Slipping Backwards (and not in a good way)

I am an outspoken proponent of high gas prices. So, therefore, when NWCN tells me that gas prices are coming back down, I get frustrated.

Why am I against low gas prices? A few reasons, though don’t expect these to be well-explained:

  • Gas fails to reflect “true cost”. “True cost” is my name for what is usually coined “social cost“, or the actual, social consequences of the manufacture and sale of a particular commodity. A good example from the Wikipedia article linked to above:

    Negative externalities (external costs) lead to an over-production of those goods that have a high social cost. For example, the logging of trees for timber may result in society losing a recreation area, shade, beauty, and air quality, but this loss is usually not quantified and included in the price of the timber that is made from the trees. As a result, individual entities in the marketplace have no incentive to factor in these externalities. More of this activity is performed than would be if its cost had a true accounting.

    The same can be said for the production of petroleum; we don’t consider the loss of precious natural resources or the pollution cost in refinement (not to mention social consequences that stem from refinement, the economic costs required to transport petroleum, etc.). If these were accounted for, the cost of gasoline would be much higher.

  • Low gas prices promote fuel-inefficent vehicles. Keeping gas prices low offer no disincentive for the purchase of sport utility vehicles or other cars with very low MPG ratings (sports or “exotic” cars in particular); certainly, while those who can afford an SUV can likely afford higher gas prices, keeping those prices low isn’t likely to make people think about the amount of money they waste on gas instead of taking a number of measures to lower fuel cost.
  • Low gas prices only prolong our dependence on oil. Now, I’m not one of those “we must abolish oil usage yesterday” freaks, though I do believe that we have to conserve our natural resources as best as possible for future generations. The development of alternative energy, whether that be biodiesel, electric vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, or fuel cell vehicles, is a worthwhile exercise in preserving our children’s future. It doesn’t matter where the solution comes from; fuel/electric hybrids are a great first step for transportation, but they are not the end-all of energy problems. They are also only one of many possible solutions.
  • As long as the “panic mentality” of high gas prices is maintained, no progress in bettering the world can be made. The issue of high gas prices affects far more than cars. It also has direct impact on the overall costs of running businesses, the ability of groups to cope with emergencies, and, rather indirectly, the development of community. That last point is a rather interesting one — so long as we can travel far on low gas prices, we aren’t as likely to pursue options that develop community: carpooling, living closer to an urban center, reducing the amount of distance between us and our everyday destinations (work, the grocery store, the bakery, the mall).

I admit, I drive a hybrid; I do this because of some of the reasons above, but also because I like to keep my costs low (and driving a hybrid car does, in fact, help me do this). I hope I will continue to drive hybrids as my primary vehicle for as long as I can drive.

Pulse and Glide

Coming home from Snohomish today, I decided to use some slightly different driving techniques to see what I could do in terms of maximizing my tank efficiency. I had just filled up earlier in the day about an hour before departing, then driven about 5 miles to my parent’s house.

I didn’t decide to try anything until about halfway home in stop-and-go traffic in Tacoma. There are two driving techniques that are not unique to the Prius but that are particularly useful in increasing MPG: pulsing and gliding. The best explanation of this comes from Yahoo’s Prius-2G list (specifically, this message):

Think about riding a bicycle. Pedal until you get up to speed, and then just stop pedalling
and glide. When you slow down, pedal again, then glide again. That is exactly what “pulse
and glide” is.

One fine point – the glide. Gliding is possible mostly at less than 40 MPH, when the
engine is warmed up and the battery charged. You mentioned taking your foot off the
pedal and coasting. That is a start. While watching the “energy” screen, after you take
your foot off the pedal, with a very light touch step on the pedal slightly until the arrows
all go away. That is gliding, with no electric motor, no gasoline engine, and no
regererative braking. You will notice the car glides a good long way.

Switching to the energy screen and doing some trial-and-error, I managed to do a couple of fairly long sustained glides under 25MPH, though, due to the activation of the internal combustion engine at higher speeds, the ability to glide becomes progressively harder. I did try, and managed to do it for a split second once near 55, but it’s not easy to sustain.

By the time we got back home, we had attained 62.4MPG with some heavy boxes in the hatch area and 89 miles driven. Not bad, but that MPG number would be more impressive with a higher number of miles. My goal for this tank is to beat the best displayed MPG of 55.8 for a single tank by at least 2.2MPG, resulting in a 58MPG screen or better. We’ll see if this happens – so far, an average tank takes me a little less than 340 miles per tank, with a wide range between 207 and 464 miles on a single tank.

I have to point out, however, that my refill policy thus far has been a little panicky, as I haven’t always waited for two bars on the gauge — this is my new policy and I don’t intend to break it if I can help it. Thus, my average tank length will likely increase over the next five to eight tanks or so as I’m careful to make sure that that policy is followed.

Not So Scratched!

After removing all the paint transfer last weekend and cleaning the car this afternoon, the damage isn’t really all that bad – nothing some good buffing and Toyota paint can’t fix.

