In article ,
Pete C wrote:
See this real life test, quotes 58mpg over the first 1000 miles:

http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/road_tests/?id=135

IMO you've spent so much time replying to DIMM you've started thinking
exactly the same way...

Sigh. You really need to read Autocar to understand their philosophy.
They're not sensational journalists like 'honest john'. They're one of the
last remaining car magazines who try to be fair and objective.

However, here goes again. On each *full* road test they give the
government urban and combined figures. They also give their actual figure
for their *entire* test.

Then a figure for their standard test route which is a mixture of suburban
type high streets with moderate traffic and suburban dual carriageways
with a speed limit of 40 or so. They're based in Teddington, so it doesn't
involve central London traffic jams.

The Prius managed 44 mpg over this test route. Which is nothing
exceptional. As I said earlier, the very much faster BMW 330D diesel did
just 1 mpg less on the same test.

They do this because it gives a reasonable comparison between all cars as
submitted for testing. Cars submitted for government testing might well be
fiddled to improve their economy at the expense of performance. Since
Autocar also check the performance, and many will buy on this, it would be
a stupid maker who would try this trick on them.

Their *overall* test figure may well be on the low side against what most
drivers will get, because it includes testing for top speed and timed
acceleration runs. And the Prius was truly poor at 23 mpg. As it is when
driving at 70 mph on a long motorway journey - it's much worse than a
equivalent performance diesel.

Had it been designed for real economy, it would have used a diesel rather
than petrol engine. But it was designed for certain parts of the US market
where petrol is cheap and diesel not popular. And near zero pollution at
the point of use in city centres.

It's merely a curiosity in the UK. Just how many do you see on the roads?
If it was so wonderful, there'd be many thousands.

Oh - it also has rather high depreciation. It's quoted as only retaining
50% of its cost after 3 years. Something like a VW Golf is 60%.

--
*Confession is good for the soul, but bad for your career.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.