Toyota working on Yaris Hybrid

[ham]

Originally Posted by mr. poopyhead

eff the hybrid! just bring us the diesel!!!

I agree. A friend of mine has a Golf TDI 50-55 MPG. The Yaris at over 1000 lbs lighter should have no problem beating that. SO YES.......F the hybrid and give me diesel and the veggie mods to follow.

[mr. poopyhead]

Originally Posted by ham

I agree. A friend of mine has a Golf TDI 50-55 MPG. The Yaris at over 1000 lbs lighter should have no problem beating that. SO YES.......F the hybrid and give me diesel and the veggie mods to follow.

i used to share a 1992 TDI jetta with my brother (it's still running strong with 300k km on it)... the thing is a complete rustbucket. it EASILY outdoes my yaris in fuel efficiency and weighs probably twice as much...

i don't know what the obsession with hybrids is in north america... all this talk of "green" and crap. are 100s of kilograms of toxic, costly and polluting Li-poly batteries really "green"? is the decreased service life really "green"?

sure a diesel may spew out more particulate pollution and such, but the total environmental cost is lower than any hybrid, especially when we talk about alternative sources of diesel.

north america needs to get with the program and embrace diesel like europe has, instead of falling for all this green marketing with hybrid and electric plug-ins... not that they aren't good technologies. but as of now, their total environmental impact isn't as minimal as people make them out to be.

[BailOut]

Originally Posted by mr. poopyhead

i don't know what the obsession with hybrids is in north america... all this talk of "green" and crap. are 100s of kilograms of toxic, costly and polluting Li-poly batteries really "green"? is the decreased service life really "green"?

sure a diesel may spew out more particulate pollution and such, but the total environmental cost is lower than any hybrid, especially when we talk about alternative sources of diesel.

north america needs to get with the program and embrace diesel like europe has, instead of falling for all this green marketing with hybrid and electric plug-ins... not that they aren't good technologies. but as of now, their total environmental impact isn't as minimal as people make them out to be.

While I can appreciate your enthusiasm there are a few problems with your presentation. Standard diesel technology (forget Blutec and its ilk as it is by no means widely available, it is costly, and it uses a fair amount of precious metals to do what it does) is truly dirty. Allowing them to run freely on our streets would be akin to removing the catalytic converters from our cars. This would herald a return to smog (or additional smog if you already have it), respiratory problems and even acid rain. No, thank you.

While hybrids are by no means a perfect solution they offer Partial Zero Emissions (PZEV) movement and have engines that are tuned to a different cycle (Atkins vs. the usual Otto) in order to more fully burn each drop of fuel, thereby burning cleaner than most other engines.

Your remark about "decreased service life" is unfounded. Prii tend to go for more than 300k miles on their OEM battery pack, and the few replacements that have been done so far have been done by Toyota at no cost.

The batteries in hybrids are not toxic landfill time bombs as you portend. Each manufacturer has a system in place that brings the batteries from the dealerships back to the OEM (usually Panasonic or Sony) and they recycle them. Sony is totally secretive about everything but Panasonic's literature shows that their recycling is 95% efficient. While 100% would be better this is a higher efficiency number than any other kind of recycling besides glass and aluminum. That 5% loss is also rendered environmentally inert before it is disposed of.

Before anyone bothers to link the "Hummer greener than a Prius" tripe please read your search results more closely and realize that it was written by a marketing guy and has been debunked by more professional and technical sources than I can count.

Again I do not believe that that hybrids are the solution. I do believe that they are a step in the right direction, though, while a transition to diesel would do more harm than good.

[BLAZINBLUEVITZ]

Originally Posted by ham

I agree. A friend of mine has a Golf TDI 50-55 MPG. The Yaris at over 1000 lbs lighter should have no problem beating that. SO YES.......F the hybrid and give me diesel and the veggie mods to follow.

yaris beating a diesel volkswagon anything even i draw the line at cars who's torque is almost double what our horsepower is..........