Replace the Prius: Corolla or Civic

[hayden55]

Originally Posted by Vman455

This isn't correct. I've observed as high as 80% in mountainous areas; when that happens, the car will run electric-only above the middle line on the dashboard indicator:

Try the scan gauge. The dash is more of a dummy gauge.

State of Charge8216F101C9 0316844105C9 2808 00C800330000 SOC XX.X %
https://www.scangauge.com/support/x-...ommands/prius/

70% on scan gauge is full bars on the dash

[Autobahnschleicher]

Originally Posted by hayden55

new commute being mostly highway with very little city driving I think I'm going to pawn the prius off and get a 90-97 Corolla or 92-00 Civic. (I am averaging about 42-47mpg now)

If your commute is mostly highway and you want an efficient ICE vehicle for that, why are you looking at 90s gasoiline powered cars instead of diesels?
In this particular use case something like a Passat B5 1.9 TDi would be ideal as it is highly efficient for highway driving due to its aerodynamic shape and very economical 1,9L TDi engine.
If you're willing to go smaller, consider something like the Lupo 1.2 TDi or 1.4 TDi.
Beating 50 mpg is pretty easy with all of them and they are pretty reliable.
The Passat should get you into the 60 mpg+ range, the Lupo in the 70 mpg+ range.

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by Autobahnschleicher

If your commute is mostly highway and you want an efficient ICE vehicle for that, why are you looking at 90s gasoiline powered cars instead of diesels?
In this particular use case something like a Passat B5 1.9 TDi would be ideal as it is highly efficient for highway driving due to its aerodynamic shape and very economical 1,9L TDi engine.
If you're willing to go smaller, consider something like the Lupo 1.2 TDi or 1.4 TDi.
Beating 50 mpg is pretty easy with all of them and they are pretty reliable.
The Passat should get you into the 60 mpg+ range, the Lupo in the 70 mpg+ range.

In short: cost and availability. Diesel fuel is expensive here, most stations don't have it, there are very few diesel cars on the road, and most diesel vehicles sell at a huge premium. To my knowledge there is no smaller TDI than VW's 1.9, and they're really not all that easy to find.

[hayden55]

Diesel would be sweet but they for the most part don't exist here. We have full size truck diesels and suvs though. We did have some vw tdis but they weren't common to begin with and the majority of then were bought back or crushed.

In reference to your comment thats why we all want 90s Honda Civics. With the VX trans they get 50mpg.

Diesel is basically the worst sin you can commit in America. *laughs*

Gas here is $2.65 and diesel is like $2.90 tho
I have to be honest though I don't know if i would want to own a vw over a Toyota though. If it was a Toyota diesel i would trade my first born child.

[Autobahnschleicher]

Originally Posted by Ecky

In short: cost and availability. Diesel fuel is expensive here, most stations don't have it, there are very few diesel cars on the road, and most diesel vehicles sell at a huge premium. To my knowledge there is no smaller TDI than VW's 1.9, and they're really not all that easy to find.

The smallest they ever made was the 0,8L TDi for the XL-1.
The 1,2L TDi was also crazy optimized for efficiency in the Audi A2 3L and VW Lupo 3L, wich where rated at 2,99L/100 km and could easy be run with less than even that.
The 1.9 TDi is a little less fuel efficient, but known to last forever.
But with the higher fuel efficiency it should still be more cost efficient.

[Autobahnschleicher]

Originally Posted by hayden55

In reference to your comment thats why we all want 90s Honda Civics. With the VX trans they get 50mpg.

Diesel is basically the worst sin you can commit in America. *laughs*

Gas here is $2.65 and diesel is like $2.90 tho
I have to be honest though I don't know if i would want to own a vw over a Toyota though. If it was a Toyota diesel i would trade my first born child.

That's not actualy all that good in therms of fuel efficiency, my first car yielded almost 70 mpg and that wasn't a diesel, hybrid or modified.

Although a car beeing a VW instead of a toyota is probably a good thing in therms of reliability.
I've made the misstake of buying a toyota, and the amount of engineering failiures I've had to fix is insane.
Plus they all rust like crazy.
And toyotas/subarus diesels are either pretty terrible or bought in from other companies.

Gasoiline here is about 1,50€/L here wich equates to about 6,84$/gallon.

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by Autobahnschleicher

The smallest they ever made was the 0,8L TDi for the XL-1.
The 1,2L TDi was also crazy optimized for efficiency in the Audi A2 3L and VW Lupo 3L, wich where rated at 2,99L/100 km and could easy be run with less than even that.
The 1.9 TDi is a little less fuel efficient, but known to last forever.
But with the higher fuel efficiency it should still be more cost efficient.

What I meant was, they don't exist here. I'm unaware of a TDI smaller than VW's 1.9 having been sold in the US. There are a couple of tractor diesels one could conceivably swap in that are smaller, however.

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by Autobahnschleicher

That's not actualy all that good in therms of fuel efficiency, my first car yielded almost 70 mpg and that wasn't a diesel, hybrid or modified.

Although a car beeing a VW instead of a toyota is probably a good thing in therms of reliability.
I've made the misstake of buying a toyota, and the amount of engineering failiures I've had to fix is insane.
Plus they all rust like crazy.
And toyotas/subarus diesels are either pretty terrible or bought in from other companies.

Gasoiline here is about 1,50€/L here wich equates to about 6,84$/gallon.

Be careful that we're talking about the same gallon - it's a different volume between US and UK, for instance.

Honda sold the Insight here which had an official epa rating of 70mpg US highway, but would cruise at 100mpg at 50mph with the A/C off, even without the hybrid system enabled, which is 120mpg UK.

[Autobahnschleicher]

Originally Posted by Ecky

Be careful that we're talking about the same gallon - it's a different volume between US and UK, for instance.

Honda sold the Insight here which had an official epa rating of 70mpg US highway, but would cruise at 100mpg at 50mph with the A/C off, even without the hybrid system enabled, which is 120mpg UK.

I used the US gallon for this example.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by Autobahnschleicher

The smallest they ever made was the 0,8L TDi for the XL-1.
The 1,2L TDi was also crazy optimized for efficiency in the Audi A2 3L and VW Lupo 3L, wich where rated at 2,99L/100 km and could easy be run with less than even that.
The 1.9 TDi is a little less fuel efficient, but known to last forever.
But with the higher fuel efficiency it should still be more cost efficient.

Most of the diesel cars you have in Europe simply do not exist in the USA. Our only options for fuel efficient diesel cars in the USA were VW Golf, Jetta, Beetle or Passat and the Chevy Cruze. That is it. Today there are no diesel cars sold in the USA. We do have some diesel trucks and SUVs.

I had a 2003 Jetta Wagon TDI with the 5 speed manual and averaged 47 mpg over 10 years / 240K miles. The engine was trouble free but the body had lot of issues.

I have a 2014 Jetta Sportwagen TDI today. It is one of the cars that VW had to buy back because of emission cheating. I'm averaged only 37 mpg in mixed driving. Very disappointing and expensive to run.

Between those two TDIs I had a 2005 and 2009 Toyota Prius that were MUCH less expensive to maintain.

For reference there are 3.8L in one US gallon