Does the c have enough horsepower?

I commuted on the HOV lane on LIE with clean pass for over 5 years (Queens to exit 60) with my 06 Prius. It has no problem with power. If I keep the flow of the traffic prior to the start of HOV lane and go around 65-70 mph in the HOV lane. I don't use more than 30 horsepower (per Torque OBDII app). 99 hp of Prius should be plenty for a lighter car.

 

Well put, Jimbo.

 

Ok, to be accurate I am posting this as a follow up. Here is a graph of that 42 miles east bound on LIE to work. I rarely use more than 30 hp from the gas engine.

 

Regarding the "power" issue. Today I had to accelerate quickly ("gun it") to get out of a potentially dangerous situation and the c did not disappoint. The car responded quickly and, yes, the engine was noisy (and fuel economy was the furthest thing from my mind at that moment) but I successfully avoided a collision when the proverbial chips were down. Very very happy with this discovery. (My other car is a peppy Mazda Miata so I'm drawing a fair conclusion here IMO...)

 

I owned a 2002 Prius and I have to say that it was "too slow". Does the Prius C have better acceleration?

 

Prius c does 0-60 about 1.5 secs faster. They have about the same 99 hp but Prius c is 265 lbs lighter.

 

how about the 04-09 prius compared with the prius c? in terms of power

 

Prius c acceleration is about the same as GenII Prius. Prius c is 390 lbs lighter but with 11hp less. 0-60 is about 10.5 secs.

 

It's borderline.

It has enough grunt off the line to pull into city traffic without worries, but freeway passing power (especially on hills) is poor. I think it has more to do with Toyota's e-throttle that has a far too conservative curve. Flooring it gives adequate acceleration, but it seems that anything less than that is like pulling the computer's teeth to let it give you any power. It gives the car an overall sluggish and reluctant feeling.

However, when it comes to WOT acceleration it's really no worse than any other small car at highway speed. In the past few months I've rented both a Matrix and a Versa, both of which had miserable acceleration, yet averaged 24mpg in mostly highway driving. At least with the C I can feel good about the awesome gas mileage while getting passed by bicycles.

 

In all my years of driving I have always gone for fuel efficient engines - even when more powerful ones were an option. I never really regretted my choices. Only a few times in my young and foolish days did I want more power than the base engine.

IF we are serious about about saving our limited resources of oil, we need to change how folks think about "power" in the cars we drive. Car reviewers don't help matters much IMO.

 

Forgetting the power mapping to the pedal, Toyota hybrids provides great passing power (30-70mph). That's when the hybrid system can reach near peak power of both electric motor and gas engine.