On the plus side, I now have 1,000 miles on the car. She started at 16,972 miles and reached 17,977 miles this afternoon. So far, my driving average is 59.12 miles per day, which is much higher than it actually is on a week-by-week basis. I’m driving about 20 miles per day in Olympia – everything else is long-distance trips to Bellingham and Snohomish.

Either way, this car is working out quite well.

Scratched!

When I pulled in last night, I pulled in such that my rearview mirror was between two support beams on the right-hand side of the car, so that if I had backed out without correcting the problem, I would’ve lost the rearview mirror on that side of the car. After adjusting for this and starting to back out properly, I started turning the wheel a little too soon and heard a nice, sickening pop. I swiped one of the poles pulling out. Needless to say, I immediately stopped, pulled forward, hit park, and checked to see how bad the damage was. There’s quite a bit of paint transfer and a couple nice scratches on the bumper which looks worse than it probably is in terms of the bumper itself.

On a Prius, you can’t see the front of the car, so judging distance from an object is nearly impossible (the same is true, I’m told, of Volkswagen New Beetles). Thus, the scratches.

After coming back from work, Amanda and I took a closer look — it looks like the bumper on the right side of the car might’ve actually shifted down a tiny fraction from its original position, since comparing the left side of the car with the right side of the car shows a slightly larger gap on the right side between the headlight and the bumper.

(Note: when I say “right” here, I mean the right-hand side as if I were sitting in the driver’s seat.)

I’ve been pissed at myself all day for hurting my precious baby. Grr. And this after about a week and a half of ownership…

First Week Prius Summary

After driving my new 2004 Millenium Silver Prius for a week, I do have some impressions and notes. I do want to note before I begin, however, that I’ve decided to name her “Cassie”, after Cassandra in Greek mythology. Wikipedia has a very complete entry on Cassandra here.

I had the opportunity to take Cassie on a round trip between Bellingham and here last Thursday and Friday, for a total of 342 miles round-trip. This gave me a chance to test her on long-distance driving, along with her cruise control and some other minor creature comforts. She handles very well on the highway and can compete with pretty much any other car on the road in terms of acceleration and keeping pace. I was, however, being a bit of a slowpoke most of the way up by sticking between 60 and 70 miles an hour (and almost never topping 70). The first leg of my trip took me between the apartment and my parent’s house in Snohomish, which entailed going up I-5, then connecting to 405, then 522. I was doing a very large amount of right-hand lane driving, which essentially meant that I had to slow down or stop depending on how close to a major exit I was getting. This was alright, since it meant that I was getting pretty good MPG out of it. The trip went quite well getting out there, though I had music on the whole time to keep my nerves from getting too worked up.

After stopping at home and picking up some things, I continued on to Bellingham by taking highway 9 to highway 2, then rejoining Interstate 5 at Everett. Once again, I was doing a lot of right-hand lane driving, though this time I did occasionally go as fast as the 70 mile an hour speed limit in some stretches. Basically, the trip up let me confirm several things:

  1. Driving over 60MPH is a definite damper on the overall MPG for a particular trip. The closer you get to 70, the more your efficiency drops off, though I found that going 63-65MPH didn’t cause that big of a hit.
  2. The cruise control doesn’t manage MPG as well as my foot can. Being able to “feather” the gas pedal at certain points can greatly improve an MPG rating within a specified time frame and puts less wear on the system overall. The cruise control isn’t capable of simply allowing the car to coast and take a slight speed hit for increased efficiency; it’s aim is to keep you at one exact speed. Sometimes, being able to coast so that you lose speed from 65 to 58MPH within a particular area can not only increase MPG, but increase the life of other mechanical parts (as well as my own safety as a driver).

    Others have tossed around numbers for how much of an efficiency hit you take by using the cruise control, but for me, it seems to be in the 3-5MPG range. This is a wild guess based on what I saw the consumption graphing doing over time.

  3. This car has a lot more cargo room than it looks. This was especially confirmed on my return trip.

Getting there took me about four and a half hours total due to the detour to my parent’s house, but when I got there, I was immediately able to show off the car to several people, including Amanda’s dad, who’s an auto parts person and was very interested in seeing a hybrid.

The next morning, with the assistance of Amanda’s dad, I increased the tire pressure to the owner recommended 42/40 front/back PSI measurements. I haven’t really noticed a difference since making this change, but it will definitely improve the life of the tires. As a side note, the car still has their original manufacturer-installed tires: Goodyear Integrity. These are not the greatest tires on the market, but they get you from place to place.

I also took the chance to refill for the first time on Friday morning, though I didn’t really need to – the tank was still only half full. I didn’t want to let it fall below half full immediately, so I pulled off at the local Chevron and filled it with about 4 gallons worth of gas. I probably should have let it go a little longer, since by the time we got back to Olympia, the gas meter was only one bar below full. That tank of gas had a displayed tank MPG of 53.9, but I calculated it out to a total MPG of 59.79. Those two numbers likely would have been closer together had I waited longer to refill.

Going back down, we had the cargo area filled to the top of the pull-out cover, which was a fairly good demonstration of how much cargo the car can actually hold. People who think it won’t carry much cargo at all would be very pleasantly surprised at how much it actually does carry.

There’s not really all that much more to report at this point. I’ll add more notes and thoughts as they come up.

