No problem.....appreciate your input.

We'll see now the new Sienna sells....the AWD version is going to get some competition from the 2021 Pacifica, which will also now offer that option.

 

The Pacifica Hybrid weighs 400 lbs more and only has 15 more horsepower. The V6 certainly has more power than the 4 cylinder, so that could help in that situation but I’m not sure. It would be an interesting comparison.

 

Electric motors, however, deliver a lot of torque at low RPM, which may help compensate for the hybrid's weight.

 

But the comparison being made here is between a hybrid Sienna and a hybrid Pacifica. So the fact that the Sienna has an electric motor is not a comparative advantage, because the Pacifica does too.

 

If you read some of the reviews they mention strained acceleration

 

If you read some of the reviews. They mention a normal acceleration until 100 mp/h, only then a strain takes place, and a 0-60 time under 8 seconds. Some use the term "game changer" in regard to the minivan segment that will need to re-adapt to this product in particular.

 

I dunno, I'm dubious.

 

Good point and agreed. I didn't realize the Pacifica Hybrid drops total system HP from 287 in the V6 only to 260 in the hybrid. 0-60 doesn't sound great at 8 seconds either

 

Here's a Motor Trend comparison of the two, complete with acceleration test data.

https://www.motortrend.com/cars/chry...toyota-sienna/

For acceleration, they basically run neck and neck until you get to about 80 mph where the Sienna has a slight advantage from there on up.

Motor Trend chose the Pacifica as the winner, for good reason, but I just couldn't buy one.

 

Interesting to read the comments of the Sienna. The Toyota trades off horsepower for 36mpg...also awd with no fuel penalty and the awd option is across all trim levels. . If that is not good enough, there are a few other models out there that are gas only.

 

Acceleration doesn’t tell you the whole story though, and those cars aren’t loaded. The power concern I have is accelerating to pass for instance, or to merge. When we travel to WV we pull out onto 4 one highways with 65 MPH limits uphill, loaded down.

Im also passing trucks uphill into oncoming traffic.

36 MPG is great, but I don’t really care about fuel economy. That’s the issue with having ONLY a hybrid.

 

Yes, acceleration doesn't tell the whole story. But when you have one V6 car and one i4 making the same performance all over the band, and the japanese hybrid enjoying 100 nm of torque more on it's electric powertrain, it helps imagine that this car will be perfectly equal to the rest of the market.

Nobody cares about fuel economy, until the gallon jumps to five dollars and more. We are around seven dollars for the moment, tendency still on the rise. And trust me, this trend will also come in the US. Sooner than later.

 

So if you have two vehicles, unloaded, doing acceleration runs and one outperforms the other, which one do you think will perform better when loaded?

Like I said, I’ve driven an older Sienna, with baggage , 7 passengers, and well under 245 horsepower (210 I think?) over a steep mountain pass and it did fine so I’m not overly worried, but I’ll test drive a new Sienna before writing it off.

My wife will only consider a hybrid vehicle, and we won’t buy a Pacifica, so unless there’s a glaring issue with it, we would buy a new Sienna if we were in the market for a minivan. I think it’ll do well.

 

There are no economic indicators that would show us we would see gas prices double or triple here in the short or medium term. Regular fuel here is $1.99-$2.30 a gallon.

I would expect the Sienna with the hybrid powertrain and CVT to feel significantly more labored under those circumstances.

Gearing plays a huge role...

 

Even then, a number of people still don't. I won't say that expensive gas has no effect on the market (it obviously does)...but just look at history. Full-size trucks and SUVs, in this country, continued to sell briskly even when gas was at $4.00 or more a gallon....roughly twice what it is today, and has been for a while. The Ford F-150, for example, has been the top-selling vehicle in the U.S. since 1980....some four decades.



Except for some (possible) spot-shortages after refinery-damage on the Gulf Coast from hurricanes, major long-term increases in U.S. gas prices have been few and far between for quite some time now......and are not likely in the near future. Why? Simple? Thanks to governmental and economic policies in the U.S., we are simply no longer dependent on the OPEC world of the 1970s and 80s, which essentially dictated the market and pricing.....and would have been even more so had Saudi Arabia, wth its huge oil-reserves, not tirelessly kept production up to keep prices as stable as possible. Today, we are far more energy-self-sufficient in the U.S. than decades ago.