First Road Trip - Impressions

I finally had a chance to take my first "road trip" over the weekend. I drove the car from St. Louis to Chicago, and back. The experience has made me appreciate my Prius even more. This is coming from someone who laughed at Prius drivers less than six months ago. I'm not laughing anymore!

I have the V with the advanced technology package. Here are my impressions/comments.

1) The radar controled cruise is fantastic. My ONLY complaint is that I tend to get slightly better mileage when it's MY foot controling the vehicle's speed. A couple things I found out while using cruise. First, if someone suddenly cuts in front of you the car alerts you and makes subtle corrections to aid in avoiding a mis-hap. Two, if the weather conditions get too bad (e.g. it begins raining too hard), the cruise control will shut off and alert you that it isn't available in adverse weather conditions.

2) LKA (Lane Keeper Assistant). At first, I thought this was a silly gimmick. After using it all weekend, I've found that it's extremely useful. As you drift too close to the line on either side of the car, it beeps and makes a very subtle adjustment in the steering. I even noticed that even when it isn't alerting you that you're drifting too close to the line, it very gently assists in the steering of the vehicle...it was easiest to feel this when going around large sweeping turns. There were a few times when I would allow myself to wander toward a line, and without any input from me, the car would slowly bring itself back to the center of the lane. It sounds like this would be a danger...the car making adjustments in the steering...nothing could be further from the truth. Also, I found that LKA will not function if the windshield wipers are on (not counting intermittant). Very cool stuff.

3) The NAV worked flawlessly. As I don't know my way around Chicago very well, I used NAV the whole time I was there. Not only did it get me where I needed to go with no issue, it alerted me to traffic conditions along my route and displayed the flow of traffic (red/yellow/green)...it was very accurate. My only complaint is that as you're typing in addresses, the keyboard is a little sluggish. After having nav in my last several cars, it's hard for me to remember what it was like driving around a large city via a map. Just think of the number of saved marriages and arguments avoided as a result of modern NAV!

4) What trip to Chicago is complete without a visit to IKEA? Of course, one cannot step foot into that place without buying a bunch of stuff you never thought you needed until you saw it in the store. As a result I wound up with a few somewhat large items of furniture that I was able to fit inside the Prius with NO problem. They wouldn't have fit in a regular car, and if I were still driving my truck, the stuff would've been in the bed of the truck and gotten soaked on the way home.

I'm sure most/all of this is described in the owner's manual, but it's really cool to use these tools and actually experience their usefulness.

So far, the only gimmicky feature provided via the advanced techo package has been the parking assist. I've used it a couple of times just for the sake of using it. I can park my own car in a small fraction of the time it takes for the car to park itself. When I get to the point that I cannot park my own car, you can just take away my keys.

With temps ranging from around 25 - 45, my grill 100% blocked and tires at 42/41, my gas mileage on the way up was around 46mpg. On the way home it was around 41. This mainly due to weather conditions and temperature...and partly to the rate of speed I was traveling. All in all, I'm very satisfied with how the car functioned throughout the duration of my weekend getaway.

 

As it was pretty cold on the way up to Chicago (and while I was in Chicago), the upper and lower grills were blocked 100%. My temps never went above 202...mostly stayed in the 180-190 range. On the way home, the weather was quite a bit warmer, so I removed the upper blocking, and left the lower grill blocked 100%. Temps stayed in the 170-180 range.

Are you suggesting that one should never block both the upper AND lower grills 100%, regardless of outside temps? I've heard talk of the inverter getting air, but figured if my temps weren't getting crazy high, that everything was copacetic.

BTW, gotta love the Scangauge. :thumb: