Not to sound rude, but I remember you were one of the ones that obsessively researched the new 06 HCH to death just like me for several months last year...and you are trading it in after about 20 weeks of usage? You will probably lose several thousand dollars in trade-in value, not to mention sales tax? All for a larger fuel tank (and 7-10 less MPG). Them marketing junkies at Toyota got you good! Oh, well...I guess it's your money...

http://priuschat.com/index.php?showt...d=210092&st=26
Prius is about 58 mpg at 60 miles per hour and 50 mpg at 70 miles per hour.
You are saying Camry Hybrid has better highway mileage than 2006 HCH and 20% better highway mileage than 2006 Prius.
Are you sure?

Ken@Japan

sorry, i didn't mean to be rude. my apologies. it's just that none of us should fall for the marketing hype or or cherry pick uncontrolled test data. i understand that you're unhappy with you 06 hch.ii and that you want a camry hybrid. great! go get it. however, we need to be careful about cherry picking certain data, especially if it is coming from an uncontrolled test. what's important from the screenshot that you've shown here is that the avg. mpg for the entire time the staff had the camry hybrid was 37.3mpg. for the hch.ii it was 40.7. the nearly 10% mpg improvement the hch.ii has over the camry is to be expected given that the camry is heavier and has a larger engine displacement. you pay for that stability and power. the camry is not going to magically deliver better mpg results. once you purchase your camry, you'll find, given the same driving conditions and techniques that you currently employ with your hch.ii that your mpg will be slightly lower - probably by about 10%. you'll probably end up around 35mpg. but, you'll have the car that you want; you're still saving the environment and getting great mpt and that's what's important!

Sure of what? I am sure the needle indicated at least 60 mpg at 70 miles per hour, and 50 mpg at 75 miles per hour, over a mile or so at each speed. I obviously do not know what real-life mileage would be with sustained travel since I do not yet have the car and only did a very short test-drive, and I do not know the accuracy of the gauge. I never pretended to.

I am not saying it has better highway mileage than a 2006 HCH either because, again, I have not driven it on a real drive, just a quick test-drive. Given Road & Track's results, its mileage is probably slightly worse (they got 38.3 with the Camry and 40.0 with the 2006 HCH).

For the record, I expect to get 35-38 mpg with the TCH, though it will probably be lower for the first tank or two (32ish?). But I also expect to get a car that is much faster, much smoother, and with a greater driving range.

Oh, and please stop comparing real-life MPG to EPA estimates. I got 96% of the EPA estimate with a 2000 Jetta driving extremely leadfooted, and 78% of the EPA estimates driving my 2006 HCH very gently, coasting alot, etc. You simply cannot use a fixed percentage to guess how one car does in real-life compared to another.

I want a cameraphone picture with the MPG display and the speedometer showing the 60 mpg @ 70 miles per hour.

Yup. It was the best hybrid for me at the time, but now that the Camry is out, that's my new favorite.

It was never about money, and there's no way I'd average 29 mpg with the Camry; every single review got at least 32 mpg and the latest reviews seem to return 37-38 mpg. And I have repeatedly listed many reasons besides tank size why I am buying it.

What marketing? You mean the stupid preachy TV commercial that I hate? I like the car for what it is. In fact the "marketing" of the low EPA scores seems to have influenced you guys into ignoring actual results people are getting.

The following is really unscientific, but when I first rented a 2005 Prius, the meter was initially showing 36 mpg over 180 miles by the previous renters (somehow), as far as I remember. The TCH showed 29 mpg over 321 miles, and test-drivers are even more likely to abuse the car. Me for example. So it might not be as bad as people are assuming, but this is just conjecture at this point.

I posted my results. If you want to argue, show me yours.

Oh, and Road & Track's test involved driving non-hybrid and hybrid counterparts literally side-by-side. They averaged 26 mpg with the V-6 Camry, and 37 with the Hybrid, driving right next to each other the entire time. If one is somehow "wrong" despite being a real-world recording (which makes no sense), then so is the other.

By the way, of the six cars they drove, only the Civics and non-hybrid Escape failed to meet the EPA highway score when they drove 75-80. The V6 Camry exactly met the EPA estimate of 29 mpg, the Camry exactly got it at 38, and the Escape Hybrid exceeded it with almost 32 mpg versus 31.

Hmm. Is the database ready to accomodate the TCH yet? Real-life fuel economy data from a bunch of cars is the only thing that will resolve this.

Let's get back to the topic: the test drive.

Does anyone know if the Optitron gauges have a ring of lights that change color when MPG exceeds a certain amount? I read in a review that they did that, and this is what the Lexus IS gauges do. They look very similar -- actually the entire dashboard does.

Thanks,
SR.

No it won't, since that shows tank mileage, not instantaneous mileage. No TCH will ever get 60 mpg in total, and I'd be lucky to get 40 mpg even on pure highway drives, I suspect. Yet they will and do get 60 mpg for at least brief moments on level highway at 70 miles per hour, according to the gauge. Just like the HCH. It's nothing new.

You guys apparently don't know the difference between a 10-mile test drive (involving one mile maintaining 70, 75, and 80 each) and actual normal driving. Believe me, when I buy the car, I will post my results, including actual "real" highway drives.