Ford Focus just as clean as the Prius?
Ford Focus a better deal than the Prius?Perhaps you've seen the Ford commercial that compares the Ford Focus to the Toyota Prius? It admits the Prius is more efficient, but that the Focus is cheaper. Likewise, the commercial implies the Focus is just as clean as the Prius, as both are PZEV vehicles.
Now, on the highway, the Focus achieves about 37 mpg, the Prius about 45 mpg, on average. In the city, however, the Focus achieves about 24 mpg, the Prius 55 mpg. So, if you live in a city, especially with $4.00 gas, you'll easily make up the cost difference between these vehicles in gas savings alone.
And then there is PZEV, which is not about tailpipe emissions, but fuel system emissions. Obviously, in terms of tailpipe emissions, the Focus is nowhere near as clean as the Prius, especially in terms of carbon emissions.
The Ford focus is a fine car, but portraying the Focus to be as clean as the Prius and a better deal than the Prius is largely nonsense.
Labels: Hybrid Vehicles, toyota prius
posted by Dahcredyns at
7:49 AM
25 Comments:
It is probably about dust-to-dust energy cost. The bitter pill for all hybrid-lovers to swallow is that hybrids have (much?) higher production energy costs. Hope, that'll change when technology is mature enough.
So, if you live and drive in the city about 10-30 miles a day, Ford Focus might be a smaller burden to the environment (as earth in the whole). However, it is definitely much more dirtier for the city where it is driven.
24MPG from such a small car?
Pathetic.
It's embarrassing...over 100 years of automotive development and the best we can do for an average small car on an regular IC platform is about mid-20's MPG.
Truly pathetic.
actually, ford is using PZEV to make the claim.
that dust-to-dust argument has been proven incorrect by numerous studies. to a large extent the thing that would make hybrids less efficient in production costs is lack of supply chains, which is always the case with emerging technologies. once scaled, these production energy costs are squashed.
that's only in the city, on the highway this car achieves great fuel economy.
Itman,
I don't see why the Prius incurs more energy costs than a regular car. It's no bigger, the materials aren't super-exotic, nothing there tells me that the car is anything over the top other than its powertrain.
Imagine how much energy costs high end sports cars incur...with all that exotic alloy, high output, huge amounts of rubber for the wheels, etc...
The comparison between the Prius and a 7000lb POS Hummer is even more ludicrous. Obviously the idiots at CNW can't do mathematics because 7000lbs of material is MORE of a burden compared 3000lbs no matter how you cut it.
Hey...DUMBASS AUTOMAKERS...how about a 2200lb Focus with a start/stop system that gets 45 MPG Hwy and 36 MPG city?
Is that too much to ask? Are you guys (automakers) in reality that far behind in every other aspect of automotive engineering except perhaps IC technology that you can't offer that?
noz-
that start/stop functionality, i think, will soon become standard on all automobiles - at least it better.
Dahcredyns,
originally the claim was Prius against Hummer. Only that claim has been proven incorrect. If you compare Prius against a smaller car that would be a more interesting comparison.
First, Prius do have higher energy costs related to the production of battery, electric engine and additional electronics. Nobody would calculate it more ore less accurately (the fucking marketing), but they do exist. This is quite obvious.
Second, all these MPG-stickers don't count AC. The truth is that the difference between a Prius heavily using AC and a Ford Focus using AC is smaller. Thirdly, as I told previously, if you drive 20 miles per day in the city at 24 mpg and 140 miles per week on the highway at 37, your average fuel efficiency is about 30 mpg... This is not bad at all. It ain't technology competition, it is the real life. With 30-55 mpg difference you NEVER cover even half of the price difference between Focus and Prius.
Nozferatu,
Automakers are greedy, but as Dah commented, most cars will be mildhybrids soon. Even the dumb topgear show dares to compare Prius fuel efficiency only against a mild hybrid diesel car!
LB-
I'm very aware of the CNW study, which was demonstrated to be using decades old data, for instance, especially regarding nickel mining.
There are some higher energy production costs, but most will be irrelevant once scales of economy are leveled.
In terms of the Prius and the Focus on fuel economy, there is no comparison if you live in San Francisco, LA, Chicago, New York, etc.
Recently, tests were done on the Prius in Chicago and LA and the Prius was consistently achieving 55 mpg, under normal driving conditions. In these conditions the Prius blew away even a new Jetta diesel. This fuel economy was not achieved via hypermiling, which enables Prius drivers to achieve even better fuel economy. All cars were driven the same way.
