RE: Toyota Prius Nurburgring lap record
Wednesday 16th July 2014
Forgive the slight Nordschleife fixation at the moment but we've been spending some time there of late and it's very much front and centre. We're not the only ones it seems and in a slightly surprising move Toyota has attempted to draw a link between going for lap times with the Lexus LFA and recording rather different feats in ... a Prius.
XF left trailing in the Toyota's wake...Using a Prius Plug-In, Toyota completed a lap of the Nurburgring in a public session using five tablespoons of fuel. An average speed of 60kph (37mph) is required during a public session and the recorded time was 20:59. The 12.9 miles is within the electric range of the Prius but the combustion engine was required for one of the steeper uphill sections. Even so, its minimal use meant the Prius registered 698mpg (the official claimed is 134mpg) on the lap. The Prius was standard bar some low rolling resistance tyres.
Toyota Prius Nurburgring lap record
Involves slightly less tyre smoke than an F-Type, amazingly enough
XF left trailing in the Toyota's wake...
Toyota has used the lap to promote the EV ability of the Plug-In compared to the regular Prius and certainly it's a novel way of drawing attention to it. As the first attempt at an mpg benchmark at the 'ring, perhaps we'll see a race to efficiency records rather than lap times now. Just in case it wasn't scary enough it might become packed with hybrids on 20-minute laps. Or perhaps not. Could VW have a go with an XL1?
See the lap video here.
Discussion
oh wow, so it can do 12.9 miles at least on a charge, and get round using just 5 tablespoons of fuel... The 918, panamera hybrid, i3, i8 etc can all do that without using any fuel... and then the all electric ones like the tesla model s with over 300 miles range, the Nissan leaf etc which can do it without a drop of fuel ever being used. not impressive at all
Edited by AndrewSV on Wednesday 16th July 11:56
lufbramatt said:
So what does the "mpg" of this work out to then?
(Perhaps this was an attempt at humor? If it was then the part you left out was it needed to be funny... being ignorant to how, where and why power is produced is no excuse for not finding out before trying to make a joke of it because FYI- its still more economically and less polluting to produce electricity in the station pictured than by driving a IC car)I actually think "a lap" is a viable measure for eco cars, be they EV's or otherwise but MPG isn't the correct result in this case, as you have a fixed length test and a time to beat as well as energy used you need a figure that encompasses all three, a power/lap figure makes more sense, doesn't matter if you're fast or slow just the power used to do it- if you can go fast enough the amount of energy used is less important so balancing good speed against economy would win out.
Im sure my car which officially only does 34mpg combined, if I stuck it on low resistance tyres and stuck the cruise on at 40mph for the entire journey I bet I could get 60-70mpg. Obviously the number is useless for real world driving.
I agree ref the comment about the majority of motorway prius drivers. 90mph seems their min speed. Then its just a heavy car being pulled by an underpowered petrol.
Be interesting to see what the equivalent new 1.6 diesels can do.
I agree ref the comment about the majority of motorway prius drivers. 90mph seems their min speed. Then its just a heavy car being pulled by an underpowered petrol.
Be interesting to see what the equivalent new 1.6 diesels can do.
scubadude said:
lufbramatt said:
So what does the "mpg" of this work out to then?
(Perhaps this was an attempt at humor? If it was then the part you left out was it needed to be funny... being ignorant to how, where and why power is produced is no excuse for not finding out before trying to make a joke of it because FYI- its still more economically and less polluting to produce electricity in the station pictured than by driving a IC car)I actually think "a lap" is a viable measure for eco cars, be they EV's or otherwise but MPG isn't the correct result in this case, as you have a fixed length test and a time to beat as well as energy used you need a figure that encompasses all three, a power/lap figure makes more sense, doesn't matter if you're fast or slow just the power used to do it- if you can go fast enough the amount of energy used is less important so balancing good speed against economy would win out.
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