Are you happy you bought a Prius???

Apart from the time - 140mi for "some shopping" is something nobody will do in Europe, unless somebody is paying your gas. Is simply too expensive to justify "some shopping". This is what is keeping overall lifetime driven miles in EU low I believe.

They have started to build outlet "villages" here in Germany as well, but with these fuel prices, it makes no sense to drive there to save 10€ for a shirt, when it goes all in the fuel to get there in the first place, Prius or not...

I "envy" your freedom to drive where you want, not thinking too much about fuel price. I don't have this freedom anymore. A 140mi/225km trip at 4.5L/100km (a bit more than 50mpg) would be 15€/22$ - I can drive a full week to my office (and a bit more around town) with that - I cannot use it for "some shopping" anymore even if I wanted to, really.

America is a large country. This is espically true if you live in isolated cities like Seaside Oregon, where the nearest large city in Oregon is Portland, about 75 miles away.

Al

I am in love with my Prius. As weird it might sounds, I don't mind driving during rush hour in LA on the 101N. My MPG goes up that way for some reason.

Happy about the car, not happy about gas prices though.

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Happy is an understatment. Gassed up for $4.07 ysterday and it still only cost me $28. The best thing for me is using the HOV lane on the LIE (for those in NY), cuts 30 minutes off my commute home. Doesnt get better than that

I couldn't be happier. I'm a couple of months away from 1 year's ownership and my average for the first year is working out to around 52.5 mpg. It would have been a lot better were it not for having to put the car in the body shop for a week last winter (don't ask), they blew thru half a tank and put the mpg's in the basement...

Yeah it's like living in 2002 again. I no longer vomit when I have to drive somewhere that's out of the way. In fact, I admit we've increased our driving simply because we put almost no stock in fuel costs now. Not by a huge degree but I remember in 2008 it drove me nuts to just drive to the grocery because it was $3 bucks in fuel alone.

I am not a crazy Prius freak by any stretch whatsoever but I do speak very highly of the vehicle to people. I honestly believe that a lot of people still lack the ability to conceptualize getting ~50 mpg city in a modern vehicle. Or maybe they lack the ability to divide annual miles by mpg times cost of gas. I don't know, the car is great it should be more prevalent.

I am definitely happy. Ok, so I've only had it for a week but I am addicted to saving money. I am coming from a Tundra 5.7 that was averaging 15mpg. I routinely would hit the $75 ceiling at the pump. I filled the prius up the other day for $35. Loving it so far

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I hardly see anything negative in the comments on this thread, and I don't have anything to add. My only little issue is road noise through the tires. I will fix that with replacements when it needs them. If Toyota offers an Avalon hybrid that gets more than 45mpg, I would be all over that like a cheap suit.

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Ditto. I miss my old Avalon a lot. Prius is nice and cozy, but having room to stretch, and stretch some more......priceless.

But this is what I never really understood - in the US the speed limits are nothing special - you cannot drive as fast as you want (e.g. like in Germany) - so huge engines to do what? apart moving big metal boxes?
and maybe provide a lot of torque from 0 to what? 20mph?
My experience with US cars I got from rentals (OK, not the best US cars on the market, likely), was 2.5L engines, with torque from 0 to 30mph and then *nothing*, only engine noise, from there onwards. And fuel consumption of 10km/L or less. And driving at constant speed on the HWY would not yield much more...

I am happy with my current 2011 prius purchase....but not thrilled. I do understand that its only been 3 days with my car but, it just isn't settling in that I have to keep a constant battle of doing just the right thing to gain good mileage. My biggest gripe is the total lack of power when moving from a standstill and when I do put the foot on it to move....it sounds like the engine is going to blow up (maybee exaggarating a little) I have no problem staying on the eco line when there is no one on the road, but it is irritating on busy streets.

I like this site though

True and I believe the European and Asian (Japanese and South Korean) cars get more out of an equal sized engine.
In addition manual cars get more out of the motor. That doesn't hold for Israel where we are addicted to Automatics - about 90% of the cars sold although that is slightly less than the peak of 95% a few years ago. Some very small manuals are catching on

First - just drive it. I also tried to "drive it specially" during the first months of having it, but it doesn't really help.

Then - please read this and then maybe you want to see if you want to adopt more "advanced" driving techniques.

You can also stay in PWR mode the whole time - many people on PC say they get very good mileage in this mode.

I agree with pakitt, casualvic. I use the HSI bar as a measure of how much I'm demanding from the car (sort of like a tach), but I don't let it dictate what I'm doing. If there are people behind me at a stoplight, I'm almost always in the power band or maybe even in PWR mode, sprinting away from the intersection.

Unhappy. ABS system never worked on my 2004 Prius, and still doesn't, and dealers keep trying to sell me a traction battery instead of fixing the ABS. I bought the book off the internet and checked my traction battery... which is fine at almost 100,000 miles. My car's warranty is worthless, with bad dealers. Traction in wet or snow is terrible, I curse the car every time it snows. I live in northeastern Pennsylvania where it snowed every other day all winter. I can't get up my driveway if I hit a wet leaf, let alone snow... and live in a forest on a mountainside... so I use tire-chains everyday to get to the road four months out of the year. There's not enough clearance for my hands between the tires and wheel wells...

I want a Highlander with electric motors on the back wheels, good traction on the front, and better traction will make a world of difference. Costs about eight thousand bucks more than a Prius.

I'm happy because I bought it totally for the gas mileage. As the price of gas goes up so does my enjoyment of the Prius. However, if the Prius got 30 MPG I wouldn't even consider it.

It is the best car I ever bought...

Could not be happier!