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Electric vehicles sound nice in theory, but there are some major environmental concerns that surround them. You’re essentially trading one set of pollution for another. As Andrew said coal consumption will most definitely skyrocket. Most of the power grid is powered by coal. Alternative fuels such as hydro, nuclear, wind and solar still make up a minute portion of output.
The second issue here is the minerals, and chemicals that go into batteries and how they are refined. Prius’s are actually one of the biggest environmental OFFENDERS on the road due to its carbon intensive manufacturing process.
[quote=”voltizar” post=127808]danielthechskid:
Thats good to know, that its more automatic than it is CVT.This might actually make me want the car more.
It would still be above 30 i would think for short trips… which is more in par with other gasoline cars like Corolla.Pithy Radish:
Thats a shame, is there something specific thats going out?[/quote]
Many of the new Toyota’s are having a problem with defective piston rings from what I’m hearing, Highlanders, Camry’s, Xb’s and Prius’s have been especially bad from what I have seen. Defective piston rings is bad news for the engine, it’s definitely a weak spot in Toyota’s lineup. I’m an entry level technician at a Toyota Dealership, I’ve been disheartened by the decline in Toyota quality lately. I’ve seen some Prius’s starting to burn oil at 50,000 miles. Repairs can also be fairly pricey when a component goes out on a Prius.The Corolla is the most solid vehicle that you listed in my opinion. Haven’t seen very many Corolla’s have problems. We’ve got a rental, and parts runner Corolla from 13′ that is abused by the dealership. It so far has had zero problems. I’ve seen one Corolla come in that suffered from a rough idle, that is it. It is also more fun to drive than the Prius by far, zippy around town, and enough passing power on the freeway to keep you happy.
Subaru’s are a bit of a niche car. You’re going to take a hit in fuel mileage compared to most similarly sized Hondas, and Toyotas due to its AWD system. They also run a different type of engine called the boxer. Instead of sitting upright in the engine bay, the engine sits on its side. This makes maintenance items such as spark plugs and spark plug wires a bit more expensive. A common failure point in older Subaru’s was the head gasket, I’m not sure if this is the case on newer ones, it’s worth checking out. Subaru’s most definitely do have more expensive parts than Honda or Toyota. They also don’t respond very well to aftermarket oil filters from what I hear.
All in all Subaru’s are reliable vehicles, maintenance is inherently more expensive due to the AWD system, and parts cost. Every vehicle has pattern failures, some worse than others.
On a sidenote have you looked up the Honda Fit? It’s a small vehicle, that has great gas mileage and a lot of space (an oxymoron I know).
[quote=”danielthechskid” post=127806]Be aware that the Toyota hybrids don’t actually have a CVT in the conventional sense, with conventional being a variable pitch pulley system AKA cone and belt.
The Toyota hybrids are just called E-CVT because that is the closest existing category to lump them into. How they work is a planetary gear called the power split device and the 2 motor-generators. MG2 is connected to the final drive and ring gear, MG1 is connected to the sun gear, and the engine is connected to the planet carrier. The effective gear ratio is controlled by the speed and direction difference between the 3 components. If MG1 freewheels it is neutral, if it is turning faster than the engine and is generating power to feed MG2 it is a low gear, if it is turning slower than the engine or even backwards it is overdrive. To turn backwards the roles are reversed so power is actually drawn from MG2 to drive MG1, causing a recirculation of energy.
A note on the Prius specifically: be aware that the core purpose of this model is for low lung damaging emissions and it can and does sacrifice MPG for the sake of being cleaner. This means if you have many short trips of less than 20 minutes or so it won’t get very good fuel economy. This has always been true, the NHW11 model had the HCAC system, basically a special catalytic converter which trapped the cold start unburned fuel, the NHW20 had the hot coolant storage “Thermos” (vacuum Dewar) to help it heat up faster, and the ZVW30 you are considering has exhaust heat recovery, basically a coolant jacket around the exhaust system.[/quote]
The new Prius’s also have an issue of burning oil from what I’ve seen, repairs can be pretty costly as well.[quote=”Chevyman21″ post=127554][quote=”Pithy Radish” post=127549][quote=”1994FordF-150″ post=126864]My Parents have a 2008 Scion Xb with around 90,000 miles, it goes through a quart of oil every 500-750 miles now… My 94 F-150 with the 300 I6, and 110,000 miles (fairly low mileage for a vehicle of that vintage but still enough to set an example) burns no oil at all and is my daily driver. I’d say the last of true American quality was in the late 60’s and early 70’s though. before California had all the emission controls added on. (luckily the I6 has been around since ’65 so the quality is similar to those days but emissions controls caused them to cease production in ’96)[/quote]
Scion xbs are notorious for burning oil. Toyota won’t say so themselves, but everyone who works on them KNOWS these things burn lots of oil. I saw an XB that was burning oil at 40,000 miles the other day. Prius’s and certain Tacoma’s, Runners and Highlanders are notorious for burning oil as well. The Scion FRS/Subaru BRZ has well documented injector issues, the valve cover gasket on Camry’s are notorious for leaking like a sieve, the Lexus 4GR FSE engine suffers from severe carbon build up problems.[/quote] The newer Toyota 4 cyls in any vehicle have that issue(scions, rav4s, camry etc.). The reason is a poorly designed oil system. Toyota actually has a TSB out on the issue so they are fully aware of it.[/quote]
I’m beginning to think that my service manager is just an a**hole.[quote=”Pitt” post=127620]Yesterday was the big day
Before i get started, here how it went down.
