Best comment to date: Overheard in my home island tourist community... "look mom... there goes one of those satelite controlled cars."

Best question: "Well if those <board> thingies over the back wheels get your mileage up so much, why don't they put 'em over the front ones too?

Latest experience: I own a Red 2000 which I am now driving from the San Juan Islands to my new home on the Maine Coast. I left with some misconceptions which have been corrected. More reading on this site and at EVWORLD.com would perhaps have straightened me out. In no particular order... 1) the car does have a conventional starter in addition to the motor start feature for those times that IMA is off, down, or "empty". I had 11,500+ miles on the car before the first time I heard it. 2) while you have to work hard to do it... the car can be overloaded with weight, but more importantly with luggage/freight/moving boxes that prevent the battery conditionl module and batteries from "breathing" and cooling properly. I found this to be true in Eastern Oregon with temps above 100 outside the car in early evening. The two vents along the walls behind and below the side windows were covered enough to overheat and "disable" the IMA system. I was lucky to not burn out the battery module or module fan. Heat was still great enough the next morning to trip the fault codes at the service center. Leave those and the one behind the passenger seat open to the air especially in warmer climes. 3) while I have on 2 or 3 occasions drained the battery module reserves to near nothing when forgetting the car is parked in "Idle Stop" mode, i believed that in intense terrain areas the IMA system would allow more charging as the battery reserve was depleted. Numerous times this seemed to be true during normal driving when the batteries were low. On the west slope of Mt. Hood, OR., Vail Pass, CO., and Loveland Pass, CO., I used all of the battery reserve and needed excessive shifting of the remaining 3 cylinder engine to maintain 40 mph in places. The car is very angry at steep grade without IMA support and seems to need excessive RPM to make it move. while i understand that the vehicle wasn't made for this driving, i now understand this reality and give other distance drivers a heads up... 1st tank Bellingham, WA to Caldwell, ID (688miles). 2nd to Parachute, CO via Salt Lake (715 miles), 3rd to Kearney, NE, and 4th...under construction. hey - honk when you see another owner!

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