Anyone encountered one of these yet? Sorta curious about fit/finish/function and if it is living up to the advertising hype.
I haven't but the pictures look nice. I really don't like the styling of the Prius. It's a different system from the more familiar Toyota/Ford system, as it uses a dual clutch transmission rather than a CVT.
Hybrids are officially dinosaurs ! You have TWICE the complexity and all the maintenance as a regular ICE car. With the increases in battery energy density and corresponding increase in range the all electric vehicle is the clear choice. I'm actually puzzled at why companies are still making hybrids at all.
There's not as much complexity as you might think. I have a Ford Fusion Energi, and while it has a number of parts that a car with a conventional drivetrain doesn't, it's also missing a number of parts that a conventional car does have. My car has a motor generator and an inverter, but no alternator, and it has a drive motor, but no starter, and the transmission is a fairly simple planetary gearset, with no torque converter or clutch. Look at the reliability of two of the most popular hyprids, it's excellent:
https://www.truedelta.com/Toyota-Prius-vs-Honda-Insight-reliability-comparison,272-112
There you go again:
Electric cars are perfectly clean. Even California knows that! (If you ignore the mining and disposal of the rare-earth and batteries), and HOW could they be nuclear powered? I don't have a nuclear reactor in my car or my garage!
Next thing you will be saying that if the Government pays for something, it's not "free".
Since you're picking on California, I'm going to use them as an example. California's grid is extremely clean:
https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=CA#tabs-4 A little more than 50% is from renewables and nuclear, the rest is natural gas, no coal plants there. EV's are extremely efficient. Take the example a compact car that avearges 30 MPG. Over an anticipated 200,000 mile lifetime, that a little more than 6600 gallons of gasoline, approximately 40,000 lbs worth. Yes, there is some rare earth in an EV's engine and a limited amount in its batteries' electrodes, but there are some in a conventional drivetrain as well, such as the catalytic converter . Lithium mining, used in an EV's lithium ion batteries is produced mostly by brining, and is really rather benign, particularly compared with some of the means of producing crude oi. How many resources will it take to produce that 20 tons of gasoline rather than the considerably less energy that it will take to power the electric car?
EVs are very efficient. My car, which is encumbered with having to carry a 300 lb engine around at all times, still averages 3.2 miles per kwh, wall to wheels. A battery electric will be about 20% more efficient. By comparison, a gallon of gasoline contains the equivalent of about 33.7 kwh of electricity. Instead of using gasoline, we'll use natural gas, it's much cheaper, and send it through a power plant, which typically is about 50 percent efficient. We'll take that 17 kwh of electricity and go 54 miles with it, not bad for a mid size sedan.
As the old TV commercial says, but wait, there's more. When you get natural gas out of the ground, it needs to be purified and desiccated, but it's pretty much ready go to after that. Petroleum, once you separate out the water and screen out the debris, not so much. You're going to have to refine it before you can put it in someone's car. Takes lots of energy to do that, it turns out. The gov't used to collect information on that, they don't anymore. The best figures I could find was from a British video that I can't find right now. Turns out it's in the range of 7 kwh, of which 4.5 kwh is actually electricity, the rest being heat. So, lets take that 2.5 kwh of heat energy, use it to make 1.2 kwh of electricity, add it to the 4.5 kwh of actual electricity, multiply that times 3.2, and you get an additional 18 miles. Now I've covered 72 miles on the energy that's in a gallon of gasoline plus the amount needed to refine it.
Not done yet. Here's a picture of North Dakota at night:
As you'd expect, there's lights in Minot and Bismarck, but what the frack is going on in the western part of the state, that's all ranchland! Yes, that's the frackers flaring off natural gas. By using natural gas to power an electric car, we're basically using a byproduct of oil drilling. Increasing the demand for gas will get some of that flared gas into the pipeline.
Just bought a 2015 Kia Optima hybrid with 18k miles. I've heard they use the Hyundai hybrid system, but it's apparently older tech than the Ionic. I've been leery of Korean products in the past, but the newer cars come with good ratings, even from Consumer Digest. We've always been partial to Toyotas, and have two Prius hybrids. They have been very reliable. The '09 is pushing 180k miles! I'm hoping the Kia will be just as dependable. I considered a Ford Fusion hybrid of similar vintage, but it's performance was well below the Kia. The Fusion also has three active recall notices! The Kia? 0.
My Optima's gas engine is rated at 199HP, so the mileage is not as good (46 city, 43 highway) when compared to the Ionic (or my old Prius for that matter!), but it's good enough for the cost. The onboard computer today reported an average of 43 mpg on my daily commute. That's about 5 mpg less than my '09 Prius for the same route, and just under what the '12 Prius delivers. Not bad for a sporty mid-size hybrid sedan. Still, we may consider a used Ionic for my wife when it's time to replace her Toyota van.
Hell, there might be something more efficient by then.
I have a 2014 Fusion plug in hybrid, had it for three years and 40,000 miles. At the first oil change (20,000 miles) I had the light up ring around the charge port replaced. It has had two recalls, one done at the first oil change and the second done at the second oil change, just recently. It's really nice driving around town on the battery. Anyone who hasn't driven electric owes it to himself to try one.