I was supposed to go flat rate next week. I’ve been there three months. 6 years active duty, bachelors in mechanical engineering, and 3 years experience on my own car and classes.
We hired a tired guy that has been doing tires for 6 years. He’s been with us a month. Literally just tires.
Keep in mind we are a car dealership, new cars.
He was pushed to flat rate and I’m kept hourly. So I work 40, easily turn 60-70 and my hours go into a pool. I still get 40 hour pay checks but 0 flag hours.
While the four other techs get the benefit of my flag hours.
Keep in mind I’m hourly, I sip lunnch, and take what ever work I am given. And after one time I have it stored in my memory.
The tire guy that became a tech takes 2 hour lunches, smokes on lunch and I’m not talking marlboro. Spend the morning bs’s while I do 6 oil changes at once.
And they think this plan will work……,..[/quote]
And I thought my dealership is dysfunctional…. You were a Toyota tech, correct?[quote=”Bluesnut” post=127595]And what’s the unspoken reason for kissing some loopy customer’s axx to keep that CSI score up? So they will feel good and return to buy another car; which is the only thing that a car dealer really gives a crap about.
The idiot service manager (dumbest SOB on earth according to the VW factory rep…) at a dealer where I worked was of the opinion that every customer who whined was in the right. He flat refused to believe that some customers will bitch just to get some money back or will pull every scam in the book so they can walk away with a free or heavily discounted repair.
During regular shop meetings me (and several others) would try to tell him that there’s a certain percentage of customers who need to be shown the door if a polite discussion went nowhere. If they won’t hit the door when told to then grab them by the effin’ collar and throw them out along with their keys.
He would say no way along with “but…but…but why would a customer complain without a good reason?”. He just didn’t get it.[/quote]
The physical sale of the new vehicle isn’t what makes the dealerships big money, it’s the shop and used car sales that keep most dealerships afloat — though usually new cars and service departments go hand in hand — at some point they’ll end up back at the dealership. The profit margins on new cars actually sucks.[quote=”1994FordF-150″ post=126864]My Parents have a 2008 Scion Xb with around 90,000 miles, it goes through a quart of oil every 500-750 miles now… My 94 F-150 with the 300 I6, and 110,000 miles (fairly low mileage for a vehicle of that vintage but still enough to set an example) burns no oil at all and is my daily driver. I’d say the last of true American quality was in the late 60’s and early 70’s though. before California had all the emission controls added on. (luckily the I6 has been around since ’65 so the quality is similar to those days but emissions controls caused them to cease production in ’96)[/quote]
Scion xbs are notorious for burning oil. Toyota won’t say so themselves, but everyone who works on them KNOWS these things burn lots of oil. I saw an XB that was burning oil at 40,000 miles the other day. Prius’s and certain Tacoma’s, Runners and Highlanders are notorious for burning oil as well. The Scion FRS/Subaru BRZ has well documented injector issues, the valve cover gasket on Camry’s are notorious for leaking like a sieve, the Lexus 4GR FSE engine suffers from severe carbon build up problems.[quote=”Pitt” post=127470]I need to vent.
We had a college girl come in last week. Completely ignorant to cars. To her, engines were magic.
She had a flat tire, car barely had 30k miles on her car, that she bought from us with her parents help.
She asked us to look at it. We found three puncture holes in the sidewall and told her the cost of a new tire.
She can’t afford a new tire, and had to leave with a spare, crying because she was so stressed. She came back a few days later when her parents gave her a check for a tire. And thanked us with cookies she made for putting her new tire on.
Flip to a few days later. A guy brings his car in for recall updates, and free tire rotations but refuses oil changes for literally 1 year.
His engine blew up, even though we documented that refused $20 oil change 7 times.
Again, his engine blew up. And the dealership paid for a new engine.
I’m former military, so I seem to swear a lot on a normal day. Even some of my techs think I swear a lot.
