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False MPG Figures: Sun Article

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False MPG Figures: Sun Article

AndyRKett said:
It's a "range extender" so an all electric vehicle with electric motors powering the wheels at all times, but they have dropped a petrol engine in which powers a generator for when the battery is depleted, this then supplies electricity to the wheel motors until the battery is recharged
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:yeahthat: and as a result it's inefficient at how it works if you want to use it beyond it's 25/30mile EV range regularly and use it as a petrol powered car.

If you're regularly needing to use the engine to recharge the battery then you're far better with a PHEV where the engine directly drives the wheels, as this is far more efficient when it comes to fuel economy.

As with them all they all have their pros and cons, and what would suit one won't nessecarily suit another, but that can be said about any vehicle really.
 
puntofan01 said:
I get it now, lol! Do you reckon more manufacturers will launch cars like the Ampera?
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Nope, far more seem to be going PHEV. Even Vauxhall have dumped the Ampera. The Golf GTE is about to be (or might now have been) launched which is another PHEV.

It'll be interesting to see how these new PHEVs fair with durability, reliability and life span. The reason I went for the Prius rather than outlander when choosing my PHEV was the fact Toyota have nearly 2 decades of hybrid tech behind them now, and a warrenty that no other PHEV manufacture currently comes near.
 
Most Easterly Pandas said:
Nope, far more seem to be going PHEV. Even Vauxhall have dumped the Ampera. The Golf GTE is about to be (or might now have been) launched which is another PHEV.

It'll be interesting to see how these new PHEVs fair with durability, reliability and life span. The reason I went for the Prius rather than outlander when choosing my PHEV was the fact Toyota have nearly 2 decades of hybrid tech behind them now, and a warrenty that no other PHEV manufacture currently comes near.
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I'll stick with a nice, old fashioned, basic petrol engine, lol!
 
Most Easterly Pandas said:
Nope, far more seem to be going PHEV. Even Vauxhall have dumped the Ampera. The Golf GTE is about to be (or might now have been) launched which is another PHEV.

It'll be interesting to see how these new PHEVs fair with durability, reliability and life span. The reason I went for the Prius rather than outlander when choosing my PHEV was the fact Toyota have nearly 2 decades of hybrid tech behind them now, and a warrenty that no other PHEV manufacture currently comes near.
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The only benificiary of ever more complex cars is the manufacturer, they become technically obsolete faster, they can't be serviced/fixed outside the dealer network (they've been trying to kill this for years but they are in their stride now) they have more limited life parts (the fuel tank in a normal car hasn't lost half the capacity after 8 years use). They can charge more on the basis you could save money (never got that logic!).

So by the time you've paid more for a car that's more energy intensive to produce, with additional materials, off set carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels to a fossil fuel powerstation, killed off little local garages to get an extra maybe 30 mpg on the very best is that progress?
 
It's a bit more than 30mpg in a lot of cases though with PHEVs.

With my current mileage it's saving me about £600 a year in fuel with current fuel prices (obviously more if they shoot up), and the more local driving I do the more I save.

And there this the fact that Toyota cover my battery for a day shy of 11 years (far better than the 3/5years most are giving) and the fact that most Prius never need their batteries replacing (12 year + models still on their original HV battery).

Comparing fuel tank capacity to battery capacity doesn't really work. What you can start to compare is EV servicing costs. No timing belts to pay £250-£700 every 50k to change. Brake pads that do 100k miles and disks that last the life of the car and so on.

As I've already said what works for one won't for everyone, but.....
 
So some of you guys think that whatever you hear about other people's purchases is gospel, but what someone else heard must have been made up & not true. There's a definite need to deny any info that plug-in hybrids aren't always being used correctly, or that people have quibbles with their mpg figures matching the quoteds.

Inductive charging is something that is wished to be rolled out, the way things are just now it's likely it will get rolled out to some extent soon-ish, in the usual trials in the usual types of places. I don't think it'll take soon-ish, but give it 10 - 20 years and people will have forgotten enough for it to seem like a great idea to install it in alongside other types of 'smart pavements'. They got enough folks using cancer-causing mobiles technology & it was well known what that was like before it got rolled out too.

And all Vauxhalls aren't any good? That's a bit harsh. They have very popular engines for tuning and upgrading. That's a brand with a fine history, thesedays cars are all pretty much stuck having to conform to safety standards and so forth, so they end up not being able to spend time on the more important aspects as they could do in the past moreso. eg, rather than spend tonnes doing impact testing on a new frame - just use an existing one that already passed. Instead of getting someones to do aero testing, just use the same software package everyone else is, so then your cars all end up looking similar too.

