Will the former doubters/haters/deniers please speak up

I was a Prius hater until last year.

My main concerns was that it didn't save me any money. I don't need a fully featured Prius at $25k. Even a Prius 2 with its push button start and power buttons is too luxurious for me. A $15k econobox with manual windows and no armrest was all I needed. Last year, I noticed the lowest trim Civic and Focus were nearly $20k. A Prius 2 was discounted heavily to $22k if you factor in 0 down and 0 interest. A $2k to $3k price delta was lot easier to make up in fuel costs.

I still hated how ugly and slow the Prius was so I looked at Versas and Yarises. Even they were $16k and at that level, I was getting a cramped car that is just as slow and ugly as a Prius. They had worse fuel economy than a Civic which made no sense to me.

I was about to buy a Versa anyway because of my disdain for the Prius. Then, the PiP became heavily discounted to $25,800 and I purchased it instead for the HOV stickers. To my pleasant surprise, my insurance costs were lower than my Civic making my payback period almost 2 years.

I'm not convinced on the reliability of the battery and Toyota in general. My family have had numerous problems with Corollas and Camrys. So far, reading this forum has not changed my mind. Toyotas may be reliable but if something were to break, it is quite expensive. I'm not a gear head. I went to a local mechanic to fix the AC unit in our 2006 Corolla when it broke and it broke again after a year. I went to the dealer to fix it a second time and it broke a third time but the dealer covered it. Same deal with the water pump in my sister's Camry. We had it done locally and it leaked again. Took it to the dealer and they fixed it properly for double the cost. I go to the dealer now for repairs. I'm sure others can go to junkyards and DIY their repairs but I haven't had much success. Both cars had 100k miles on it. I have never had such expensive repairs on a vehicle at that age. There are too many battery related issues that I read on this forum and not enough drivers of old or high mileage Prius to convince me it is reliable. I'm fully convinced a Prius is the way to go despite my concerns with Toyota's high cost of repairs because my worries are anecdotal.

As to the eco-friendliness of the vehicle. I'd like to see more data on the environmental costs to manufacture the batteries and its disposal or recycling costs versus just burning more gasoline like a Mazda 3.

I think Toyota has done as good a job touting the green benefits of the Prius as they can. On reliability? I think they will need to do a "Tesla type" warranty against anything to convince more people to drive it. Honestly, if it wasn't for the green stickers, I wouldn't be on this forum. But now that I am here, if they suddenly removed HOV access to BEV's and PHEV's, I'd still have a Prius on my driveway. I've seen the error in my ways but nothing Toyota did convinced me about it. Well, unless they lobbied to get HOV access into law.

 

Actual Corolla owners average 31 MPG. Toyota Corolla MPG Reports | Fuelly

Consider the Prius v. Huge back, real owners get 42 MPG, does not look as much like a Prius. Toyota Prius v MPG Reports | Fuelly

 

I have long commutes so my wife suggested that I get the Prius as my next car. I didn't want one as the Gen II was too awkward looking. When the Gen III came out I reconsidered and eventually got it after my previous car (a Mustang convertible) was declared a total loss.

 

Thanks for pointing that out. 40mpg is just what I estimate I would get in the Corolla based on my driving experience with other manual transmission vehicles. I also realize that I'll probably be getting 58mpg in the Prius.

 

I no longer trust epa fuel estimates. I always go to fuelly where you can get actual mileage. I'm sure there is some bs there, but statistics shows through. Throw out the outliers and you get a pretty good estimate.

 

I'm kinda surprised people are talking about reliabilty problems in this thread when listing their reservations to getting a Prius. No doubt some have experienced issues, but if you look at aggregate numbers like Consumer Reports or True Delta, there are few cars as reliable. I loved the Prius before I got it and love it more 3-and-a-half-years later. No hate here.

 

I was a hater. But as of last week I now own a PiP and love it. I basically thought of the Prius as the car for people to get who don't like driving. But things change when you realize you spend 95% of your driving time doing stop and go through the city or just cruising on the highway, rather than zipping around onramps or doing high-speed slalom maneuvers. I learned that the Prius is fun to drive but in a completely different way than a sports car is fun to drive. Also a new job with a 6 mile round trip commute made the PiP the perfect vehicle for me, and fact that after all rebates and discounts the car is cheaper than a base Prius and the PiP has far better standard features.

I have to say though the complete lack of steering feedback is pretty insane. But I knew what I was getting into when I bought it and it works for a car like this that is dedicated to economy rather than driving dynamics.

 

I was a hater, not so much of the car I believed in the tech, knew the car was efficient, reliable and safe.

I hated the drivers, hated the stigma attached to owning one or even how the web and "studies" portray Prius drivers. I spend a lot of time on the road in my line of work and if there was ever a constant it was a Prius in the passing lane, a Prius not using their hands free, a Prius not paying attention to the lights, a Prius with some type of political message, etc.

I have come to the realization that it probably is the area I live and work in and popularity of the car as a whole. I believe it is the best selling car in California for good reason.

