In this vlog, Rob Greenlee records himself driving his 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid across the I‑90 bridge in Seattle while a Nokia N73 phone mounted on the dashboard captures the footage. He explains that the video experiment is meant to give viewers a sense of what it’s like to drive the hybrid. Greenlee describes the vehicle’s powertrain, noting a 165 hp gasoline engine paired with a roughly 45 hp electric motor, and emphasizes that the electric component, while modest, contributes noticeably to performance. He points out a key limitation: the hybrid’s 150‑lb battery pack sits behind the rear seats, occupying about a third of the trunk space and restricting cargo capacity. He speculates that a larger battery could dramatically improve fuel economy, potentially reaching around 100 mpg by allowing more electric‑only driving. Greenlee wraps up by thanking viewers, mentioning that future videos will include an external tour showing the engine and trunk, and invites the audience to stay tuned.
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Hello, this is Rob Greenlee. I wanted to try something a little bit different. I have set my phone, which is basically my N73 Nokia phone, on my dashboard and take a video of me driving in my 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid. And I just wanted to see what it was like to make a video while I'm driving a car. And I'm actually on the I-90 bridge in Seattle going from Bellvue over to Seattle right this time, and bumper-to-bumper traffic, so I'm not driving very fast. But yeah, I've been actually over the last 6 months or so, I've been posting videos on YouTube about the Toyota Camry Hybrid, and I've had a good time doing that. I recently posted one talking about kind of the synergy drive and what the experience is of actually trying to drive one of these cars, and it's certainly a pleasant experience. Experience driving one of these things, it kind of brings in kind of a blending of experience from, from being able to drive a gas-powered car, which this has a gas engine in it, and but at the same time the car has a juice and electric-powered engine in it as well. And the gas engine is about 165 horsepower and the electric engine is about 45 horsepower or something like that, so you You can see that it's still heavily weighted towards the gas-powered engine, but from what I can tell, the electrical part of it is actually pretty powerful. I mean, a 40-horsepower electrical engine is nothing to sneeze at. I think that where the challenge that this car still has is the fact that there's fairly limited battery capacity that's in this vehicle. It's got about 150 pounds of batteries that are back behind me, actually they're behind the rear back seat of this car, and the only real problem that that presents is that you are really limited in the amount of capacity that your trunk has because your trunk is taken up, probably a third of the trunk is taken up with the 150 pounds of batteries, so you really don't have much trunk capacity in this car, but I really wish that the battery capacity in this car was a lot more so, you know, this car could spend more time driving off the electric engine, or motor I should say, than it does. It actually spends— and part of the reason why it doesn't get as good a gas mileage as you would expect from probably an electric car is that it mainly runs off the electric or off of the gas engine. And if there was more capacity in that battery, more juice that was available, then I think that this car could get a lot higher gas mileage. I think we could get up to, you know, maybe 100 miles per gallon, something like that, if I could drive the vehicle more without having to actually use the gas engine so much. So anyway, that's kind of a, you know, high-level view of kind of my experience with the Camry, and just wanted to create another video kind of giving a little bit different perspective on it. You know, I know that the video on this part of it is not necessarily quite as engaging with the vehicle itself, but it also helps you see me driving it and, and what that experience might be like. I'm not— I can't really see what the image that you're looking at is because the camera is on my dashboard. But, but anyway, I certainly appreciate you watching the video, and then I'll probably come up with a few more videos of this car. I'll probably give an external tour next, actually shows the engine and the trunk and all that kind of stuff. Might be the next video that I put together for YouTube. So thanks for watching. Bye-bye.
