Since nobody gets EPA numbers, I doubt the lawsuits will be productive. Some people get really bad numbers, much worse than EPA, usually because of how they drive.
The web site you referenced was funny. Not the article, I had heard of that and am waiting to see what comes of it. The Prius drive train is patented, but it amazes me that nobody did anything like it before. I think though what will win the day for Toyota is that they are using a triple-moter system, not a dual-motor system, and their patent may therefore be unique enough to survive the challenge.
I’m surprised though they didn’t just pay the guy off. They are competing in the same field, after all.
What was funny was reading other owner reports of “failure modes”. For example, the “stall” is a known condition, but they had a story where the guy didn’t turn off his car or put it in park, because “he couldn’t make it work”. So when they finished towing the car, and unhooked it, it rolled into the tow truck.
Another guy insisted that he couldn’t stop the car when it got stuck in runaway acceleration. But the truth is the toyota engines aren’t that powerful, and the brakes can easily stop the car even if you are giving it full gas. Heck, that’s true of just about every car, just push the brakes down and floor the car.
Anyway, back to mileage. The problem with the Prius is it’s still a mid-size weight car, and it’s expected efficiency is about the same as any other car of the same weight, for obvious reasons.
But the Prius RAISES that efficiency through several clever means, mostly involving two principles — first, that gas engines have a widely varying efficiency, and by restricting the engine to a narrow operating range you can keep it in it’s max efficiency range.
NOTE that, if a drive knew how to do that himself, he could get as good a gas mileage as the Prius in ANY car with the same size engine. It would require long acceleraton times though. The Prius uses the electric motor/battery to add extra power when needed so the engine can run at better efficiency, and then continues to run the engine at higher efficiency to charge the battery back up for the next time — meaning most all of the operation is at the engine’s highest efficiency. BUT, it’s still a gasoline engine.
The SECOND major source of gain is turning off the engine when it isn’t needed. But that only helps if your drive includes a lot of stopping. Most people don’t, and if they do, they weren’t getting good mileage in their other cars either. EPA does stop/go for city, and that helped the Prius efficiency.
The problem is, if you drive very aggressively, you can force the Prius into circumventing both of these features. First, you can ride the brake too lightly at stops, which makes the car try to inch forward, using up electricity. Second, if you accelerate quickly and decellerate quickly you won’t get charged much and you will be forced to operate the engine outside of efficient ranges.
this will effect efficiency in ANY car, but like I said, if you do this Prius won’t be any better than any other car with the same engine. So driving agressively HURTS a Prius mileage MORE than it would hurt a regular car mileage.
But it still does better than the regular car would in the same circumstance. BTW, I’ve found that I can drive home at 30 mpg, or 50 mpg, simply by changing in small ways my driving style, but still going the same overall speed. That’s a big difference, and if you never pay attention you can be very dissappointed in your mileage.
I could get over 50mpg easily on highway, except I drive very fast on the highway so I only get around 46 or so (70+ mph all the time). I’ve done some trips at 60/65 mph (speed limit) and gotten well over 50mpg.