Talk:Toyota Prius (XW20)

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Alternatives to official fuel consumption figures

If these are notable and reliably referenced they add a NPOV on fuel consumption to the article. Is there any good reason to exclude them? -- de Facto (talk). 22:46, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is a specific convention for the exclusion of this information. There is also WP:WPACT which covers the Top Gear test.

In the edit summary, you wrote, "NPOV it's notable and challenges the official figures dramatically". Well obviously if one was to drive a Prius at full throttle continuously, then fuel consumption is going to go up isn't it? Fuel economy is only useful if it is obtained methodically (i.e. the EPA figure). The subjectivity of fuel economy means that you can, in specific circumstances get better fuel economy in a large V8 than in a small hybrid. In normal driving conditions, this is not the case.

I am reverting back. If you feel this needs further discussion, this will need to be discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Automobiles, because policy cannot be ignored without a consensus to do so. Regards OSX (talk • contributions) 23:28, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that a project convention trumps the Wiki NPOV policy, but I don't want to upset the good work of the convention editors either. Can you (or anyone else) suggest how best to incorporate views about the differences between the theoretical potential fuel consumption and the real-world achieved fuel consumption of this car. This isn't 'criticism', it's an alternative or empirical observations by notable commentators and documented in reliable sources. It would go against one of Wiki's "five pillars", and be a diservice to the readers of the articles to leave it out. -- de Facto (talk). 09:16, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The convention does include a clause allowing for the inclusion of non-government figures if they are widely reported to strongly deviate from the official figure. There aren't too many cars that this applies to, and even then, it is not an invitation to include prolific amounts of content, such as the list that previously resided at the main Prius article. The spirit of the convention was never to facilitate the inclusion of non-representative conditions such as the Top Gear comparison—there is a difference between verifiable content and notable content. The Top Gear test is interesting trivia (if not depicting what would otherwise be a logical result), and trivia should generally be excluded.

Personally, I don't see why some editors see a need for articles on hybrid models to have mountainous sections devoted to fuel economy. Isn't an EPA figure suffice? The additional figures do not generally add value to the article, they tend to correlate closely to the EPA figure. This begs the question, why do we need to transform the article into a tautologous mess by saying what is effectively the same thing more than once?

We could instead directly compare the EPA rating to similar-sized conventionally-powered vehicles produced by the same company such as the 1.8-litre Corolla or 2.4 or 2.5-litre Camry. I think the average reader will much better appreciate a statement along the lines of: "The EPA rated the XW20 series Pruis at 48 mpg (city), which is 50 percent higher than the 1.8-litre Corolla." This sends a more powerful message than a large list of numbers that are often meaningless to those who don't really understand MPGs all that well. The actual numbers aren't all that important, it's the message that a Prius uses less fuel than a similarly-sized and specified non-hybrid model. OSX (talk • contributions) 12:01, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to have missed my point. It isn't standardised fuel consumption testing that I'm talking about, it's notable and interesting observations and real-world experiences with the car. These are valid additions to the article if they are from notable commentators and are reliably referenced. I'll see if I can work it into the article somewhere. -- de Facto (talk). 13:05, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting it may be, but it is still trivia and has little to do with the Prius other than the fact that is was the vehicle selected (probably to make a point, because it was at the time, widely considered to be the most environmentally-friendly car available). If the same comparison made with the Prius and BMW M3 was instead made with the Insight, the Volt, or even the Yaris or Corolla, the same result would apply. The lower-performing Prius was driven under full throttle continuously, the BMW merely had to keep up. This is not a legitimate comparison and therefore not notable in the context of this article (although maybe in the Top Gear article relating the episode in question). OSX (talk • contributions) 13:21, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the Top Gear test, similar discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Toyota_Prius#Independent_fuel_economy_tests Snakeyedcharmer (talk) 23:34, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]