Do Hybrids Really Make Sense?

[niky]

I'm a' just gonna leave this here:

Toyota Prius

versus

Toyota Corolla

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The Prius does pretty good on the secondhand market. Better than the vaunted Corolla. (unsurprised at the blip around 2000 for the Corolla... teething issues with that new motor.)

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Nifty site, that. Done by Steven Lang, used car dealer who writes for The Truth About Cars, Curbside Classics and Yahoo Autos. Takes information on reliability straight from repair and value estimates done at point of purchase by used car dealers. For some cars, the sample sizes are (unavoidably) small, but both of these are culled from a few thousand samples.

Lots of interesting stuff to see there.

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Oh, and also, Lang's Hammer Time articles are worth Googling.

[oldtamiyaphile]

I thought I'd post the same for Honda:

Honda Insight

Honda Civic

If you consider the 2000 onwards portion of the graph, the Insight has twice as many problems as the Civic.

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by oldtamiyaphile

I thought I'd post the same for Honda:

Honda Insight

Honda Civic

If you consider the 2000 onwards portion of the graph, the Insight has twice as many problems as the Civic.

Also interesting to note from those same links:
They list higher % of issues for the Civic than the Insight:

Insight
Power Train Issues 6.48%
Transmission Issues 4.63%
Engine Issues 2.78%

Civic
Power Train Issues 10.6%
Transmission Issues 6.55%
Engine Issues 4.76%

[oldtamiyaphile]

Because they're including Civic's from 1995 with 200,000+ miles. You may as well say Civics are unreliable because, well, when was the last time you saw a First Gen Civic?

[P-hack]

there is definitely something up with the year/defect ratio chart on the insight, it flatlines, from 2002-2009 then snaps back towards the curve with the 2nd gen release. I thought they were out of production for a spell, certainly looks like they weren't fixing anything during that time anyway.

[niky]

It's an automatically generated graph from the data... Absence of data means the line extends horizontally between the two data points at the end.

The rest of the graphs are more normal.

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by oldtamiyaphile

I thought I'd post the same for Honda:

Honda Insight

Honda Civic

If you consider the 2000 onwards portion of the graph, the Insight has twice as many problems as the Civic.

Only some 16,000 first gen (1999-2006) Insights were ever made (topping at MY 2000) so only a handful will have made it to that graph. The vast majority of the 108 cars in the graph will be second gens (2009-2014).
108 cars is a very small sample to build a graph like this.

The flatline must mean that model year has no entries, or maybe they ignored the entries if it did not have a single failure (as to avoid posting a 0% failure rate)

Looking at the graph I guess there were 14 2000 Insights in it of which 1 (7,1 %) had a failure.
There must have been 7 2001 Insights of which 1 (14.2%) had a failure.
There have been no Insights thereafter, or too few to affect the graph.

So you were basing your statement on what is most likely a single 2001 failure.
But thanks for the graphs anyway

[P-hack]

missed the 108 insights vs 14610 civics in the data...

the vw golf looks kinda stinky (and doesn't list the count)
http://tradeinqualityindex.com/vehic...agen_Golf.html

but the prius (no count there either) has very low engine/powertrain/transmission issues. and the insight is low compared to the civic.

[niky]

Originally Posted by P-hack

missed the 108 insights vs 14610 civics in the data...

the vw golf looks kinda stinky (and doesn't list the count)
Volkswagen Golf

but the prius (no count there either) has very low engine/powertrain/transmission issues. and the insight is low compared to the civic.

You'll have to go to the Brand page to find the count for each model.

The Golf is also a relatively low sample model.
Untitled

I imagine those poor scores are from that dual-clutch transmission.

[GreenHornet]

Every car that has an alternator in a sense is a hybrid albeit to weak of a hybrid to exhibit any of the strengths we have come accustomed to in todays world such as start stop, regenerative braking, or power assist abilities. However the necessity of comingling the two ICE and electric has always been there and always been required once we started adding modern conveniences to cars such as AC, heat, windshield wipers, radios etc..

So the progression from a weak electric motor in the form of the alternator to a more robust electric motor that we see in todays hybrids has really been a very logical progression.

Everything is moving to electric hybridization with the ICE as support only. Take for instance Power steering, What about electric water pumps, or even electric AC, or even electric super chargers :-) anything that can run off the engine can run more efficiently off an electric motor and this is why you now see the shift from the car manufacturers.

In essence we all drive hybrids to some degree excluding of course the pure EV drivers the question really is how dependent is your vehicle on the ICE motor for modern conveniences, acceleration, and braking etc..?