"dont Buy A Hybrid If You Live In The Sticks.. Its A City Car"

[Dasbob]

LIes!!!

I commute 20 miles to work every day on a single lane A road, i have to travel on a few B roads as well.... i live in somerset near the coast and my phones 3G(H+) internet connection in Taunton is twice the speed of my home broadband...

Now hopefully thats painted a picture of my area. Now as you can see from fuelly i am getting 62 mpg (66 on the car..first fuel up was 55 but i was playing with the car) and quite often if i get stuck behind a tractor or a slower driver than me i can hit 72-74 on the car by time i get to work/home.

The reason i bring this topic up is because it was one of the factors which almost made me not buy a hybrid, all i heard was how amazing they are in cities, but how they fall foul in the country. Thinking about my commute I think what helps me out is i travel from 1 town to another, so i burn up all my electric getting out one town, and by time i gotten to the other town i have an almost full Battery..... which has gotten me thinking.... If you live in the city or any built up area, how do you even manage to get any charge on the Battery? i could imagine the car is constantly sat at 2-3 bars (some times the petrol engine kicking in if you leech too much out to knock you back up to 3) surely that wont help any ones MPG and cant be doing the Battery any good.

So why have hybrids got this "city car" type stamp on them, surely they are ideal for people who commute OUT of the city/town, not for those who commute around it.

Any thoughts?

[Mkuk0]

Lies as you say, I spend most of my time on A roads and moroways and average 60mpg easily. Still the best car I've had in 35 years of driving!

[rotty]

Agree. For A & B road 'commute' driving they seem ideal. We have had two Prius and now have a Yaris HSD - my Mrs used to commute W-s-M to Bristol daily and could get great mpg. Motorway driving however is pretty poor mpg-wise.

But as you say, in-city driving is OK as far as the stop/start bit of the engine is concerned, but I find that often sitting in traffic, the ICE will kick in as the charge state is always too low. It annoys the hell out of me to be sitting there with the engine running

I was a bit sceptical going from the Prius to the Yaris (no longer needed such a large car as I drive a 'world destroyer 4x4') but I have to say, apart from some of the toys that are missing such as adaptive cruise and park assist (never used it and my Rangie has it and I have never used it) I much prefer the Yaris as it seems to be 'nippier'. Steering is better and it just seems to be more suited to popping to the local shops etc... I love it.

[Chris Dance]

It does not matter where you live the Toyota Hybrid cars are great. My son uses his to do business in UK & Europe, it coped in the Alps etc with 100% reliability. ( In Winter he uses Winter tyres). I have a mate who lives in "the sticks" and he rates the Prius highly. Like Mkuko says best cars we have ever owned. We have owned gen2 & Gen3 Prius T Spirits.

[Nicolai]

I think a lot of reviewers etc. focus on the fact that hybrids delivers "bad" mpg on motorway.

[jonesbach]

I think a lot of reviewers etc. focus on the fact that hybrids delivers "bad" mpg on motorway.

I can't agree with you there. So far over the summer I averaged around 61mpg on shortish 'hilly' trips of around 5/20ml. in small town and 'A/B' roads, though admittedly not in many queues. After the last but one fill up I travelled 300 ml. on motorway with the rest on long runs and I averaged 68mpg. Having returned home, and going by the 'display - 10%' as I haven't filled up yet, I expect my next fill up will be back to 62/63 mpg.

If you beat the s**t out of it on the motorway your economy will fall, but if you keep to around 65mph, with sensible driving you can improve your economy. Incidentally, I've found it better to drive so that a lorry is behind me(at a safe distance) rather than 'tailgating', it provides some protection from the 'normal' motorway driver.

[Parts-King]

I ran a Yaris Hybrid a short while ago and got 60-62 out of it without trying too hard, my run to work is 15 miles or so dual carriageway at 70 MPH, 6 miles A road stop and start. On the A road I can run in EV for most of it, so under 30 MPH I can keep it in EV

The trick is ultra light throttle, but keeping the car moving, if I was to use the buttons to keep it in EV longer, I reckon I could get more out of it

Kingo

[Yolina]

If you live in the city or any built up area, how do you even manage to get any charge on the battery? i could imagine the car is constantly sat at 2-3 bars (some times the petrol engine kicking in if you leech too much out to knock you back up to 3) surely that wont help any ones MPG and cant be doing the battery any good.

So why have hybrids got this "city car" type stamp on them, surely they are ideal for people who commute OUT of the city/town, not for those who commute around it.

Any thoughts?

I got 73mpg average (real mpg as calculated by me) over the last few tankfuls out of my Yaris hybrid without really trying ;) and that's in London (am in zone 2). I'm mostly on a mix of 30/40/50mph roads around London.

