Prius III on Mulholland today -- it's fun!

I just back from a fun drive on Mulholland with my Prius III. I have some thoughts an observations. (For reference my last car was a 2001 Mazda Protege MP3, a factory tuned go-cart like car.)

Overall, I found the Prius to be pretty fun to drive. For spirited driving, definitely use PWR more which seems to keep the ICE on boil a little more.

- The seats are quote good! The cloth holds onto you quite well and side bolsters are good. I'm a 170lbs 6' tall typical male, and they fit me pretty snugly, especially in tight corners.

- The tires are the biggest weak spot. Grip levels aren't horrible and they are predictable at the limit but man are they noisy and grindy. I think as people have pointed out before, just replacing them with some grippy summer tires would make a huge difference in handling and braking, though probably reduce your MPG a little. They are "safe" meaning you can tell when you are near the limit (even quite far) but even when grinding there is lots more to go before you are sliding. The grinding sound scares most people from pushing the car further which is too bad as it can handle it.

- Steering is pretty good -- sure not a BMW, but I've read so many stories about the Prius being an intolerable driving experience when pushing it. I didn't find that -- I've driven so many cars that were worse....

- Brakes are good -- once you get used to the regen (which I already am) you can work with them and they are easy to modulate.

- Emergency Brake Assist is an interesting feature. This is where the car applies full braking when it feels you are doing a panic stop. I tested it out a couple times while slowing down and it works nicely. Just give the brakes a firm and very quick press and the car will apply max braking. You have to release a lot before it lets up. It engaged a couple times as I was approaching a corner and I scrubbed off a little more speed than I wanted... but I don't think the feature is detrimental to spirited driving. You just have to know it's there so you don't get caught off guard by increased braking from what you expected. It turns on while trail braking, this can be annoying as you have to let off quite a bit to get it to stop ... though the ABS handles turning and braking nicely.

- ABS -- is works well. Since the car is brake by wire, you don't feel anything in the pedal, which I like, and the car doesn't really pulse the brakes either -- more modules them. But the 4-ch system works well in corners too ... I didn't do a full test of just slamming on the brakes mid corner, but entering a corner hot on the brakes is well controlled and you don't just go plowing into the corner.

- Traction control -- I like it. I've driven so many cars where it works by just dramatically cutting power. Even my friends first model year 350Z did that and man did it suck! The Gen 3 Prius is much nicer and it came on a few times while exiting a corner and other than a flashing light, you can barely tell it's working. You still get slight wheel spin which is great... I've driven many cars with relatively low limits where the traction control was so overprotective that it made it impossible to drive the car in a spirited way.

- Stability control: Don't really know -- I got no beeping and flashing light, so I guess it never came on .. but the limits are pretty high because I pushed the car through some corners right at the limit (of the crappy tires) and it didn't do anything. So you must really need to be out of control. A couple of times I was cornering and hit some water where the car slipped a little and nothing happened there either.

- Throttle Response: This would turn a lot of people off right away as it's "weird" especially compared to a typical normally aspirated car. There is certainly some lag -- almost like turbo lag. Once the ICE is spinning, inputs to the throttle happen quite quickly. But when you go from coasting to power, there is time for the ICE to turn on and spool up... but it's not worse than turbo lag on a lot of turbo cars. You just need to adapt and anticipate it.

- Power: My old Mazda MP3 had 140hp from a 2.0l motor it being a lighter car with a 5-sp manual, it was faster -- but the Prius wasn't as bad as I thought. The battery assist certainly helps -- and the fact the ICE can be at the proper RPM to generate power helps as you don't suffer the problems of a normal car of being at a RPM (in a certain gear) where power output isn't as high. It's kind of neat you don't have to constantly shift.... Of course that kind of sucks too. Haha.

- Handling caveats: There is a little wallow at times ... but it doesn't seem to upset the balance. A lot of this comes from the relatively soft dampers on the car which give it the good ride. It's not nearly as bad as I've felt on some other cars and only really came on when the road surface was changing dramatically with bumps. I was surprised at the solid rear axle. If you have ever driven cars from the 80's with these, it was horrible. Lots of sideways judder during cornering over bumps ... none of that on the Prius.


Overall balance of the car is good and I'm pleasantly surprised. Slight oversteer in some circumstances, understeer most of the time, but overall grip levels were higher than I expected! I found chassis communication to be decent as well -- it was easy to tell what the car was doing. With some decent tires on this car, I don't see why it wouldn't be fun at the track. (I don't know if the brakes would hold up but they were doing fine today.) Perhaps you might see a red Prius running around at Willow Springs at a track event in the near future!

OH, and the best part -- even with lots of crazy driving, I still managed 36mpg on the trip according to my ScanGauge II! From my house it's only a couple minutes to canyon driving, so that was almost all carving. Uphill it was pegged at about 21-23mpg downhill the ICE cuts out every chance it can, even in PWR mode.

 

Damn, I didn't even think of that! Would keep the ICE spun up for better response. Next time I will try, though it might be annoying to have so much engine braking through corners.