Is Gen 5 Prius really better-looking than Gen 4 Prius Prime?

I miss the economic efficiency that the AMC cars had in their last years of production.
Cheap particle board and egg crate plastic. Love it!

 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I'm trying to see how the new Model Y is all that different than an older one. I've looked through a lot of pics on the internet and just don't see that much of a difference personally. Maybe if I had the chance to see one in person I'd have a different view.

I do prefer the Model 3, and especially the Prius, in terms of roofline and overall shape compared to the Y. The Y still looks pregnant to me, like a bubble on wheels. But on the other hand, it is a lot more of a curve than your average boxy crossover, so I'll give it that.

I do like the less busy interior. But I still do not understand why so many vehicles have a huge, bulky center console including the Model Why. There is no transmission going from a front engine to the rear wheels, so why make such a large transmission tunnel? I prefer the ID-Buzz interior with the removeable center storage. Actually, I prefer a lot of older vehicles, going back to the 2000's and before, that had simple interiors. Think air-cooled VW, for an example. I want to be able to add my accessories, not have the car manufacturer dictate that only their giant piece of plastic can go next to my seat and nothing else.

I both love and hate the glass roof of the Tesla cars too.

There just aren't any cars that tick all my boxes. Sleek roofline, spartan interior, no tablet, no center console... Why do I even keep looking at these forums and car sites?

 

Tesla 3 headlights look “sensible”, took a look at the new Y: not so much…

 

Looks the same - to many.

 

I have a hard time believing that having both right in front of me would make one look night and day different from the other. To me, they're slightly different. Not enough to really tell.

I'm not sure of what you're talking about. To me, the perfect car shape is the Aptera. Car's these days are too boxy. While I like rounded shapes on classic cars, like the original air-cooled VW Beetle, I don't like them on new cars. Airplane-like tapers are much more sexy to me.

The Model Why was always bloated looking, and it's still boated looking, like they blew it up with an air compressor and forgot to turn off the compressor in time. Maybe if it were a hot air ballon instead of a car, then the shape would make a little more sense to me.

 

I'm still trying to figure out what you're talking about. The rear of the new Model Why has nearly the exact same silhouette as the original.

The lights are different and the place the license plate goes is different, eliminating that lip on the trunk necessary for license plate lights, and putting it down low.

I like the original Beetle, but do not like any of the newer iterations of the Beetle. The Original Beetle was a great attempt at making a car aerodynamic and a practical size back in the 1930's when it was designed.

But the Model Why and many other recent models are bent on making cars as tall as possible, instead of doing logical thing and put that extra space where it makes more aerodynamic and practical sense, in a longer, station-wagon styled vehicle. Sure, the Model Why is aerodynamic for someone 7' tall or someone who wears Carmen Miranda hats. But for me, it's just wasted space. Why make a car so bulbus just to make a bigger frontal area that creates more airdrag instead of putting it where it makes sense?

 

Yeah, I guess I can agree. Now that you say "shrunken head" I see what you mean. And yes, I think they've done a better job at making it smaller.

I think that's done for two reasons that have nothing to do with looks:

1. Impact zones on doors. Doors are thicker than ever. The original Beetle didn't have the shrunken head like modern cars, but the doors were also only about 2 inches thick. Thick doors these days are necessary for protecting passengers from side impacts.
2. Keeping the width clear up to the top makes zero sense from a practical standpoint. Sure, it might look more normal, but you don't need the window to be 8 or 10 inches farther to the side than the door panel. That extra width, just like extra height, is more frontal area, and therefore more air drag.
3. Another reason is to put the wheels farther to the sides. This was actually part of the design of the original VW Beetle, as the fenders and wheels were wider with the interior only wide enough for two people to sit side by side. Any thinner and they'd have to put in an even smaller engine in the rear in the VW Beetle. Modern cars, though, already have to have wider doors, so why not put the tires way out to the sides to match it?

 

While I appreciate how they acheived the lower coefficient of drag, there's still room for improvement. They jumped over the lower hanging fruit and jumped on the harder to reach fruit in order to keep the design tall for rich customers while lowering drag as much as possible. This is part of the reason why the Model Why starts out at $40,000 and not $20,000.

Lower hanging fruit is there. Even if it had the same coefficient of drag as before, just making it smaller, such as shorter, improves the overall drag by the size reduced, because air drag energy lost is speed squared times the coefficient of drag times the frontal area. A tall vehicle is a drag penalty, low coefficient or not.

The coefficient of drag can also be easily reduced by making the vehicle longer. Longer, more sloping curves, rather than bubble-like curves, are more aerodyamic. Because of this, you can keep the same interior space, just squish and stretch the vehicle at the same time.

These were lower hanging fruit options Tesla ignored. People, like me, just can't consider a vehicle like a new Model Why because they don't do things that both reduce the cost as well as increase the range, at least not to the point that we can afford one. Tesla prefers paying engineers the money to make the vehicle the same but better. I'm sure for Tesla and Tesla enthusiasts, that makes sense. For the rest of us, no it doesn't.

Now imagine both a lower coefficient of drag and a smaller frontal area. That's what the next gen Model 3 will undoubtedly be, and will undoubtedly be even more aerodynamic and get better range than the new Model Why, while costing less.

 

I suppose you're right. In reality, my prejudice against the Model Y isn't all that justified.

I should look at it as a best of both worlds. I dislike the move to exclusively utilitarian vehicles, as they tend to be less efficient and give less space and practicality for the price. But the Model Y is perhaps better than a happy medium.

Yet, at the same time, the Model Y still feels like the same ol' "make it bigger and charge more" attitude in the car industry. A defeat to the practical, economy car. You say I can get a Model 3, and I could right now, but for how long until that car is dropped? The Toyota Corolla is becoming the Corolla Cross. The Camry is being replaced by the RAV4. Ford and GM have killed their entire car segment for exclusively utilitarian vehicles with the exception of the Mustang and the Corvette, and they've even tried the SUVification technique on the Mustang already.

The VW Beetle, that car I could go park and actually put my arm around my wife as she rested her head on my should as we watched the sun set together in, is history, never to come back. Big, pig-nosed, pedestrian-crushing egos-on-wheels are the future.

 

Thanks!

I see what you mean. My question is, what is the coefficient plus frontal area? Like I said before, the coefficient of drag is a pretty useless number without the frontal area.

However, the Gen 5 Prius is both short and wider. So, who knows. Still, I think the Gen 5 looks fine to me. It's slimmer than the Model Y. The Model Y looks like it needs to go on a diet.