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Comment by kgilpin | Hacker News Reader

The idea of a hybrid light truck (Tacoma) interested me. When I looked into it, the hybrid mileage was only 23mpg, compared to 20 for the regular model. What’s the point of that?

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For whatever reason Toyota seems to be designing their hybrid truck options as power upgrades rather than efficiency upgrades. They often put the exact same engine in and just add 50HP and 150 ft/lb of torque with an electric motor. I'm sure its great for towing and for low-end torque off-road but it feels like a weird strategy to target the MORE POWER MORE TORQUE I NEED TO TOW 5 TONS ON SHORT NOTICE crowd with a product category associated with boring slow green commuter cars.

Mileage doesn't really make sense as a measure for hybrids. Usually the electro motor handles the speed/power ranges where the fuel engine would perform badly. Rule of thumb: low velocity stuff. If you do a lot of that (and braking), then the hybrid is going to save you fuel. If you do a lot of relatively constant speed driving (such as I expect for light trucks), a fueled engine doesn't really benefit much from e-support, as you see in your numbers.

Aren’t light trucks mostly driven around the city, pretty much like any other vehicle?

I would imagine that some of that is going to be because trucks don’t just compete on fuel efficiency like economy sedans, they compete on power as well.

In an Accord Hybrid the only number they are trying to push up is mpg. In a Tacoma they also are trying to maximize torque,hp, towing capacity etc.

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