2007 Toyota Camry Article at Automotive.com

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2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid

Below is an enthusiast article written by the automotive experts at Automobile. It's all about the mileage--and definitely not the driving experience.

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Value Rating

Excellent

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IntelliChoice Value Rating

The chart above shows the purchase price versus ownership cost for each car from a specific vehicle class. The cars with better than average ownership cost/purchase price correlations are the best values, and these best value cars are represented by the dots below the curve. (i.e. the cars that have a lower ownership cost compared to its purchase price.) Those cars, which are worse than average or poor values, appear above the curve.

One way to view the graph is to draw a vertical line through any purchase price. You may see several dots that fall on this line - each of which is a car with a similar purchase price. However, notice the difference in ownership costs of each car represented by the vertical position of the dot. Two cars with the same purchase price can have thousands of dollars difference in ownership costs. This is what separates "good value" cars from "poor value" cars.

What is a good car value?

A "good car value" is one whose cost to own and operate is less than expected. The lower the cost to own and operate a car compared to what is expected, the better the value of that car.

But how do we know a car's "expected cost"?

For each car in the class, IntelliChoice plots the car's purchase price against the total five-year cost to own and operate it as determined by IntelliChoice research. Each dot on the above chart represents a specific car. Generally, we find that as the purchase price of the car increases, the cost to own and operate that car increases. This is why the dots on the graph tend to rise upward and to the right. This phenomenon also makes intuitive sense - as the purchase price rises, financing costs tend to rise, as do insurance, depreciation, taxes, and most other car ownership costs.

This is an important concept. It's normal for car ownership costs to rise as purchase price rises. Therefore, we can't just establish one "average" ownership cost number for each class, since cars in the class have different purchase prices. (This is why the "Relative" shown on each chart is different for cars in the same car class.)

Using statistical techniques, IntelliChoice "connects the dots" to form a curve that defines, for this car class, the relationship between the car's purchase price and car's ownership costs. This curve is our "expected cost" curve. The curve defines, for any car in the class, the five-year ownership cost that we would expect to see at each possible purchase price. If every car in the class were an average value, then all the dots would fall exactly on the curve. However, it's rare that any dot is exactly on the curve. Some dots are a little higher or lower, and some are a lot higher or lower. The dots that are a little lower are better than average car values, while the dots that are a lot lower are excellent car values (A dot that is a lot lower than the curve has ownership costs much lower than expected for a car of its purchase price). Conversely, a dot a little higher than the curve is a poorer than average car value, while a dot that is much higher than the curve is a poor car value.

Value is a relative term, not an absolute term. It is performing better than the logical expectation.

So is a Mercedes-Benz E320 expensive to own and operate? Certainly in an absolute sense. Most other cars cost less. But, when its cost to own and operate is plotted against cars with comparable invoice prices, the E320 costs less. So the E320 is not expensive to own and operate - it is a good car value. The Mercedes does not have low ownership costs, but it has low ownership costs for its invoice price.

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Article From Automobile Magazine

2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid - Four Seasons Wrap-up

By Rusty Blackwell / Photography by A.J. Mueller / Article provided by: Automobile Magazine

Back in 2001, we completed our first--and heretofore only--Four Seasons test of a gasoline/electric hybrid vehicle: a Honda Insight that yielded an observed 49 mpg. Our 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid's mileage fell far short of the itty-bitty Insight's economy figure, but the Toyota's twelve-month average of 34 mpg was impressive considering that--unlike the basic Insight two-seater and, to a lesser extent, Toyota's own Prius hatchback--the Camry is a mainstream sedan capable of carrying five adults in comfort.

But comfort and fuel economy aren't everything for automotive enthusiasts like us. Nonhybrid Camrys certainly aren't brilliant sport sedans, and the hybrid components, which add about 300 pounds to the car's curb weight, don't help. Staff members complained that the Camry Hybrid offered few entertaining qualities: the handling was soupy, the steering felt artificial, the ride was bouncy, and the brakes were grabby and noisy.

"The Hybrid isn't simply a Camry that gets better mileage and pollutes less," noted senior editor Joe Lorio. "There are compromises: a bouncier ride because of the heavy battery pack; a smaller trunk resulting from all that hybrid hardware; and weirdly varying throttle responses due to the dual power sources and the continuously variable transmission (CVT)."

Contributor Ronald Ahrens agreed, adding, "I liken the experience of driving this car to going hiking with ankle weights on."

Lorio elaborated on his primary complaint in a later logbook entry: "I'm still annoyed by the constantly varying throttle response when the hybrid system switches back and forth between drawing power from the battery and recharging it. It's almost like driving into a gusty headwind or through patches of standing water. And then in city driving, you have the grabby brakes and the shudder when the engine restarts."

Fortunately, gentle pedalwork can defer this shuddering for quite a while, since electric propulsion alone can accelerate the car to more than 20 mph; battery power also can independently maintain cruising speeds of up to 40 mph or so. And when the driver brakes or coasts for more than a second or two--at almost any speed--the engine turns off and the larger of the car's two electric motors becomes a generator to convert unwanted momentum to an electrical current that's used to recharge the battery. After a short time behind the wheel, it became clear that exercising the hybrid system is easily the most entertaining thing about driving the Camry Hybrid.

"It's fun to try to obtain maximum fuel economy," road test editor Marc Noordeloos noted on our first day with the car, "even though I felt like I infuriated every other driver on the road. `Can't you see I'm trying to save the earth!' is what I wanted to yell at everyone who was tailgating me."

To grade such Captain Planet attempts, our Camry had several different gimmicks: an instantaneous-consumption meter, a basic power-flow diagram, a more colorful graphic of the energy usage, and a bar graph illustrating recent minute-by-minute mileage. Finally, the trip-computer screen provided positive reinforcement of our fuel-sipping prowess (flashing the message, "Excellent! Excellent! Excellent!") if we turned off the car after a session in which we'd scored an average of 36 mpg or more. Yes, scored was the proper term, as a number of us found ourselves fixated, video-game-style, on these readouts. Hybridizing a vehicle has other benefits, too. The electric boost gave our Camry more get-up-and-go than you'd expect from a large sedan with a 147-hp, 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine.

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