>> So you want a Toyota Prius, but they just look too damn goofy. Consider this, the Nissan Altima hybrid. Same power train, good looking body.
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Now our Altima hybrid's loaded to the gills, so bear that in mind. And there's a lot of cost associated with these options, but I'll get to that in a minute. Here's our navigation audio system, you see the Bose branding right at the top here. First off let's talk about navigation. The screen on this guy is one of the more disappointing in my point of view. That's an ugly map. The speckling, the, the jaggies around street names as well as street lines. I don't like the color scheme a whole lot, it seems very kind of washed out and low contrast. So I'm not crazy about that. On the other hand though I actually like the logic of the menuing. To set an address it just makes sense to me, and I like how once you do get into the address mode, you have three bins where you can directly go to house number, street name, or city. Other than that though, it is a touch screen, six and a half inch, and it's pretty quick to get things entered or selected, except sometimes you feel like you're getting ahead of the process or in the navigation mode as you're entering and changing menus. So it's a mixed bag o this guy. Also in terms of display quality, a very simple piece of tech is this tilt button right here that lets you select one of three tilted positions to cheat out glare. Also if you hold that button down, you find a disc drive behind it. But that's not for you, that's the DVD ROM data for the navigation. Your disc drive is down here on this optional system. This BOSE system comes with a six disc you know, in console changer. And you've also got an AUX jack hiding up here unlabeled. That's not documented anywhere on Nissan's build your own website either for this car. So be aware, AUX jack does come as part of the upgraded audio system. But the real star of this car is the hybrid power train. It's an Altima hybrid after all. Let's go for a drive, I'll talk about it on the way.
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Once you're underway, you start off in EV mode, just like a Prius, because it is the Prius power train, the Toyota hybrid synergy drive. And you also get this engine flow display that they make a big deal about. It's cute, after a while you don't care, as long as the car's running right who really cares where the electricity's going. All in, this engine delivers 42, 36 is the EPA estimate. That's a pretty good improvement over typical gas engine cars in this class. This vehicle puts all its power out through an ECDT, an electronically controlled continuously variable transmission. No real gears, just two variable bands and pulleys that change the ratios infinitely. And you see it has no shiftable gait. It does have a B position, B puts you into an engine breaking bias. That means it's gonna slow the car to put more electricity back into the batteries. Why do I feel strange driving a 650 volt electric car through water? Anyway, let's price our '07 Altima hybrid. The base price is pretty reasonable, twenty five thousand dollars. Then the tech gets expensive. No a la carte. Everything I've showed you is part of one or two packages, and they aren't cheap. There's a tech package for sixty four hundred dollars that is led off by the navigation system. Then there's a connections package, another forty four hundred dollars, that is highlighted by the audio system. You want to get both to get all of these toys, plus a whole slew of comfort options. But that's eleven thousand dollars on top of twenty five, and pretty soon you've got an expensive car for its class.
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