---wasting more energy than all of us do... really torqued me off... here's their piece...

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/01/epa_mpg.html
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here's my rant back to them. they asked for a consumer complaint... *What happened? Use as much space as you need."
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here's my rant in reply:
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it's one thing to rag on toyota for bogus mileage claims. it's another thing when the fault lies with a US government agency that hasn't updated its bogus EPA mileage tests in thirty years. anyone who expects their car to actually hit their EPA mpgs is out of their mind or hopelessly stupid, or, as happens so much today, trying to make a fast buck out of a lawsuit.

screw 'em.

i have an '04 prius, fully loaded. it's towed a trailer 'cross country with two dogs and me and my wife, and virtually never went below 35 mpg. it gets about 44 around town in Raleigh, where we now live.

to me, it's a little like the tobacco lawsuits: anyone who's been smoking for thirty years and hasn't had a thought that smoking might give them cancer is a cretin and should be excluded from lawsuits based on Darwin's theories.

i love my prius, and i did enough research and estimating to know darned well that i wouldn't hit 60mpg in city driving. there's not enough stop and go, light-to-light outside NY City to come close to that.

Morons!

just don't write your stuff in such a way to exonerate such mindless non-thinking and make it sound "so reasonable."

my wife and i are thinking of trading her '98 camry, which gets an average of about 20 mpg on the '97 camry hybrid, which has been touted at 40 or so mpg by early EPA estimates. i'm expecting an average of 30.

and two other things: it's WELL-known that cars' efficiencies drop in cold weather, and that includes hybrids, too. prisuchat.com and greenhybrid.com is rife with testimonials to that effect. someone who buys a car in the summer and gets worse gas mileage in winter and goes on to complain about it..... has never owned a car? every car does that.

second, it's been well-demonstrated, and i'm in perfect agreement with toyota: if you drive a prius with your foot either flattening the go pedal to the floor or mashing on the brakes, you'll never come close to ANY nice gas mileage. it takes a LITTLE skill and THOUGHT to realize that NO car gets good mileage under those conditions and neither will a hybrid!

don't be a perpetrator of bad information and more lawsuits by reporting half the picture.

"thanks."
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And in reply to the next box, labeled "Consequences. Describe the economic or physical damage that resulted.", here's my answer:

misinformation and likelihood of stupid lawsuits which might be damaging to toyota motor company might be initiated by morons.
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ah, that felt good. i feel better now. how cathartic.

 

ok... take a chill pill... it works both ways. if the epa updates their test, all cars will suffer.

 

no problem, Liv... already cooled off.. wait til LeahBeetle gets on my "case"....
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you're right.. the good news is that all of the numbers should come down, hopefully closer to the "reality" we know all too well... and that might de-fuse some of the stupid lawsuits..... that junk just really torques me, and sometimes, that's all the exercise i get on some days, so it's good for me...


happy motoring!

 

Wow, to get 30 mpg in a Prius you'd have to drive one mile, then turn off the car for several hours, then drive another mile and repeat. In other words, do ultra-short trips. One time I drove a Prius with A/C on and floored it every time I accelerated, never coasted, and drove 90 mph on the highway. I averaged 39 mpg over 60-odd miles according to the display.

 

Should I complain because I'm getting better than EPA numbers?

Bob Wilson

 

I'd say you did pretty well. You abused the car beyond what any normal driver would do and it still gave FE numbers which any other vehicle couldn't do.

 

That was the point I was making. Hell, my current car averages 39 mpg and I drive it very gently and coast whenever I can, though I still get up to 80 mph on the highway. I drove a Prius around a bunch of highways at 80 mph with A/C off, using moderate or gentle acceleration, and got 46.5 mpg over 60-80 miles. Oh, both times the Prius was rented so the tires were probably at 32 PSI. Bringing them to 42 might have added 2 mpg.

 

Remember this article the next time you read "horror stories" about any product or service.

 

LOL. I should too. Something is obviously defective.



Indeed. While a lot of consumer reports (not CR) type places can be useful, they can be woefully inaccurate as well. Reader Beware.

 

If you find out who to complain to, let me know. I'm over 57 mpg on this tank and it's a travesty that I'm not meeting EPA #'s