Car & Driver Says Prime Ugly, Too Slow

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Go start reading at page 30. Without any liquids in your mouth.

Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down - Dave Barry - Google Books

 

A Charger or Camaro, perhaps. A truck? If driving a truck is fun, then driving a school bus must be even more fun.

Would you rather fly a 747 or an F-16? Would you rather drive a school bus or an F-1?

All the things I like to do don't require towing or more room than my Prius so I don't need a truck anymore (used to have an Explorer and a Ranger). But even though trucks are good for hauling stuff, they are as much fun to drive as a school bus. I actually enjoy driving my Prius more than my 2-door turbocharged sports coupe, and way, way more than the Explorer.

 

The Sonic sits higher than a 2001 Sable. Lowering down to sit can be worse for some ailments than climbing up. Then the climbing up can be compensated for by factory or aftermarket steps. Fixing a low seat isn't has easy.

The ZEV credits earned by PHEVs are the same type earned by PZEV Subarus.

Considering the discussions here on waiting for the Prime to come to the center part of the country, I don't think the Prime is being bought on the incentives alone. Cars aren't iPhones. They can't be shipped out and held in the dealers' back store room so that that they are available across the country on the first day. Required credits and incentives that will help sales just make states more attractive to the manufacturer to ship to first.

 

You're not driving the right truck~
I remember when I first started driving my work car (a G3) everybody razzed me about leaving the golf cart at the clubhouse next time I play, etc. The thing is....they all drove trucks, which are generally governed at <100mph speeds....while the Prius isn't.

Still....
I used to look for excuses to drive my truck instead the Prius to remote offices because (a) it has acceptable performance and (b) you can actually see what's ahead of you instead of having to crane your neck looking up at the rear bumper of the car in front of you.
At night?
It's absolutely no contest. I only drive my work car at night when I absolutely HAVE to, which hasn't happened in a few years.

 

The whole visibility thing with trucks is largely because of other trucks. And if you know what you're doing, it's not a problem. I sold my truck in about 1995 and have driven nothing but cars ever since. When I do drive a truck (a full-sized Dodge pickup to tow a boat), I think the visibility is worse overall because of the difficulty of seeing everything behind you, and the forward visibility is no better despite the height. There's always someone in front of me in an even taller vehicle like a panel truck at some point anyway. It gives the illusion of better visibility, but the visibility is equally imparred.

 

I believe gas prices are going to stay down for the foreseeable future this time: fracking and big producers such as Russia in play, Iran and Iraq coming back online, OPEC having much less control then they used to, worldwide demand down, gasoline vehicles getting more efficient... The reason oil and thus gasoline went up so high at the beginning of the great recession was investment funds buying up oil futures bidding up the price. It didn't take long before that market collapsed.

 

That's why MPGe matters too.

 

Not true, PHEVs get TZEV credits, which are arguably better than PZEV credits (because PZEV is relatively easy to get 6% of your production for a model year, the maximum number of PZEV credits you can use).

As I said on the last page, 14% of an automaker's production must be compensated for with ZEV credits.

At least 3% of production compensated for with those ZEV credits must be true ZEVs, and they must be at least Type 1, which means at least 50 miles range.

Up to 6% are allowed to be PZEV credits, yes. However, up to 2% are allowed to be AT-PZEV credits, and up to 3% are allowed to be TZEV, NEV, or Type 0 ZEV. So, you can use TZEV credits to get ever closer to meeting your obligation, and have to buy less credits, or sell less loss-leader BEVs. (Of course, this is Toyota, and they get something silly like 9 cars worth of full-on ZEV credit for each Mirai, so...)

 

I don't believe I said that I have fun driving my truck, but if I'm going to be having fun I often take the truck. It allows me to take my toys. It allows me to not care about the bumps or the holes or the mud or the blood..... The truck provides me the capability to have fun. That said, if I had to choose my truck or my Prius to drive across the country I would easily pick the truck as long as I didn't have to pay for gas or maintenance on it. It is a much more comfortable vehicle for me than the Prius. The Prius is great at commuting, pretty good on day trips, but any farther it's right there at the bottom with the rest of the economy cars. Maybe the vinyl seats on the higher end models are better.

 

Funny...I have yet to be in a car I have found to be overall more comfortable on a long trip than my Prius, including some cars that cost more than twice as much.

I've rented several of the cars in the Prius' size range (Mazda3, Corolla, Camry, Malibu, Altima, etc.) and none of them come close.

