Camry Hybrid - Page 5 - GreenHybrid

blueskies · #41 (**permalink**) 01-01-2006, 10:24 PM

Oh well. I was just thrilled that they did not pair it with a V6. I have never driven a Camry. It may be that the 4 cylinder is more than enough for family usage.

But I guess they could have paired it with a smaller I4 for even better FE.

Well I think part of the problem is the ever increasing drive for HP that manufacturers deal with....

Quote:

Originally Posted by gonavy

...underpowered by who's standards? Toyota seems to have sold an awful lot of I4 Camrys as-is ...sounds like folks are pretty happy with it at 154ish.

Having more oomph may be nice and make a few extra sales, but the large majority of people buying a Camry-type car (or Accord, or Altima, or Fusion, or Malibu...) don't have performance on their top-three list. If it were the V6s would be outselling 4's by a lot.

I agree there probably is a niche for something between a 4 and 6's numbers, but Toyota could've truly pushed people's boundaries and expectations of the technology by pulling out all the stops in the Camry- a regular family car that even my 85 year-old grandmother is familiar and comfortable with, not the spaceship that the Prius is. They didn't, and we all lose becasue of it. It will still be a great vehicle, but not what it could've been. Ditto for Honda and the HAH.

Having siad that, NOBODY here can claim to know anything about the decision process that led Toyota to make it as it is. They're not dumb, and certainly have excellent rationale for why the product is what it is (will be?). All we can do is play "what if" and armchair the "ideal" vehicle.

xcel · #42 (**permalink**) 01-02-2006, 01:33 AM

CGameProgrammer · #43 (**permalink**) 01-02-2006, 03:49 AM

The Accord Hybrid is actually less than $1000 over the non-hybrid, but the non-hybrid it's based on is $29300 (for the 2006 model). Specifically that is the price of the automatic-transmission Accord EX with V-6 and satellite navigation. If you look at the list of consumer reviews for the 2006 Accords (scroll down to the trim levels), you'll see 19 people bought the I-4 EX and 18 bought the V-6 EX. So the V-6 was in demand by Accord buyers as was the high-end EX package, but very few bought navigation since it inflates the price by like $2500 for some reason. By equipping the hybrid with navigation, Honda targeted very few of the people that bought Accords.

Those same ratings for the Camry show 154 reviews for the I-4 and 82 for the V-6. So 35% of the reviews are for the V-6 and 65% are for the I-4. That's a sizable portion of V-6 reviews so there are plenty of people who like the power.

Well Toyota seems to have learned from that. They're using the I-4 and they're not basing the hybrid off the high-end Camry; it's probably the LE that it'll be based off of, judging from the unofficial specs published on treehugger.com.