[sanzomat]

I have to admit that I was almost put off by the "bad motorway mpg" stories but my experince so far is that even on a long motorway run it is still better than any turbo diesel I've driven. A recent 300 mile round trip 95% on motorway with hardly any traffic so set on cruise at 78mph the whole way returned 53mpg (56 on trip computer). The return leg was into a really strong headwind too (wind picked up from nothing in the morning to a gale in the afternoon). And this is in a car that had only covered 1000 miles from new so arguably still a bit tight. In similar conditions my previous cars would have given somewhere between 40 and 48mpg (all turbo diesel estate cars of a similar size to the Prius Plus). I was actually surprised that it would do this well as I couldn't understand why the hybrid system should be that efficient on a steady motorway run. The engine was on all the time so I thought that surely it would be just like driving a 1.8l petrol car carrying the extra weight of the HSD. Thinking about it though, at a constant speed the engine is pretty unstressed so the Atkinson cycle effect should work well and give good thermodynamic efficiency and having the energy monitor on I noticed that every time it went up a hill some electricity was used to help the engine so avoid it going into the red zone so even at a steady speed on the motorway you get to use some of the electricity you've made (for free whilst going down the other side of the hill). In all other driving it is better still so if even at its worst its over 15% more fuel efficient than a diesel and its mostly around 25% better in my usual mix of driving.

[Cyker]

I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that hybrids are bad if you live outside of a congested city.

The criticism is just that they have worse mpg on the motorway (Or any long constant-speed journey).

In the city, A-roads, even country roads, you are changing speeds all the time so the HSD has more opportunities to scavenge energy to recharge the batteries (Yay Gravity!).

On a motorway, diesels tend to beat them just because the hybrid can't make full use of the electric motor and relies on the efficient but gutless Atkinson cycle engine whereas the diesel can abuse its already highly efficient cycle, but also take advantage of the fact that it has probably 3-4x more torque and so run at higher gearing and lower RPM.

It is a straw man argument really tho' - Yeah they get worse mpg on the motorway but it's not massively far off a half-decent diesel engine, and even my super ossom Yaris D4D :D would be hard pressed to get Yolina's effortless low-70s in town!

[Ten Ninety]

I suspect that the official EU economy figures inflate the urban mpg rating for hybrids because the short length of the cycle allows EV propulsion to have a disproportionate impact. This makes the official urban figures look as good as those for extra-urban driving which - perhaps in conjunction with HSDs' original exemption from congestion charging - is probably what has led some folks to believe HSDs are primarily city cars. Add in the usual motoring press misinformation about poor motorway economy ("it turns into a normal 1.8 carrying a load of heavy batteries" - no, really, it doesn't) and you can see why they are misunderstood.

The other thing is that on the motorway many 'normal' drivers (and all motoring journalists, it would appear) seem to aim for a minimum of 75-80mph and when they aren't actually doing that speed they are either braking heavily for someone who's just pulled out on them or accelerating hard back up to speed once that person has pulled in again. They then wonder why the car isn't delivering its EU-stated extra-urban figure, or why it's not appreciably better than a diesel driven in a similar manner. By contrast, when they're in slow stop-start traffic and their speed is determined entirely by other people, the HSD's advantages are likely to be more obvious to them, so they perpetuate the 'city car' myth of that being its natural habitat.

The reality of hybrid mpg is that, like any other car, it's influenced primarily by speed, smoothness and momentum. As we know, a steady cruise around the national speed limit - as opposed to frantically Audi-ing your way past everyone in the outside lane - can return a real 60+mpg. If you're prepared to sacrifice journey time then dropping the speed lower can tip the figure back over 70mpg.

I recently did a 350-mile trip which was entirely motorway/dual carriageway apart from literally a mile at either end. With cruise control set at 63 I wasn't slipstreaming or holding up lorries and when passing slower traffic on two-lane stretches I did speed up to 70 if someone came up behind. In other words, I wasn't the rolling road-block that some people believe it's necessary to be when driving for economy. Yes, it is true that a journey of that distance did take an extra hour compared to doing 70 all the way. I accept that would be a deal-breaker for many. However, I arrived more relaxed than I have ever known after a long motorway journey and I had the added bonus of a 75.2mpg reading on the MFD.

For comparison, that was a little way off the 81-83mpg that I routinely see on the MFD after my usual commute (at least in the summer whilst it's warm) but that's a mix of National Limit A/B roads regularly interspersed with 30-limit villages. Which, as it happens, sounds rather similar to the OP's route as described above. It is this type of journey - not city driving - which I reckon is where hybrids deliver their best economy. Just like any other car, then really. :D

[Dasbob]

Thanks for your feed back, its very interesting to read all the responses

[timberwolf]

When Toyota designed the 1.8l engine hybrid, one of the things they apparently improved was the motorway cruise speed to achieve a given mpg because of the complaints from North America and Europe. The 1.5l engine in the Prius Gen 2 has a lower cruising speed to achieve a reasonable mpg, still not even close to some of those Gen 3 MFD readings.

[cuius]

Usually the diesel/hybrid comparisons are based on manual former and automatic latter.

I live in a rural area, don't do any commuting, but 80% of my mileage is on motorways travelling across Spain; usually on cruise control for the majority of the journey. My last few cars using the same pattern of driving have given the following consumptions based on brim-to-brim records:

2.0 diesel manual 49.3mpg

2.0 diesel dsg auto 50.4mpg

2.0 petrol tc auto 37.7mpg

Auris hybrid 54.8mpg

[Hicardo]

Agreed - I live in the country and so spend most time on 30-60 mph roads. My Mk 1 Auris HSD routinely records 62 mpg on 30 mile runs without trying. On shorter runs mid to high 50's. in town over 65 mpg. And on long motorway runs 55 mpg at around 70 true mph by the sat hav. Very pleases with that, and very close to that achieved by my previous car, a G 3 Prius.

All in all a lot better than my previous previous BMW 120d, which averaged in the same circumstances 51mpg. This was a manual but without S/S