Remember, whatever technology some folks will justnow claim will never happen or is a long way off, that's what was said about the things sitting in front of you and that you're using everyday, 10 or 20 or 30 years earlier. When I was at school people were convinced flatscreens would never be able to happen, based on the size of the glass vacuums required to get a CRT screen to work. It's always the same with these things.
 
Most Easterly Pandas said:
It's a bit more than 30mpg in a lot of cases though with PHEVs.

With my current mileage it's saving me about £600 a year in fuel with current fuel prices (obviously more if they shoot up), and the more local driving I do the more I save.

And there this the fact that Toyota cover my battery for a day shy of 11 years (far better than the 3/5years most are giving) and the fact that most Prius never need their batteries replacing (12 year + models still on their original HV battery).

Comparing fuel tank capacity to battery capacity doesn't really work. What you can start to compare is EV servicing costs. No timing belts to pay £250-£700 every 50k to change. Brake pads that do 100k miles and disks that last the life of the car and so on.

As I've already said what works for one won't for everyone, but.....
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I know we disagree on this and I don't have a downer on the Prius itself it's a beautifully engineered bit of kit. It's more the general direction, the most complicated and energy intensive solution cannot in my mind be the most efficient, it just feels like there has to be a better way.

I used to be a supporter of small turbo engines, however the reality they seem to be another conspicuous sideways step, bringing in more complexity without adding a great deal in other areas as the original article that started this thread highlights. I do wonder what would have happened if the R and D money spent on them had gone into conventional engines as to whether or not they'd be just as efficient.
 
robotfireengine said:
So some of you guys think that whatever you hear about other people's purchases is gospel, but what someone else heard must have been made up & not true. There's a definite need to deny any info that plug-in hybrids aren't always being used correctly, or that people have quibbles with their mpg figures matching the quoteds.
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The main crux of you're argument is "what ever you hear" Most Easterly Pandas has a plug in hybrid so it's not so much what he hears as what he lives with daily. I know a couple of people with both plugs in hybrids, normal hybrids and all electric vehicles. It's not just about what you hear 3rd or 4th hand we're getting direct from people who use these cars every day.

You talked about PHEVs but when MEP used the abreviation you didn't seem to realise what he was talking about.

The whole point in the thread is that people don't get their quoted MPG figures and MEP Went quite a bit in depth as to why this happens with PHEVs so there is no denial there. But a plug in Prius is about £2k more than the same non plug in model and requires a considered through before buying one, so if that person isn't using it properly and isn't charging it when required then that's really their own fault and not something you can blame the car for, if however they use the car like this, they will still see the same MPG figures they would have gotten with the non plug in model.

as for hybrids I'm a little on StevenRB45 side of the fence, why take a car that works fine and then load it up with another 500kg of technology, just to squeeze a few more MPG out of it, it's unnecessary and over complicated.
The Prius has been ground up designed for fuel economy so would put most cars to shame even without the electric motor working.
Extra aerodynamic, light weight construction, ultra fuel efficient 1.8vvti engine etc, Toyota have done it for years so really know their stuff, and the current Prius is the peak of all that R&D.

I'd actually rather see the petrol or Diesel engine dropped completely. Better batteries, better motors (like the one in the BMW i8) and a better range, the current Nissan Leaf can muster 100miles on a charge, while tesler get 300miles out of their battery if every electric car had a 300 mile range, then there would be little to argue against owning an electric car and as mentioned many of the batteries fitted to electric cars seem to far outlast their expected life cycle proven by 1998 Prius cars still running about on their original battery, charge it from wind or solar energy and over a 20year period the environmental impact is very low by comparison to a car pumping out a load of exhaust chemicals each year
 
StevenRB45 said:
I used to be a supporter of small turbo engines, however the reality they seem to be another conspicuous sideways step, bringing in more complexity without adding a great deal in other areas as the original article that started this thread highlights. I do wonder what would have happened if the R and D money spent on them had gone into conventional engines as to whether or not they'd be just as efficient.
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I achieved this in my lovely, relatively basic, relatively simple, woefully outdated 1.4 8v Grande Punto. :)
 

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So now an abbreviation needs to be known of, cause if you don't recognise the abreivation then whatever you wrote about must not be true then. Why am I wasting my time pointing that out as well, when it too is obvious.

'What you hear' - the presumption is that any reports on this are accurate. Otherwise how can you use the information you get; you'd just have to presume it's all fake, like presuming all news articles are made up.

If the true measure of the mpg figures isn't known, then the user has no way to determine if they are driving their car as the manufacture intended or not. Hence why I'd mentioned that, and linked an article that details more about the test itself, explaning why the figures aren't acheiveable.

