New Suzuki Baleno

[benlovesgoddess]

Just found out about the Volvo V60 D5 SE Nav Twin Engine. A diesel hybrid plug in, been chatting with a couple of people from Volvo on LinkedIn. Not cheap at £38,000, but maybe a government grant of £2,500 plus some other discounts.

[Draigflag]

Yes there are lots of plug ins flooding the market now. I'm not so keen on plug ins to be honest, it just seems like you have to keep panic charging the thing as much as you can to fool yourself your getting good fuel economy. Most of them can only do about 20 miles real world on a charge, after than, it's just a regular petrol car with poor MPG. I think green car tested the Volvo and got less than 30 MPG in it. If you cared about fuel economy that much and wanted to save money, you wouldn't be spending that much to start with.

[LDB]

We don't have the Prius plug in here in Texas. I think it's pretty similar to mine except for the plug in function and going 15-20 miles all electric vs. 1-1.x miles electric. Outside those ranges I think it's similar good mileage to mine on gasoline. I wonder if that Volvo will eventually come here.

[benlovesgoddess]

The Volvo is a diesel, not petrol, they are reporting 72-74mpg - but as it is a demonstrator they are holding back using the battery, to show it to clients with it mostly charged.
If I could get guaranteed better mpg but higher pence per mile through super unleaded, I think I would!
And yes, if it was all about saving money, I would have paid off and put up with the i20.
Switching to the Prius not only added that higher cost, but wrote off £9,000 paid on the Hyundai, ouch!
I guess I want a nice car, but with better than average mpg. I think the Prius price tag was my upper limit, hence no Outlander PHEV or diesel hybrid.
The Prius test drive found me liking it far more than I'd have thought. I still take it out just to enjoy the drive.
It would again to be cheaper to keep buying older £400 - £800 cars and replacing them every year or two, and not even care a great deal about their economy, compared to buying even a very efficient new car bigger than a supermini.
This is what I did for more than a dozen cars before the incredibly unreliable Rover 75 put me off for good!
How is the Insight doing?
I see a lot of older Priuses, but still just the two Gen 4 ones, maybe August is when they'll all be delivered. When we bypassed the Yaris and went straight for the Prius my first thought was plug in, but they either didn't have (or weren't interested in selling) any of the outgoing model.

[Draigflag]

Oh sorry, you're talking about the V60, I thought you were talking about the new suv plug in they had. Yea Next Green Car tested that too, can't quite believe the hybrid is a shocking £15,000 more than the standard diesel and gets worse mpg too. After 500 miles they only averaged 41.3 MPG, and less than 40 MPG driving in diesel only mode. They also only got about 10 miles on electric. Utterly pointless set up if you ask me.

[benlovesgoddess]

They have offered me a two day test drive of it, but as the missus is next up for a new car, and she's not interested in it, and we can't afford it, not a great idea! As I'd need to fill it up twice and drive a few hundred miles to get à meaningful result, an expensive way to satisfy a little curiosity....

[trollbait]

The US will be getting the V90 PHEV from Volvo.

The Prius plug in was only available in 14 states, and probably fewer European countries. Toyota stopped manufacturing it last year. The unveiled a prototype of the Prius Prime recently. It has a 20 mile EV range, and should come out in the fall.

[arrow76]

Interesting Draigflag! I'll be keeping an eye on this one when it comes on the European market. Like you say above I think it's a great idea to combine the manual gearbox with simple, lightweight and cheap hybrid system. It may not achieve as high mpgs as a full hybrid, but the energy and resources required to produce the 12V battery for this system is certainly much less than for the big full hybrid batteries.
Are you sure the Honda Jazz Hybrid is still on the market? I recently had a look at the Honda website here in Switzerland and it's not there anymore. It may have been discontinued.

[Draigflag]

There's already some at my local Suzuki garage, not sure if its the hybrid, I don't think its out yet. Its not a bad looking car actually, looks better in real life than in pictures. The one I saw was bright red with chrome trim, looked smart.

[benlovesgoddess]

The Jazz Hybrid was discontinued a few years ago, i looked at getting one in march. I like the light green colour and very clever folding rear seats. Was due to test drive one, but the dealer never called me back. I'd bought the Prius 15 minutes after, but they didnt know that!