Sometimes I feel ashamed of my Prius

Nobody ever tell me these things. You need better friends, or maybe get out of NC.

 

It sounds like you are way too sensitive to what other people think about your car. Tell them the next time you ask them to help with the car payment that you will listen to their misinformed comments.

I have had a few remarks from friends and co-workers that were due to being totally misinformed. Once I took the time to explain the facts about the car, explain 10 years worth of reliability and tell them my average mpg I usually do not hear any more remarks.

 

Yeah! You need to get out of NC...lol. You get props here in Los Angeles; the only car for less than 30k that is allowable to cruise in Beverly Hills...lol.

 

Some people on here just need to be ignored

 

Those are all statements made by people that know very little about the Prius. I wouldn't try to take your BMW pal to lunch in your Prius.....He may have trouble getting his head in your car.

It's your car....You make the payments......You buy the gas (on occasion)

Relax and enjoy your ride !!!!!!

 

I took a skeptical friend of mine on a golfing outing, I filled up the tank at the start of the trip and he agreed to fill it up at the halfway point of the trip. (He drives a new Ford Flex). When he laid out $16 for the return trip he said to me: "Now I get it."
Some times it takes a dose of reality to clear the air.

 

Heed this wise counsel...

 

You could always grow your hair out like me and just admit you're a hippie.

I see a lot of negative stuff on the internet, but nobody ever says anything bad about my car to my face. My neutral and pro-Prius conversations are broken into 3 categories.

The converts: Friends, family members, or coworkers interested in buying a Prius, or who just bought one. They'll ask me about it usually because they think it's just a neat car.

The mod crowd: I talk to my Asian friends about cars a lot. Most of them are of the Scion, Lexus, and Nissan crowd. New people I meet will ask me what car I drive. When I tell them Prius I typically get reactions like "that's cool."

The mileage obsessors: They are the ones only interested in talking about how good the mileage is, how quiet the car is, or etc.

As for the people stressing you out, if they are even willing to discuss the Prius, it means they care enough that they may have the capacity to change their opinion someday. Sometimes the ones who hate it the most, end up liking it the most because they naturally tend to form the most extreme opinions. So just keep chugging along and finding people like the ones I described above.

 

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. - Gandhi

You are on Phase Two!

 

I do understand what your saying and if you love the car stand firm.

1. Peer pressure is rough, but as others have said, many so called friends are just ignorant. Fight back with some true facts about the Prius. Losing "man points" is truely subjective and just joke with them back. Don't take them to seriously.

2. The Prius is truely a good safe car. One lady on PC has just survived a headon collision with a truck and walked away while the truck driver had to be med flight to a hospital.

3. Totally false and another ignorant person. Any vehicle with a 12 volt battery can leave you stranded.

4. Really..? Power from an ICE engine with belt driven acessories is OLD school, but to each their own. Hey, we Prius owners can be smug to. LOL

5. I'm not going to advocate racing, but those big 4x4 monster trucks are easy to blow the doors off of. They are joke on the street.

If your so ashamed and can't take it, get rid of it and fit into their world.... or be different. If everyone was the same it would be a boring world.

Best wishes to you and laugh it off. I do and its really funny when people show their ignorance.

 

BTW I really want to go to UNC Chapel Hill next year. If I get accepted we'll meet up and crack some skulls together, alright?

 

I'm an officer in the Navy. I've done multiple combat tours in the Middle East, fought pirates off the coast of Africa, evacuated civilians from Beirut as Israel bombed it and generally had a very adventuresome career.

I'm also a member of both the Green Party and the Sierra Club and have been driving my Prius for two years now. I will drive it until the wheels fall off and I couldn't care less if someone thinks I'm losing man points over it. They can **** off. While I am a self-proclaimed treehugger, the cold economic and geopolitical rationale for environmentalism is just as pressing as the fact that we're destroying the only infinitesimal bubble of habitable space in the known universe.