Prius Experiences for 6/25

I went out to Evergreen and took a whole bunch of pictures today while parked in a mostly empty parking lot. Those pictures (perhaps an overly extensive set) are located here. I appear to be falling victim to the Prius Owner Photo-Taking Syndrome, which has affected some other Prius owners as well. Of course, more photos will be forthcoming.

Last night, I went ahead and popped a CD into the audio system, knowing I would be taking photos this morning. The sound quality is really quite good, and since I had to turn the car on to pop the CD in last night, the music started right up when I turned her on this morning.

The drive over had one semi-long wait — the Evergreen Parkway is being repaved, and they picked this weekend to do a very large stretch of that work. So I ended up driving through a construction zone to get to the lot so I could take my pictures. After taking the pictures, I went out next to the Library Loop and noticed that that was closed too. I decided to avoid construction and go out towards Highway 101.

There’s a roundabout now where there used to be a couple of turn lanes — this was kind of a waste of money, since it also included taking a four-lane road down to a two-lane road. Anyway, going out towards the highway, there was a very large pipe ditch that apparently never got covered. I slowed way the hell down so that I wouldn’t accidentally set off the airbag system by hitting the forward edge, rolled forward, and got stuck. Thankfully, a good press on the gas pedal got me out of it, but it shocked me that there was even something there to get stuck in. Steel plates, anyone? Detours, maybe?

I did check the Prius when I got home to make sure that that little encounter with a road-width ditch didn’t damage the car. Thankfully, no damage visible.

As I keep driving this car, I’ve noticed that my nervousness surrounding driving is starting to slowly drain off. Chalk that up to both experience and having a car that’s really fun to drive. More later.

New Prius

[This post is backdated.]

As it turns out, the new Prius in the family is actually mine. They had a used 2004 Millenium Silver Prius at Titus-Will in Tacoma which we opted to get. The car was originally put into service on April 27, 2004, making it a little under a year and three months old. It’s a Toyota Certified Used car with an initial mileage of 16,972 miles. My parents initially test drove it and I didn’t have a chance to drive it until we were done with the paperwork and leaving the lot. I can make brief comments on some functionality here, but not a whole lot.

The drive is a very interesting one in this car, and is actually much more enjoyable for me than it would be in a normal car. Since I’m hearing impaired, the big thing for me is cabin noise, which the Prius handles excellently. At low speeds with only the battery running, nothing can be heard but whatever music is playing at the time — at highway speeds, it’s still possible for me to hear the sound with a much lower volume setting than I might otherwise have to use. Both great advantages.

Tons upon tons of information is available about this car, but the real kicker for me was that, at least in terms of overall operation, there is little difference from a standard car. There is still a gearshift and responsive steering — the only difference is that the Prius has an environmentally sound PZEV rating. Admittedly, this car is not going to solve all the environmental problems in the world, but it does reduce the footprint a single driver (and his or her passengers) have on the environment. I once mentioned the Leave No Trace hiking philosophy when discussing the Prius on this blog, and that definitely rings true.

Anyway, I made it home and pulled into my parking slot with 17,005 miles on the odometer. A very comfortable car, though I didn’t have much chance to test very much of it out. The consumption screen is very useful (and I managed to get at least one instance of 100+ MPG displaying on there). I turned on one of the area’s classical music stations on the way home and enjoyed being able to make the drive myself.

Further notes and impressions to follow.

Prius Stuff: Followup

I’ve done some e-mailing on the toyota-prius and Prius-2G Yahoo! Groups, and there appear to be a number of people who have first-generation Priuses with easily twice that offered mileage (one person cited 180,000 miles, a bit under twice the number of miles on the eBay car described below. Here’s the incredible part — he claims to still be on his original set of brakes!).

This doesn’t really settle the question, since with each new model year, we get slightly different reactions. I would anticipate that the second-generation Priuses (2004-5 model years) will fare just as well, if not far better.

Prius Stuff

Out of curiosity, I pulled up the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration’s safercar.gov web site to compare a 2001 Toyota Prius, a 2005 Toyota Prius, and a 2004 Subaru Forester side-by-side. The results are interesting — the 2005 Prius is only slightly less safe than the Forester and an obvious improvement over the 2001.

What brought this on? A 2001 Toyota Prius has been on eBay for the last couple weeks under a couple different item numbers, first listed at $11,980 (item #4555762203, Buy it Now price) and now listed at $11,480 (item #4557663223, Buy it Now price). The recommended MSRP is much higher — around $17,000 for that particular vehicle (the auction says $16,000, but I’m being a bit more generous and tagging on an extra thousand).

So here’s the question looking at those auctions inspires for me. The car has roughly 92,000 miles on it, but I’m curious whether that kind of mileage should be a negative when considering purchasing full hybrids like the Prius. On a normal ICE, I wouldn’t dare go anywhere near that car with a 25-foot pole. However, since Priuses are gasoline/electric, there isn’t as much wear and tear on the gas engine, so it seems like reliability would be just as good as if the car had roughly 50,000-60,000 miles on it. No proof to back up that wild guess, but it would be interesting to see data on this.