First Impressions

I found our Prius to be very very responsive to a slight turn in the wheel. On the highway I did a turn and when I pulled the Prius back to the forward position, it strongly jerked the car the other way. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not.

Yeah, and I love the gas mileage too. I easily achieved 47MPG on the first drive on the highway.

One more cool thing I noticed was the SKS and the interior lights. When you put the dome light and rear light to the "door" position and approach the vehicle, the lights turn on for you. Cool!

 

there are so many cool things about this car that I cannot begin to list them all.

 

The one I'm trading in after 2 months and about 2,300 miles was quicker than I expected from a dead stop. On the bad side, very bad side it just wasn't stable through s curves or on a windy bridge.

The turning radius in a parking lot was really cool but so is a golf cart and in the end it's more like a golf cart than a car.

 

I think this is what I was trying to explain. On the highway while making curves at fast speeds, it is very hard to recover stability.

 

Because of construction on my old route home from work a large S curve was built into a section of highway leaving Tampa. The car was pretty scary going through there and because of traffic it wasn't safe to slow down to the very low speed that the Prius was comfortable with in that area. Then it swayed in some moderate gusts of wind on the bridge across the bay. I don't need the white knuckle rides.

When hybrids are more common and the technology improves I think we'll see a little weight added and better suspensions. The Honda Civic Hybrid I test drove had a much more solid feel but it was god awful slow. Dangerously slow in quick traffic and dealing with some ofthe real world entry ramps and lane changes that get me home. In one case I enter and have to cross over 3 lanes immediately in quick moving traffic. A slow car in that situation is dangerous.

 

I was driving a Solara before my flirtation with the Prius. I wanted to go back to a smaller car with a hatchback. The trunk on the Solara was difficult to fit anything sizeable in.