When I heard that we were giving that guy a new engine, but can’t finance a $130 tire for a college student who came to us religiously for oil changes and service work I really didn’t care what came out of my mouth and who heard it.
This industry is destroying itself because of good old boy networks, and a high acceptance of low standards for techs. All the techs I’ve ever seen that would be studs in the shop become field service techs, or go specialize in rebuilds.
At this rate its only going to get worse.[/quote]
I feel like if the dealership has documentation of such behavior, then they should flat out refuse to put a new engine in. I feel as if Yelp, and other sites have empowered customers to be the biggest D**ks imaginable. People are finding out that if they complain they get things for free.Nobody gets freebies in my dealership… Break a TPMS sensor and my service manager will coming riding on his flaming horse looking for war with the offender. Customer unhappy with the price? They can call him all they want, and he just gives them the proverbial middle finger. His favorite line is “its the customers fault”. If he finds out service writers are giving away hours, he will ride on a godly fire storm and smite the said Service Writer, in fact his past time is firing service writers. Coincidentally my dealership has very poor yelp reviews, unfortunately he denies even legitimate mistakes by the technicians.
[quote=”Chevyman21″ post=126739][quote=”Bluesnut” post=126737]As a foreign car mechanic (no Toyota dealer experience) I feel that the Japanese cars always break just like everything else.
Recalls, hundreds of service bulletins, chronic problems for which there are no bulletins, etc.
There’s always that catch-phrase. “I’ve heard that Toyotas don’t break down…” or “My Toyota is broken down. How can this be? It’s a Toyota….”.Speaking of manufacturing junk anymore; that applies to just about everything. Twice in the past years I’ve fixed a couple of plumbing leaks in my home. Off to Lowes and buy new galvanized pipe, unions, elbows, etc, etc.
In less than a year both of those repairs were leaking in the same places. Inspection showed pinhole leaks in the new pipe which was rotting through and rusted enough to where it looked 50 years old. Another leak involved a pinhole/major rust on a new pipe and the pipe union of all things was rotting through. All of that on new fittings less than a year old.I’ve got a refrigerator that still works great and it’s almost 35 years old. Back in 1983 I bought my wife a large microwave to help her out during the day while I was at work. That microwave has been through a bunch and still works fine after all these years.
I wonder how many fridges and microwaves made today will ever make it to 15 years much less 30.The new Frigidaire fridge my daughter bought (12 month warranty) died with a compressor failure at 13 months. No help at all so off to the scrap yard with it.
The appliance store: “Yeah, we’re getting a lot of complaints. The compressors are going bad”. Chinese crap.[/quote] Music is also very bad now, but that’s another discussion. Japanese makes are no better than any other make in any case.[/quote]
I’m beginning to think that domestics have caught up to, and in some cases even exceed Japanese quality. My dealerships owner also owns a Chevy dealership that is right next door. If my dealership is slow they’ll throw a few cars our way, or if the chevy dealership is slammed we get the overflow and vise versa. The brother of my dealerships owner also owns a Ford dealership across the street, so often times we get Fords coming through as well if they are swamped or stumped on diagnosis (our lead tech is the man when it comes to diagnosis, he reminds me a bit of scannerdanner). We also get a lot of folks whose warranty has expired from the Honda dealership come through because we charge a cheaper rate than the local Honda dealership. We’re a Toyota dealership but we have a very diverse group of vehicles that come in. I’ve seen everything from WRX’s, Foresters, Legacy’s, to Mustangs, Fusions, and Focus’s, almost every make and model of GM, Hummers, various Acura, and Honda’s, and of course Lexus’s come through the dealership.Though the non-Toyota group of cars doesn’t come in as often as Toyota’s, they do come in frequently enough that I get a good enough feel from each brand. I’ve never seen a Honda or a domestic burn oil at such low mileages, i’ve never seen a new GM with the chronic injector failures that an FRS has (seriously I see these in the shop far too often), nor have I seen extremely low mileage oil leakage. Yeah, GM, and Ford have their problems, I feel like Ford’s, and GM’s are a little rougher around the edges than Toyota but I also don’t see as many issues with them. Another thing that I feel like I’m seeing too much of is leaky water pumps in Toyota’s… BUT I’m probably biased because I see far more Toyota’s on a day to day basis than other brands, so I get to see more of their issues.
I’m just astounded by the problems I’m seeing from fairly new cars. I knew they that Toyota’s weren’t indestructible like their owners proudly proclaim, but I expected much better than what I’m seeing from Toyota’s product. Again.. maybe it’s because I work with far more Toyota’s than any brand.
