The Nissan Altima Hybrid Has electrically driven, Power steering and Air Conditioner compressor. So no help there. As I said i will dump it. Going to wait until the new Pirus comes out and see what it is. This thing is a joke. I appreciate the encouragement. I have been monitoring a friends Pirus (3 doors away) he gets 36.8 with the AC and same type of driving I do so that is about 22% better. The Altima is In my opinion at least 22% more vehicle, weight, air drag, cross section. tire drag, volume to condition and importantly bigger ICE it all adds up.

I don't believe the technology can do much better than it is doing. We need diesel engine powered Li-Po battery combination to truly achieve the 50-55 in my area and my kind of driving (normal) for a Pirus and about 40-50 in a Altima.

I really would have waited but I am a tech guy (retired NASA and all that stuff) and 72 and don't have time to wait 10 years for the more refined stuff to arrive.

I do believe the battery management could be better and should also be larger. Too many compromises having to be made at this stage. It is a many parted system and that idiot Goshen does not like to spend any money. I need to monitor the Camry site more closely and see how they are doing. I doubt it is more than 1 to 2 mpg better but 1 to 2 is nice. You have to be very carefully what you believe folks tend to extend a bit.

Don,

I guess that insane desert heat is just tooooooo much, if a Prius is only getting 36 mpg I think you have answered your own question!

How much do you want for the car? Color? Payments?

Don,

If your friend is only getting 36.8 MPG there is something really wrong. That is one of the lowest MPG I ever heard of for the Prius. He should be in the mid to upper 40's at least. My niece lives in Phoenix and drives a Prias and I saw her log when she came up for a visit. She is usually getting around 50 or 52 and she doesn't hypermile. Good luck.

Color Precision Gray, Black Leather interior, Tech package all accessories except Sunroof. I'll set price when the new Pirus comes out.

I have TWO friends in my housing area and the display ont the dash logs read 36.8 and 37.1 mpg Like me they are older and drive normally.

The problem with GipperDon's Altima and his friend's Priuses is their
driving pattern.

GipperDOn got his Altima on 6/01 and in little over a month drove
285 miles. This means a lot of short trips. A lot of short trips kill
mileage in a hybrid not to mention the intense use of AC in AZ.

When I drive my NAH after a long break the first 5 mins mpg
(from the Navi) is 18-24, then 36-44 and then I alternate between
55-60 mpg and 38-42 mpg as the battery charges and discharges.
This is all in city driving at about 40 miles per hour with minimal use of AC as
bay area is mild.

As a result my hand calculated average is 37.5 mpg. (I am at 2450 miles now in about 3 months) Now if I took 5 min drives most
of the time and then took long breaks in between so that the engine
cooled down, there is no way I could have broken 30 mpg.

So most city trips need to be alteast 15-20 mins to get decent mpg.
Else breaks between trips need to be short so that the engine does
not cool down in between.

I would call it a problem with the hybrid battery controller ability to work with my driving pattern and not a problem with my driving pattern. Obviously there are at least three of us that have these same driving patterns. If I drove off a cliff I bet the Nissan would be able to brag about that great milage. I don't have anyplace to go that requires more than a 10 mile drive before I stop. and In Scottsdale we can rarely go 45 miles per hr. Most posted limits are 35 and the traffic is thick and it is all city streets. We go to Grocery stores, resturants, Shopping malls and thats about it. I didn't know I needed to move from the urban city to a rual setting to agree with the patterns of the NAH system

I think it needs a Diesel and a Li-Po battery and a different controller one that adapts to the driving habits of the owner. We have many automatic transmissions that learn the habits of the driver and also even the Nissan Murano "learns" the fuel management system ecu. I also think that a PLUG would help me especially since I drive short distances and a double size battery would be good also.

So while I get your point I don't argure with it but I reject the lack excellence of the engineering that has designed it so poorly.

Gripper Don,

What kind of fuel milage did you get with your VW Pheaton? I can't imagine it was that great with the short trips and a 8 cylinder engine.

You mentioned an adaptive transmission but doesn't that just adjust the shift points between gears - shifts later for aggressive drivers - shifts earlier for light footed drivers? The eCVT in the NAH, Camry or the Prius doesn't have the ability to change shift points as it really only has the one gear ratio.

Too bad it's not what you expected but perhaps things will improve in the fall when the temperature goes down to at least under a 100.

Actually the NAH like the Pirus Camry have a continuously variable ration transmission. These systems are step-less and provide any ratio required.
I owned two Nissan Murano's before with the same type transmissions.

The Phaeton which had an adaptive 6 speed transmission did learn when to shift to fit my driving style and thereby provide the most efficient gear ration to be in. The mileage on the nearly 6000 pound full time 4 wheel drive car was astounding averaging 18.1 over the lifetime of the car. We ran the AC un-abated and drove the same as we do now having lived in our home for 12 years.

It also had This is partially why I am so disappointed at the NAH and think that a good dose of German engineering would greatly improve it.

AS I said before the mileage stinks.

I must be nuts to question an engineer but I don't believe eCVT in the Toyota/Nissan is the same as the CVT's you had in your Muranos.

The eCVT is actually called the Power Split Device and is more like a differential than a transmission. It only has a single gear ratio,

http://eahart.com/prius/psd/

http://www.cleangreencar.co.nz/page/prius-transmission

It has some of the advantages of a CVT but doesn't work the same way. The electric traction motor (M2) and the drive wheels have a fixed ratio. The ECU controls the speed/load of the generator (M1) and the gas engine to manage the power output. I read somewhere that the electric motor has maximum torque at 0 rpm so a low gear isn't needed to turn the wheels from a dead stop.