Additionally, a huge percent of LA commuters drive far more than 20 miles per day, for instance. I know many drivers that commute between 50 and 100 miles everyday. That's very common in Southern California.
Last week, CNBC claimed that the average commuter in LA wasted $2500 per year, idling in traffic, a condition where the Prius uses NO fuel, or very little fuel. That's essentially free money to someone in a Prius.
When size, ammennities, and fuel economy are factored, a Prius will easily make up the price difference between a Prius and a Focus for a significant percent of SoCal area drivers, and probably the far majority, in my opinion.
When size, ammennities, and fuel economy are factored, a Prius will easily make up the price difference between a Prius and a Focus for a significant percent of SoCal area drivers, and probably the far majority, in my opinion.
I am sorry, but this is a total bullshit for now. E.g., what can put in this tiny trunk?
It will when the price jumps to 10$ per gallon. How often does Toyota requires to change the oil on hybrids cars?
PS: the national average is 30 miles a day, not 100.
LB:
There's more to driving the Pruis than just fuel mileage...it reduces pollution across the board.
And frankly, the national average means squat when most Pruis owners are in California and most Californians drive WELL IN EXCESS of 30 miles a day..and in horrible conditions mind you.
And what tiny trunk are you speaking of? I have a 2001 Focus and believe me when I tell you the Pruis is a MUCH bigger car inside.
People need to stop focusing just on fuel mileage and look at these cars as a whole. If not, then we might as well all wear dunce hats and buy into Chrysler's $2.99 a gallon BS for 3 years and pretend we are saving only what's important..money.
i'm talking about urban drivers, for which the prius makes the most sense, not the national average. i've consistently argued that the prius is primarily a car for ubran commuters.
tiny trunks? It's a hatchback with a lot of room and a ton of functionality. that's a ridiculous argument.
for the average LA driver, the Prius can easily save over $1000 per year compared to a Focus. a base prius msrp is about 21, a focus with automatic is 16. that's a five thousand dollar difference. after 5 years, you've made back your money and your car is worth more, so you get a better trade in, or you keep driving it and all your fuel savings are pure gravy.
now, if you drive the 25,000 miles per year, such as Jane Wells of CNBC, as well as millions of other SoCal commuters, that difference can be made up far sooner.
millions and millions of socal commuters can easily make up the difference between a focus and prius in 5 years or less.
THAT's A FACT.
And, when you add in the costs of foreign oil dependency, i'd rather drive a prius and reduce my foreign oil footprint rather than a cheaper focus even if i don't recover my costs.
tiny trunks? It's a hatchback with a lot of room and a ton of functionality
It does have a tiny trunk.
When you are talking about urban drivers, you really mean you friends who drive A LOT. An average urban drivers lives in 15-20 minutes driving from her/his work. Again, talking about price you don't tell us that Prius requires more oil-changes than Ford. I asked you if you 55mpg calculations included AC but you never answered. I am sure that they don't.
And, finally, what about 3 thousand dollars that are added to MSRP by many dealership now?
PS: I, like some other people, don't care about automatic transmission. Hence, I can get Focus even cheaper.
I'm sorry, but in terms of LA drivers, you obviously don't know what you are talking about. Yeah, the average LA commute is just 15-20 minutes. That's just a complete joke.
Most SoCal drivers would kill for such a short commute. Even when I lived 10 miles from my office downtown, my commute took over over 20 minutes on the best of days and I thought I was lucky because my previous commute, of the same distance, but from a more congested area, took 45 mins, minimally, and usually an hour - and that was under normal conditions. If it rained, commutes often doubled. I'll bet in those conditions, the Focus doesn't even achieve 20 miles per gallon.
Also, what kind of damage does extreme stop and go traffic do to a vehicle like the Focus? I'll bet it leads to significantly more maintenance than a vehicle like the Prius, which was built for these conditions. My old Sentra, for example, had to have its brakes replaced like regular maintenance.
Dahc, you are not answering my question about AC. Regarding brakes: I lived in a very congested and huge city (~10 million citizens) , I changed my front brake-pads in about 20-30 thousand miles. And that wasn't Toyota, that was the Russian car, if you understand. So, perhaps, that was something intrinsically wrong with either your Sentra or your driving style.