As for the performance aspect, when I'm not concerned about maximizing my mileage, there isn't much on the freeways of San Diego that can keep up with me, so I'm not sure why people are down on hybrids from that angle, either.

I think your car rocks. It fights terrorism, reduces our trade deficits and helps to guarantee that our children will have a future. Your friends only demonstrate their profound lack of patriotism and intelligence by being proud of wasting fossil fuel. You can tell your friends that this came from a man who kills for a living.

 

Lots of room to carry hunting rifles (in a locked case), dirt bike parts, and taxidermy supplies, out of sight, in the back. Look out Bambi, her comes another Prius. :usa2:

 

My wife and I just went to see Captain America. As we were leaving and approaching our Prius in the parking lot, a lady in the minivan parked next to us said, "Wow, that's a nice looking car!" I said, "Thank you."

PS - The movie was pretty good.

 

i know way too many details and opinions of this car. i took all that and pulled out all the good details that other people gawk at.

1.. the rims.. people love it and realize they are nothing special (scion rims) but make the car look "real".. and simply classy.

2. the room inside.. it's huge in a sense (leg room)... the rear seat of my prius is only challenged by a cadillac... (or possibly any other high end full size sedan)

3. i have a trailer hitch.. and a 5x8 trailer... i usually average around 40mpg (i drive aggressive-ish).. with the trailer it's about 30mpg... i still take off faster than any other truck or truck with a trailer... i get 2x to 3x their gas mileage while towing... combined i end up around 35 to 40mpg with a lot of towing.

4... a lot of them are joking, as others have said, and really don't see it as bashing on you because they hope your ego can brush it off...

5. the battery cost a lot less than they think (it's like 1,000~... less if you buy parts and do it yourself.. it's something like 2 to 3 grand if you get an expensive quote from toyota. a lot of people on here have ran over 200k miles.. i'm almost there with no failures. by 200k miles, a lot of cars or trucks are considered dead. mine still feels newish and looks new.

6. your car consist of: electric motors, gas engine, and gears to power it (battery too, naturally)... genII has a huge chain that is used to move the wheels, genIII has direct gearing). there are cutaway photos of it. as another person said already, their cars have clutches, belts, and all kinds of extra crap because they are old and will be outdated... not just in model year... in entire setups.. they will all eventually be belt-less, and clutches will some day be thrown out... then they will move on to systems that are similar to the prius HSD.

7. it's a safe car. there are many accidents out there, like mentioned above, where the prius owner was fine while others were very injured or didn't make it. there are also some where i consider the damage to be equal or greater in the prius... equal sometimes happens... greater is rare... very rare.. it comes down to the mass of the car moving against you... crash zones slow the rate of the other car.. so you're only really battling with the weight of your own car in an accident... (don't quote me.. there are more factors to it than just your own cars inertia.)

8. where was i... oh yeah... weight... most people argue when i say that my car is as light as a corvette... corvettes are the holly grail of light fast cars to most car people... and it's a two seater.. so.. they argue.. but the numbers show my car is actually lighter. i think it's lighter by 160lbs or something like that. (that corvette has a huge engine)

there are a lot of details to learn about this car and how it stacks up to other cars.... it's all buried right here in priuschat... hehe..

 

Back when Hummer was king of the dinosaurs (guzzlers), we heard it all. The claims some people made were amazing, truly outlandish that they'd expect anyone to believe them. Those were wild times. Supporters of Prius were declared fools. Extinction came though. The biggest of the disingenuous have vanished. We've been vindicated.

In short, hang in there. These remaining small battles are nothing in comparison... a few still fighting change... denying what you already know.
.

 

after almost 8 years of driving a prius, i just met the first person who also owns one. nice car! i said to him. great minds think alike! he said. and that was it. i hang around with the wrong crowd, but i love my prius!

 

OP - how old are you? If you are still young you will grow a thicker skin.