 Wheels and lower control arm #2) Windshield, front qtr panel, OS rearview mirror ( still looking for the deer that stole the original ) #3) Rear door, lower rocker panel and rear qtr panel Of the approx $5000 cost for these three incidents probably $3000+ is just for shop labor 40 hrs x $75/hr. |
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Replying to: gagrice (Apr 17, 2007 4:17 pm) The report mentions that they are showing energy dollars needed for repair, not the cost of the repairs. In other words, they are trying to show the "societal" cost, not the cost to the consumer out of pocket. And this is supposed to be, in the words of CNW, "a general-consumer report, not a technical document per se"? If so, it fails pretty miserably. Heck, I find technical documents easier to understand. If nothing else, putting those charts listing every model in every chart was a piss-poor design idea--they should have all been put in an appendix, to make the document more readable. A marketing company should know better. Of course, CNW don't indicate how they figure out the energy cost. There is some talk about all of the factors they need to consider, but then there's nothing about they actually use all of these different factors. The end of the report includes a lengthy quote full of citations from Google Answers about the energy cost of manufacturing a single car; the CNW people put in a note that says "There are no calculations in any of the aforementioned articles related to the energy requirements for supplier industries". Which is like the pot calling the marshmallow black, because the CNW report contains absolutely no calculations. Here's an example of something that CNW gets consistently wrong: they figure out averages the wrong way, for the purposes of their study. Let's say you're shopping for a new car, and you're curious what the average new car buyer is paying. Your dealer tells you "well, here's our tiny econobox model for $15k, here's our mid-range sedan for $30k, and you can get our wonderful luxury SUV for $$55k. 15 + 30 + 55 = 100, divided by 3 different models, so our average new car buyer is paying $33,333." Well, yes, if you want a "straight" average. It assumes that the same number of people buy each car. But what if only one person out of 100 is buying the SUV, 29 out of 100 are buying the sedan, and the remaining 70 get the economy car? Clearly, the average new car buyer is paying far less than $33k for a car (in fact, they're paying $19,750 on average in my example). This is the "weighted" average. It's especially important when you're considering situations where you have lots of people buying one type of car (say, a Toyota Camry), and very few people buying another type (like a Ferrari). That CNW study, with very few exceptions, uses "straight" averages. One trivial example pulled from their paper: they can't even figure out how to calculate lifetime fuel efficiency (MPG). They have all these nice tables showing the fuel efficiency for each car model when the car is aged 1-5 years, then for cars aged 6-10 years, and then for cars over 10 years. So, CNW should be able to use their data for how long a car lasts and figure out the lifetime MPG. Sadly, they can't. They use a straight average rather than the weighted. They may write at the start of the report that "The information contained is as accurate as we could make it", but they seem to have absolutely no idea how to do any analysis. Note that these objections apply to every single car mentioned in the CNW study. In other words, the study's conclusions mean nothing, because they are based on totally faulty analysis. Even if the study's conclusions said that we should all immediately go out and buy hybrids, I'd still say that it didn't have a leg to stand on. |
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Replying to: kermit4 (Apr 18, 2007 11:34 am) What it boils down to in my eyes is this: For some reason, who knows why, Art Spinella is in political bed with SOME sort of anti-hybrid, anti-environmental, anti-Japanese, or at the very least pro-GM group. And he was paid to try to put a gobbledygook study together that shone on hybrids in a negative light. Only he knows the truth. But those people who can do math and can read have valid issues with the conclusions in his report.
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Replying to: larsb (Apr 18, 2007 11:40 am) You are really grasping for straws on that statement. 4 out of 10 of the least costly vehicles in the study are from Toyota. That would lead one to believe that he was in bed with Toyota. Maybe they would like to undermine the hybrid and get out from under the burden of a continued loss and potential bombshell. I think we are all missing something in this report. No one spends that much time and effort on a study that has no basis. I do not know who he was working for or why. If it was done to be controversial it was successful. If the premise was to bring to light the long term negatives surrounding the hybrid vehicles offered for sale, I agree. I wish I understood his methodology.
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