[quote=”Chevyman21″ post=126714]I agree 100% As of now Toyota is just riding on it’s reputation, a facade that will soon fade. All the problems you’ve mentioned are facts that Toyota is unwilling to acknowledge. Let’s not forget the unintended acceleration incident. That was proven to be Toyota’s doing and they covered it up.Toyota’s current customer service is horrible as well based on testimonials I’ve gotten from owners.[/quote]
After I got hired I asked my service manager about unintended acceleration, his answer “it’s the customers fault”. I asked him how the FRS was selling just for lolz, and he says “they’re selling great!”. No they’re not selling great, the sole FRS on our lot has been sitting for months.Ugh… Deny, deny, deny, deny, that is how Toyota deals with the skeletons in their closet.
[quote=”andrewbutton442″ post=126706][i]…Prius’s and Highlanders are burning tons of oil at 50,0000 miles, Prius’s are having weird electrical issues, transmissions are shifting oddly clunky for how old the car is. The Scion…
[/i]They burn oil at 50,0000 miles. Thats pretty good. Where are your customers driving to ???? I would expect most motors to disintegrate with that many miles. What do Toyotas, have, granite cylinders ?[/quote]
whoops! haha[quote=”Chevyman21″ post=126702][quote=”andrewbutton442″ post=126701]TBI is like a carb, with a brain running it. Its not so involved as switching to modern stuff, which also means cheaper. Small block gas consumption can very on many things. 283 had little valves and little power but displacement among motors could affect fuel mileage, but all the other crap attached is what makes the difference. The best small block of the bunch was the 327 with a larger bore but a shorter stroke. Always the favored motor, especially for 60s chevies. 283s with it’s 3 inch stroke makes for a pretty soggy car unless really light (like a 57 which all had 4.10s..hmmm) where as with the same bore at 4 inches, but 3.25 stroke, Chevy nailed it with that in 1962. Plus most had camel hump heads. Unfortunatly I am not exactly the only one that knows this needless to say, and so the prices for a 327 are crazy bad. I put an L79 350 hp 327 back together for a widow in a midyear Corvette with this motor, and it was life changing experience – most engines have no soul or spirit, that one was just the opposite.. Somebody asked me what I thought of that 65 model compared to a modern corvette which am all to familiar with, and I had to laugh. 350s unless they are modded to the moon don’t excite me in the least. Large journal over stroked motors will not do the same things a 327 will do, although very affordable and accessable are the fallback as they made a couple hundred million of them and they cost nothing to buy or build. I wouldn’t spend 2 cents on a 305 as they were just plain junk motors engineered for the sole purpose of pleasing tree huggers.[/quote] Yes OP for the love of God don’t put in a 305…I agree, what a junk motor.[/quote]
I would never even entertain the idea of buying a 305, I know what pieces of junk they are.[quote=”andrewbutton442″ post=126685]These cars when new got reasonable gas mileage with really high gears in the back. The problem with a powerglide they had zero off the line performance with 1.78 first gear, yuck. And overdrive auto is definatly the way to go, because if you put that 2.73 gearset with an overdrive say a 700r4 is .67, then you are in gas sipping territory. Manual transmission with overdrives for that application, plus the conversion would not be worth your time and money. I am not sure how comfortable you are with re-engineering things, but if you can yank a motor out of a 80s or early 90s truck with a throttle body smallblock, you will in business. a 350 with a TBI will have much more performance and mileage than a 283. You may even get lucky and find one attached to working 700r4, as most all of them had them. Great transmission, had a bunch of them, and they downright work. That 283 motor has no advantages over later smallblocks and powerglides are a good thing to dump as a turbo 350 is a direct swap, where as the 700r4 is longer. If you can find a 200r4 with a chevy pattern it will be a direct replacement for a powerglide and it has a better ratio than a 700r4 but much less common and generally not as rugged and more expensive then 700r4s which are the favorite. Quadrajets are great, but they are not something that you want to just throw to the local guy to fix as you will be dissapointed unless you have somebody who knows them and that means being able to modify it. Quajrajets also don’t play nice with high gears and heavy cars out of the box. An 76ish vintage quadrajet with an electric chock is what you want, and it would be from a later model chevy truck. You don’t want to put a BOP carburetor on there, as they are different.. Early ones have some special issues and wont find a good one anyway. Almost all quadrajets have side inlets, but a few of a certain vintage had a straight inlet, This was more year specific but chevys always had side inlets but you wont run into a front inlet carb easily, and if you did, you wouldn’t want to use it anyway. M22 Rockcrushers have no advantages unless in a vehicle is being restored. They are not stronger by any means, just louder.[/quote]
I was thinking about switching to a 350, but I’m undecided. All of the ones that I’ve been around have been thirsty beast. I’ve never seen one get over 20 MPG, but of course most of my experience with them is in my dads old work trucks, and work vans. I know you can get brand new crate ones for reasonable prices. Basically I want a nice cruiser that will net me at least 25, because it will be my daily driver, and I drive a lot.