PS: It ain't really good that you have to change almost oil every 3.5 thousand miles or 3 months whatever is shorter.
re: ac, what do you want to know exactly?
i can't say that I've noticed much of a difference when i use my ac, maybe i don't turn it up high enough.
also, when i drive my camry hybrid, with the whole family, i put the ac on in the econ mode and, again, i don't notice that much of a difference in fuel economy. of course in my camry, versus the prisu, i like to use my moonroof, rather than ac when possible, so i might not be the best example of ac and hybrid performance.
still, when i'm in stop and go traffic with the ac on, i'm usually still functioning on just battery power when i'm stopped. when i start moving, it's harder to keep in electric mode as long compared to if i don't have ac on, but not by much. perhaps if i turned up the ac all the way, the difference would be greater.
Yes, I want to know exactly how much MPG on the average do you lose in a congested traffic, when it is 90 degrees outside and your has been parked outside the street for a couple of hours. Why nobody is talking about it? Despite the fact that your engine is not working much when you don't move, it doesn't mean that the energy is taken from nowhere.
LB SAID:
It does have a tiny trunk.
When you are talking about urban drivers, you really mean you friends who drive A LOT. An average urban drivers lives in 15-20 minutes driving from her/his work. Again, talking about price you don't tell us that Prius requires more oil-changes than Ford. I asked you if you 55mpg calculations included AC but you never answered. I am sure that they don't.
And, finally, what about 3 thousand dollars that are added to MSRP by many dealership now?
PS: I, like some other people, don't care about automatic transmission. Hence, I can get Focus even cheaper.
First off...the Prius is a larger car than the Focus...it has more trunk space. So you're wrong there. Sorry.
http://www.edmunds.com/apps/nvc/edmunds/VehicleComparison?basestyleid=100920075&styleid=100924407&maxvehicles=5&refid=&op=3&tab=specs
Second, the average commute according to 2003 US Census stats for Los Angeles is just under 30 minutes. AVERAGE. I'd say tack on a minute or so for each year that's gone by so now we are 2008 and the AVERAGE should be about 34 minutes.
That's ALOT for a city carrying over 10 million people now? So that's about DOUBLE your wrong assumption.
Third, who says the Prius requires more oil changes? What nonsense is that? Use synthetic oil and there is no problem with the Pruis (or Focus) oil being changed at 10k intervals...anything else and it's all bullshit talk.
Fourth...you again avoid to answer the question regarding overall emissions...NOX, CO, CO2, etc...not just fuel mileage. Aren't reducing those a benefit to everyone?
LB:
Regarding A/C...if you lose mileage on a Prius due to A/C use, you will lose as much if not more on a regular IC car. It's not rocket science.
A/C can make a car lose as much as 10-15% in mileage.
The best thing automakers can do is use solar powered A/C units that are not coupled with the engine.
lb,
OK, you win. Go ahead and buy a Focus.
You can't deny that a Prius offers lower pollution emissions and greater mileage. People can value those benefits differently. There are also unknown but potentially higher maintenance costs, as well as initial purchase price, and yet on balance some people value the benefits higher than the costs. And you can't deny that for some people with certain driving patterns the fuel cost savings make a Prius purchase more economical than most cars comparable cars.
I will grant you that most people from Moscow, and many Americans, wouldn't give a second thought to pollution concerns. But that is not the case for many people in Los Angeles, as we are faced daily with the effects of pollution and are educated as to its sources.
Of course, if all you care about is saving money, yes, please buy a Focus, if that will make you feel better.
i don't see big changes between summer and winter driving. perhaps, its my driving conditions, or my driving style. i'm also not a heavy AC user.
as stated before, when i'm stopped in congestion with the ac on, i typically functional solely on battery power, however, i can't stay in electric mode as long when i start moving with the AC on. still, i don't see big drops in fuel economy.
i am going on a few thousand mile cross country trip this summer, i'd be interested to know if the ac affects my performance on the highway more than my normal stop and go commuting.
a lot of new concepts are using solar powered AC, hopefully, that technology, like start/stop, becomes a standardized feature.
the prius is a great car for some people, not others. the ford focus is a great car for some people, not others.
what are you looking for in your car? what are your driving conditions? if you have to have a hybrid, and you don't drive in congestion, then the civic hybrid is the best hybrid, for example, i believe.
still, as to the question of this post, the ford focus is not as clean as the prius.
LB,
I asked you if you 55mpg calculations included AC
I drove from NY to Boston with AC and got 60 MPG. If you are curious about amazing MPG of Prius during rush hour congestion traffic, search "Prius congestion" on google video.
I made those videos just for people like you.
Thanks for the info about your Prius videos Dennis!
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