So having worked in an industry where things are very black and white with very little grey and my better half telling me we're going to buy this car whether you like it or not it fits exactly what we need; I really have come to enjoy driving it and choose to drive it more than my own daily driver.

Case in point, I've been off of work the last few days and I've only taken the Prius. My Infiniti which averages a dismal 15mpg on my short commute sits and sits and... sits.

For every "bad" Prius driver there have to be 10 "good" ones right??

 

Nope, that is pretty much true everywhere.

Nope, reverse that ratio: 1/10 (good to bad).

 

I can understand why people hate the Prius. Especially car guys since I've owned and worked on performance cars. I consider myself a young conservative who happens to love cars, tech, firearms, and anything mechanical.

The Prius to me is a mechanical/technological wonder. I appreciate the engineering involved in the car.


Nexus 7 ?

 

I guess I would be a good person to chime in here. I have been a gear head all my life. The Prius was never on my radar until a couple of years ago due to:
a) distrust of new technology (which is ironic as a have worked in IT most of my adult life). Toyota now has been doing this for several years and it has proven to be reliable
b) the Prius driver stigma which we all know

What changed for us was we were looking to replace my wife's Cadillac CTS. I was really looking to replace it with a Hyundai Elantra/Sonata. Neither of these impressed us. We stopped at the Toyota dealer and one of the first Prius Vs was there (this was March 2012). Wife fell in love with it so we have it.
Last summer we moved further away from work and my Mercury Mariner was using more gas than I was comfortable with; stopped by to look at a low trim 13 Prius which I couldn't justify the cost of vs. what I had. Other side of the lot was a 2010 Prius IV that they were dealing on.

I do find that many other drivers have a prejudice against Prius drivers. They cannot handle being behind one and will speed up to 40 over to pass me when I am driving along at 20 over on the freeway. Oh well haters gonna hate...

So in two short years I have gone from hater to being the owner of 2 black Priuses

 

I hated them for all the reasons listed above. I now own a '13 hatch and a '13 "v". My coworkers laugh and point at me, I don't care... I like them both!
GT-N5110 ? 4

 

I commuted just under 1000 miles a week for years and pretty much drove Corollas, was always happy with them. When I looked to replace my '08 a few years ago, I decided on a bigger car like a Camry or Sonata. I have 2 young kids and was looking for an alternate to our mini-van and the Corolla back seat wasn't enough anymore for them as they grew.
I tracked my mileage religiously and always averaged 33-34 in cold weather and 37-39 in warmer. So 35 in a Camry or Sonata was fine with me.
I never really liked the Prius, just looked to odd and I was one of this people convinced that replacing batteries and hybrid parts would outweigh the savings. I did all my own maintenance on my cars, cheap and easy. So when I went and looked at the Camry SE's, I decided to glance a Prius 3 window sticker and it dawned on me.... Same car price, same car size, and 15 more mpg. I sucked it up and bought it. It had the chrome door trim and LED door sills, so I thought it was kind of cool, never was really attracted to a Prius and will still not consider it good looking. Over time, I saved so much in my gas budget that I lowered it and put nicer wheels and tires on it and was happy with the way it rode and drove. Afterward it was all savings. Loved that.
The car still doesn't really excite me and I've since moved and only commute 100 miles each week but it's still good for sightseeing trips around the southwest instead of horrific commutes into N. Va. It's a good car.


iPhone ?

 

I was never really a Prius fan or a Prius hater. I liked the technology since its inception, but not the design. The Prius is by no means a comfortable car to ride in. We will not use it on long drives (more than an hour or two) because the sound deadening is terrible and the seats are very uncomfortable. It's a great city car, though. While my parents never had luxury cars when I was little, they always did have cars that were well equipped with leather & a sunroof. I have become so accustomed to those features that I don't want to be without them. The Prius doesn't allow that without spending a lot of money. I wanted a Three w/ Solar Roof but my wife preferred the Persona with SofTex and big rims. Since she primarily drives the Prius we went with her preference. For the first couple years of our marriage we got by with just one car, this fall we needed a second car because my wife was starting a new job (we previously both walked to work most days) and we wanted something affordable. We could probably have leased a Corolla or other small car for less money per month (between payment & gas combined), but driving a hybrid is addicting. We're so used to cruising in electric mode in our Fusion Hybrid, having the engine off as traffic lights, etc. Whenever I ride in someone else's gas car it feels so antiquated and barbaric. The smoothness of the Power Split Device is so incredible as well. It is so amazing to drive a car where the ICE RPM is smooth and isn't rising & falling with transmission shifts. Acceleration is also perfectly smooth, there are no momentary changes in acceleration rate as the transmission shifts like in conventional cars. That is why we have a Prius as our second car instead of something like a Corolla or a Ford Focus.

 

Very true. I had Corolla and this was what I got with AT and normal (ie. fast) driving.

Coming back to the topic, I test drove 2000 Prius and hated the drive experience.

Then, I went back in 2010, test drove a 3rd gen and liked it (but only after I pressed the power button). The rest is history.