Quote:
Originally Posted by E60orBust
I asked a friend about that who owns a Prius. From an engineering perspective, driving the Prius at full throttle never let the electric motor engage so there was no savings in fuel economy.
So M3 owners can say their gas engine is more efficient than the gas engine in the Prius  |
Quote:
Originally Posted by carl_d
Its true, according to Top Gear, watch this
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There's a bit of fuzzy logic going on here. Yes, the Prius gets worse gas mileage than an M3 when driven under track conditions, but it's not because the Prius petrol engine is less efficient, it's because the Prius must pay a weight penalty for all the batteries and electric drive components that are going unused.
These are not light weight items. I'm actually a little surprised that the Prius did as well as it did (17 MPG) when you consider that it was hauling the equivalent of a trailer full of batteries and electric motors. If you wanted to test the efficiency of both engines (not the cars), you'd need to pull the engines out and test them on a bench.