About to buy a 2017 Prius Three. What should we expect as 2004 Prius owners (for 15 years)

I've never owned a Gen 2 - I decided I couldn't live with it - in comparison to the FORD FOCUS Diesel which I bought instead - the Gen 2 was frumpy, handled poorly in comparison and just not a real nice drive.

Gen 3 - better than Gen 2, but still too compromised - I bought a FOCUS Diesel instead.

Gen 4 - yes, much better, maybe not as good as the Focus or Peugeot I was looking at - but much, much better car to drive. Rear seats fold down flat, but there's a step up, depending on which spare-tyre arrangement you have as to how big the step is. The boot is bigger as far as "acreage" but not quite as high as the old models. In most cases, you want floor area rather than height - school bags, shopping, boxes, bags of potting mix etc.

Economy - FUELLY shows consistently better averages for Gen 4 over Gen2/3 - I've changed this to USA MPG. I'd guess you should get similar percentage improvement - though 17" isn't quite as good as 15" - but grip better:

 

Geez Alan, for a moment there I thought you'd decided to list every car you'd ever owned on fuelly.

Maybe the 2019's are just an outlier, to small a sample? Or maybe something tweaked??

And what the heck do you mean by "frumpy"??

I'll concede gen 4 delivers better mileage, I gnash my teeth a lot about that...

 

No this is the entire cohort on FUELLY - and the figures are the average:



Some samples:
2019:

2016


2005

 

The pros and cons lists above are already fairly complete. I'll just add and in some cases contradict.

The headlights being better is an understatement. These are the best headlights I've ever had on any car. They are the brightest and have the sharpest cutoff of any car and put the headlights of my Model S P85D's to shame.

There is much more road noise than our 2009 Gen 2 with 314K miles on it but I do have the 17" wheels of the Limited which have larger contact patches than the 16" wheels of our 2009 Touring. That said, I think I vaguely remember dumping the stock tires of our gen 2 almost immediately for similar reasons so this may not be a fair comparison.

Engine noise is far less and makes more power at lower RPMS even if it doesn't make more peak power.

My wife swears our 2019 Limited is slower off the line compared with our gen 2. I think I agree with her but it's hard for me to tell the difference between our two Prii when my daily driver sprints to 60 in 2.8 seconds. But I'm starting to feel that this is the case and that the 0-15 is slower than our gen 2 and that the 15-60 is faster than our gen 2.

I didn't see your braking question answered. Gen 4's brakes are vastly superior to the Gen 2 and stop from 60 mph 15 feet sooner.

I didn't see the system mentioned. Although I guess I can't make that comparison since it's between the ugpraded JBL on our 2009 Touring vs the 10 speaker JBL on the Limited which is VASTLY superior to the our 2009. That's assuming you can actually get good sound to it in the first place. If you have a too many songs on your USB drive, it will take forever to index or just never finish. Android via bluetooth sucks as only the SBC codec of A2DP is supported and is limited to 128kb for whatever reason. Too bad that there's no apt-x, apt-x hd, or any of the other high quality high bitrate codecs supported except for AAC. If you've got any iPhone, then you're fine as the profile supports AAC direct so you're AAC iTunes library will survive completely lossless through the BT connection.

 

Same here, looking at used Gen4's.

I've used a very large flat screen TV box in an empty parking lot as the "crash test dummy" when we got our first vehicle with these features. The dummy survived!

I've found many used 2018 Prius Two's also came with a "free" safety package which includes the sonar, auto-parking and more.

Although I like many of the other features in the 2016-17 Three/Four/Touring models, the 2018 Two with safety package is a better value for my purposes and sometimes are priced around $3-6k cheaper in my local market than the (older) Threes and Fours; that's 1-2 more years on the warranty plus the Two has a spare. The older tech NiMh battery is both a pro & con but I consider it more a pro at this time since it's well known tech.

FWIW

GOOD LUCK!

 

I couldn't find any used Gen IV's with low miles cheaper than a brand new one given that dealers are discounting the last of the 2019s by at least $7K off MSRP.

 

One big basic difference that makes the Gen 4 easier to drive is the steering. It's lighter and geared different so there's less turning of the steering wheel to get the same amount of steer.

 

I think it's also - the much improved TNGA suspension has better body control.

 

I have the 2017 Prius Prime and I love it. I do mostly city driving and hardly ever buy gas because I get almost 30 electric miles a day. If you can get the Prime, go for it. I love the big screen for the navigation. The Safety Sense features are the best. My other Priuses had a terrible blind spot, now solved. My only complaint (and I assume the Prius Three is the same), the hatchback room is less than the old Prius style. It looks roomy, but the back window sits lower than the old style, and I've had a few issues getting large items in.

 

Raised hatch floor on the prime is a factor too.

 

So, we've had both the Gen 2 and Gen 4, plus two Gen 3's in between...

• seat and cabin space? Smaller/tighter
• You sit a little lower? There's a lever on the driver's seat that raises the height
• less or more cabin space? Less
• do rear seats fully fold down -- Yes, plus you don't have to release the back seat belts from the seats. They are permanently fixed to the side of the back seats. The back headrests fold down so they do not interfere with the backs of the front seats...
• glove boxes (hear we lose 1 or 2?) -- You lose the top one
• handling? -- Much better
• acceleration? -- Much better
• mpg? -- At least 10 MPG better than Gen 2. Toyota Prius MPG improves 10% with each generation
• braking? -- Meh?
• oil change interval? -- Doubles to 10K Miles with 0W-20 grade, but you still get the 5K reminder on your dash
• Eco/power mode (don't have this)? -- Don't use it
• 17" wheels tires vs. 15" or our 2nd gen? -- If you get a Model Three, you'll have the 15-inchers, Touring gets the 17-inchers

Due to the aero shape, the rear hatch opening is much smaller than Gen 2. Your tonneau cover over the rear storage area might be cloth. You might not have a spare tire under the rear floor. You might have a NiMH battery or a Li-Ion battery.