The Camaro SS LS3 variant has this feature on the A6 SS's. So maybe that's where this is coming from.

Tom

The "Pius" drivers here in NorCal simply refuse to believe me when I tell them that my Vette routinely gets 25-26 mpg and doesn't look like it was carved from a block of clay by somebody on high powered pharmaceutical drugs. Calling a Prius ugly is actually being nice.

:cheers:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2263/...2b10de3b_o.gif

GM messed with displacement on demand with the vette, but scrapped it because it presented unsatisfactory driveline harmonics/resonance. In other words, they couldn't make it "transparent" feeling in the vette.

Probably also didn't hurt that the vette gets pretty good mileage as it is.

At least the system works better now than it did in the past....remember the V-8-6-4 Cadillac engine of the '80s????? What a nightmare!:thumbs:

It is fun to mentin the fuel efficience of our Corvette's when the hybrid dirvers start bragging.

When I was a young man working in the '70's, we had a coworker who religiously checked his fuel consumption and then bragged about his great Maverick. Some other workers started adding fuel to his tank and his bragging got worse. He couldn't believe that he would sometimes acheive 50mpg! The pranksters let him brag, but then they started removing just enough fuel to screw up his fuel mileage. He just clammed-up and if forced into talking about it, he would cite what his maverick did "last month". It was hard to keep a straight face. I would love to try this with some of my super-miler hybrid driving friends.

That is AWESOME!:thumbs: I have to figure out how to do that to one of my neighbor's rigs. He would go ballistic if his "WunderCar" starting getting 15-16 MPG all of a sudden:lol::lol:

What a great story!!!:thumbs:

Wish I had thought of doing that to one of my co-workers. :cheers:

:lolg: You know, if a vendor came out with a nice aluminum one in different colors, they'll be some that buy. LOL

:rock:

:thumbs: That's Hilarious!!

We may see DoD in the C7. They have to do some work to get driveline vibration issues solved with direct drive powertrains in light cars. Its probably a matter of ECM tuning and extensive testing to see how to switch back and forth without shaking the car noticeably.

My daughter's 08 Tahoe Hybrid has it and when it switches you can feel just a very slight tremor. In a car that weighs close to a ton less than the Tahoe that tremor might make the occupants think they had experienced an earthquake.

Bill

Cylinder deactivation is what they call it now. The "Dead on Delivery" as we called it in house is no more. It really didn't pan out all that well. If you every drove one you almost had to be on a dyno to get it to stay in 4 cylinder mode. Just a little tip in on the throttle and it was back to a full eight.

I'm sure some vendor here will come out with a block made of carbon fiber....:rofl::rofl:

Like I said . . . . :D

print this article and give it to him

Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.
The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.
“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.
All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?
Wait, I haven’t even got to the best part yet.
When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer – the Prius’s arch nemesis.
Through a study by CNW Marketing called “Dust to Dust,” the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles – the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.
The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.
So, if you are really an environmentalist – ditch the Prius. Instead, buy one of the most economical cars available – a Toyota Scion xB. The Scion only costs a paltry $0.48 per mile to put on the road. If you are still obsessed over gas mileage – buy a Chevy Aveo and fix that lead foot.

Pretty sure we will see DOD (displacement on demand) in the C7 5.5 liter.

I have a 2009 Dodge 1500 Quad Cab with 5.7 Hemi. Its 390 horse. Mine has a 3.92 sure grip differential and 20 inch tire/wheel package. It has multiple displacement system (MDS) Goes from V8 to 4 cyl. It works flawlessly. It is piratically a seamless transaction. If I didn't have a duel Magnaflow exhaust other then the fuel saver light I'd never know it was swapping. That system has been out several years on the Dodge Hemi and no real issues of any sort have been a problem. Oil usage has not been a issue. Some of these trucks on the forums have 200k plus miles and no issues. I ran a Cadillac service dept a few years. Saw a few Cadillac v8/6/4s come in. It was a mechanical system. I had a tech that could and did make them run and work pretty good. He said the biggest issue with them was butchers working on them. He spent more time fixing others butcher job then he did fixing the original issues. They were only in production 1 year I believe.

1 hp=2,545 BTU
1 gal of gas=115,000
My Prius II goes one hour @ 62 mpg @ 60 miles/hr.
My 08 Vette goes one hour @ 30 mpg at 60 miles/hr.

So the Prius uses about 26 hp to travel that distance.

The Corvette uses about 60 hp to travel the same distance.

Logically then the Prius is more than twice as efficient as the Vette.

Comparing peak hp to each other is meaningless for efficiency. How far and often does one run any car at it's peak hp?

The Vette is 436 hp and the Prius II has an 80hp traction motor and the 1.8 liter 99 hp gas motor.

By the way the Prius does not use Li-Ion batteries, they use magnesium hydride batteries made by Panasonic. To insure the supply Toyota purchased Panasonic. Many of the original 2002 Prius's with over 200,000 miles still have the original battery according to a auto review in the transportation section of last weeks Chicago Tribune.

How long do the batteries last in our Corvette's.:rofl:

Toyota does not own Panasonic, they are in a joint venture together to produce batteries which is called Primearth EV. It is 60% owned by Toyota and 40% by Panasonic. Current Prius batteries are of the Nickel Metal Hydride type.:thumbs: