Originally Posted by mjanowich
There are no other production cars that are powered only by a combustion engine that get better gas mileage than the Prius. And I'm not talking about EPA sticker mileage, I'm talking real world driving conditions. If you need proof, check out Consumer Reports.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/c...ient/index.htm
We typically average 50 mpg on highway road trips and 42-44 mpg in normal suburban driving and that's calculated by what the onboard computer tells us.
My neighbors wife is an Engineer at Toyota headquarters here in Torrance California, And they owned a Prius for about a year. He very rarely made 50 mpg unless going down hills while driving on the freeways or around town. 40-45 mpg is more accurate, but let's not split hairs. Lol.
Actually there are combustion engine cars that do get 50 mpg. There is the 3 cylinder Geo metro, Honda civic HF the super lightweight model with lightweight forgerged wheels, and I think the Ford Fiestas might have made 45 mpg.
Back in the 70's, Smoky Yunick converted an Iron Duke 4 cylinder motor into an Adiabatic hot vapor engine from the Pontiac Fiero. It made a little better than 50 mpg, and put out around 280-300 hp. In fact the head engineers at GM thought it was total BS, until they drove the little Fiero. They where left astonished by how much power it made and how durable it was. But I doubt we will ever get to know the secret behind the idea of how old Smoky made it work...I think there's alot of ceramics involved.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1984-...QQcmdZViewItem