 

Yeah, I found my Gen 4 (with cloth interior and all) to be quite comfortable on a 1700 mile roadtrip I took for New Year's...

 

i need a hyava.

 

Incorrect

 

Walking the dog to day I saw a Jeep, believe it was Wrangler? All black, I was actually quite impressed; it had a very clean harmonious look. Nice design at least.

 

I refuse to subscribe to Car and Driver so I can cancel my subscription in disgust!

Using dynamic cruise control running at the same speed as traffic, I did this on Friday:


Bob Wilson

 

You drove 1200 miles? on Friday? Even at 100MPH average that is 12 hours driving. But that looks like lifetime mileage since it doesn't have a trip number so you are showing average over your first 1200? Yesterday I did 90 miles in our Prime and we did 73.6 MPG, if I had been thinking we were going to take the long drive when I started the day, I would have conserved more EV for city portions but I had burned the first 10 miles off the EV range before we decided to do a long day trip. Also with the rainy weather my drive score was horrible


I think that the big issue is that car makers are still ignoring the American buyers in a large way. Large families buy mini-vans or large SUVs. Right now in the US there are 2 SUVs and 1 mini van that has been equiped with with a hybrid drive. And the mini-van is just now becoming available and the SUVs are both Toyota (Highlander and its cousin over in the Lexus line, okay there is also the Volvo XC90 but it only seats 7). Sure you can talk about the fake GM Hybrid in the Sierras and the like, but those really don't improve efficiency much if at all. And just about every small crossover that has been made a hybrid sacrifices space for the battery system, losing a lot of the appeal people have in buying those vehicles in the first place. I wanted, and still in many ways want, a PHEV crossover. If they had made a plugin-RAV4 I would have been all over that vehicle assuming they didn't steal more than the hybrid RAV4 already does from the cargo space. The Niro looks intriguing but probably too small to really fit my desires. The Prius is replacing a Camry, two vehicles in fairly similar segments from my usage. I still have a big inefficient, mostly dead, truck that I would love to part with, and originally the plan was to find a PHEV crossover and sell the truck and Camry and be a single vehicle household. While the automakers build their little compliance cars, they are really missing the segment. Part of this comes down to volume. If Toyota had a market for 300k Prius, it would be in trouble. They can't make that many. Current battery technology limits production rates. Even Tesla can't build its vehicles fast enough because of battery limitation. That is why they build the Gigafactory, to try to get past that limitation for themselves.

The reason I need a truck is partially hobbies. I do woodworking which requires moving sheet goods to my house. As nice as the Prius is, packing it full of cabinet grade lumber is just not going to happen. We own a big canoe and 2 kayaks. The Kayaks each weigh in at 52 lbs empty. The roof rack for the Prius is rated at a total of 100 lbs. I will probably still carry them on the Prius, but it is pushing my luck. That canoe is never going on top of the prius, I worry about the truck each time it is up there. It is probably 90 lbs, but it is just a massive windbreak and would significantly raise the center of gravity on a small car. On the plus side, if it ever flipped into a river I would probably float.

 

• ~4 miles to the hotel from the dealer on Thursday.
  
• ~60 miles round trip to Twin Rivers casino - North Kingstown RI has no significant, night life and I was bored. I also used it to get familiar with the navigation system and vehicle systems. Got back at 3 AM.
• ~1,140 miles North Kingstown RI to Huntsville AL - started a little after 8 AM with about an hour or so visit with my brother Dave in New Haven, RI. I arrived in Huntsville at ~5 AM (EST.) Other than biology breaks, there was one fuel stop at the Daleville VA exit on I-81 after driving on "E" nearly 60 miles to get a rough, first metric of the tank size.
• Per Google Maps -> 1,130 miles, 17 h 26 min. Add the time visiting with my brother and various biology breaks along with using dynamic cruise control to 'follow trucks', we're pretty much in spitting distance of each other.

That is why I insist on having a receiver hitch. Our BMW i3-REx has a 2" receiver and I'm starting to think about making my own for the Prius Prius Plus.

Bob Wilson

 

If the Prius had 1000 lb towing rating or even 750lb, this vehicle would be perfect. I would buy a small tow trailer and use it for my trips to homedepot or the wood store (very different things if you want cabinet grade lumber). My grandfather used to have a small trailer he used all the time behind a Dodge Omni.

 

It does, just not in the US.

I've loaded as much as 1,000 pounds of lumber in the back of my 2004 Prius before.