The irony, if you read both articles, is that they are saying the same news, about 2 years apart. The one I linked is saying this mpg measuring problem should all be resolved by 2014 (I think it is 2014 and not 2015, it is too late to bother checking it just now, anyway..), but if the Sun article is based on truth then it seems that hasn't happened yet.
The Sun figure doesn't say if the mpg's are urban or cuising etc; they look like crusing type of mpg's for petrol engines. (again I'm using a generic term here, I don't remember if there is another term for 'crusing' eg 'extra urban' or possibly some abbreviation. But that shouldn't matter).
The Fiats I checked listed in it are petrol engines, and the manufacturers site doesn't have any official figures I could find, so I'm not sure what their actual claims on the models mentioned are.
 
JimbbobW1977 said:
View attachment 154773

However, in a 161bhp car that can achieve 60 in just over 8 seconds with 340nm of torque...
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And I take that, and most car displayed MPG readouts with a pinch of salt tbh. Most are up to 15% over reading.

Brim to brim calcs on fill up and a track record on fuelly are only a real true world use measurement imo.
 
Most Easterly Pandas said:
And I take that, and most car displayed MPG readouts with a pinch of salt tbh. Most are up to 15% over reading.

Brim to brim calcs on fill up and a track record on fuelly are only a real true world use measurement imo.
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It depends on the car, the one in the Mazda is 0.5mpg lower than the fuelly figures if you zero it each time you fill up but there would be no way of knowing that if I didn't have fuelly.

I include a picture of my current average fuel read out for amusement, because obviously I'm doing it wrong I zeroed it at the petrol station then climbed 400ft up to my house. If I'd done it the other way I'd be beating Jimbob although the Fuelly signature below might give away the fact it's utter bull****..
 

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AndyRKett said:
The main crux of you're argument is "what ever you hear" Most Easterly Pandas has a plug in hybrid so it's not so much what he hears as what he lives with daily. I know a couple of people with both plugs in hybrids, normal hybrids and all electric vehicles. It's not just about what you hear 3rd or 4th hand we're getting direct from people who use these cars every day.

You talked about PHEVs but when MEP used the abreviation you didn't seem to realise what he was talking about.

The whole point in the thread is that people don't get their quoted MPG figures and MEP Went quite a bit in depth as to why this happens with PHEVs so there is no denial there. But a plug in Prius is about £2k more than the same non plug in model and requires a considered through before buying one, so if that person isn't using it properly and isn't charging it when required then that's really their own fault and not something you can blame the car for, if however they use the car like this, they will still see the same MPG figures they would have gotten with the non plug in model.

as for hybrids I'm a little on StevenRB45 side of the fence, why take a car that works fine and then load it up with another 500kg of technology, just to squeeze a few more MPG out of it, it's unnecessary and over complicated.
The Prius has been ground up designed for fuel economy so would put most cars to shame even without the electric motor working.
Extra aerodynamic, light weight construction, ultra fuel efficient 1.8vvti engine etc, Toyota have done it for years so really know their stuff, and the current Prius is the peak of all that R&D.

I'd actually rather see the petrol or Diesel engine dropped completely. Better batteries, better motors (like the one in the BMW i8) and a better range, the current Nissan Leaf can muster 100miles on a charge, while tesler get 300miles out of their battery if every electric car had a 300 mile range, then there would be little to argue against owning an electric car and as mentioned many of the batteries fitted to electric cars seem to far outlast their expected life cycle proven by 1998 Prius cars still running about on their original battery, charge it from wind or solar energy and over a 20year period the environmental impact is very low by comparison to a car pumping out a load of exhaust chemicals each year
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If you live in a hilly area like Mid Wales you can comfortably halve the quoted range of every electric car - I asked a Leaf owner who's lucky to see 30 miles in winter.
 
dragonwagon said:
If you live in a hilly area like Mid Wales you can comfortably halve the quoted range of every electric car - I asked a Leaf owner who's lucky to see 30 miles in winter.
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If you live in the hills of Wales then why are you buying a Leaf? It's the wrong car for the job, I wouldn't have one and I'm only 12 miles from the city centre. If you travel roads that can be closed by bad weather or are isolated it wouldn't be my first, second or third choice.
 
I use a Leaf on a regular basis at work. I think Nissan quote 120 miles range.

However, in the winter on a cold day after a full charge it will display just over 80 miles range. Using the heating straight away knocks 20 miles off.

Using the one the other day it said it had 71 miles. After a bit of driving around say at the most 15 miles, the range said 14.

I have run one out of power before, it said it had a range of 20 miles, I needed to do a journey of 12 miles. I didn't make it and had to be recovered.

They are nice enough to drive and not lacking in performance but lack reliability in range.
 
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