Background
We purchased our 2004 Toyota Prius in June '04 after having been on a southern California dealer's waiting list for more than five months. (More about our actual buying experience further down.) We had wanted this car since we first heard about it back in 2003. My wife and I are what you might call "yuppie environmentalists". Meaning, we recycle the containers that our gourmet prepared food comes in, we buy organic esoteric vegetables at the local farmer's markets, we pay more for products made of recycled materials (everything from recycled-paper paper plates to ski jackets made of recycled plastic bottles), and we put our baby son in cloth diapers instead of landfill-filling disposables (but we buy designer-made diaper wraps to hold the cloth in place). The uncharitable among you might label us hypocrites, limousine liberals, or "bohos in paradise". I prefer to think we're just doing what we can to lessen our own personal contribution to the gradual destruction of our planet while simultaneously enjoying life. I mean, why not do less harm if you can? Also, if doing less harm means not enjoying your life, well, what's the point in that? :-)
We also care about our health and the health of our baby. I exercise regularly, my wife does yoga, and we try to eat food that won't send us to an early grave. That means organic whenever possible and processed and fast-food only occasionally. (Yes, we pay more for organic baby food at our local Whole Foods grocery store.) It also means we care about things such as air quality, water pollution, and the erosion of our natural environment. Of note: I bicycle to work once a week and plan to take my son out on bike rides with me once he's old enough. So traffic safety, safe streets and clean air mean much to me personally.
That's why, after having bought our primary car in October 2003 (a 2003 BMW 325i wagon; see my Epinion here http://www.epinions.com/content_117810105988), we decided our second car would be a Prius. The advertised fuel economy and emissions impressed and appealed to us. We also thought the list price of $21,000 for a basic model was a bargain. Ha! how wrong we were on the price, and that's where our buying experience story begins.
Buying Experience
By the time the Prius hit the market in southern California, it was too late. You couldn't buy one with cash in your hand if you walked into a dealership waving the greenbacks. The early buzz on the car had gotten so hot, especially in soCal where you DRIVE A LOT and where AIR POLLUTION matters, that waiting lists were forming before the first cars even reached the dealers. There was also the flash factor, a superficial yet integral thread of the fabric of life in southern California. Cameron Diaz and Tom Hanks supposedly drove Priuses! The car must be cool!
Overall, though, it was sort of like with the MINI Cooper and the Honda S2000 -- remember how buyers had to be put on waiting lists for those cars and then ended up paying over sticker? Simple supply vs. demand economics.
We decided to wait a few months to see if "Prius fever" would die down. With the MINI Cooper it did. You can now buy a MINI at a showroom; there are no MINI waiting lists anymore. We thought that perhaps the frenzy over Priuses would ebb once the first early adopters got their cars and then we could walk into a dealership and buy the car as we would any other car, bargaining the salesperson down from list price.
We were wrong, at least in soCal. (I can't verify the situation in other parts of the U.S. I've heard there are waiting lists in the Seattle area, the San Francisco Bay area, and the NYC region.) The current waiting list at soCal dealerships for a Prius is about HALF A YEAR (I write this in August 2004). It turned out that not only didn't the initial frenzy die down, but a second wave of consumer demand swelled quickly, possibly in part because gasoline prices have been so high this summer. (In Los Angeles this summer, a gallon of premium at some stations broke the $3 mark!). There could also be some "war effect" at work among some buyers. Namely, consumers who feel stronger about their intent to lessen our country's dependence on foreign oil supplies as the war in the Middle East drags on might've shored up their decisions to buy a car that burns comparatively little gasoline.
Whatever the causes, by the end of 2003, it was clear that we couldn't buy a Prius right way. So we researched area dealerships on the Internet and decided to add our name to the waiting list at Carson Toyota in Orange County, just south of Los Angeles proper. Carson's Internet fleet sales department has a very good reputation. Their head salesperson even posts regularly on Yahoo's Prius newsgroup. (I know, I know, it's the Web, so that could be a 13-year-old boy from Ohio impersonating the salesperson -- but I doubt it.)
When I put our name on Carson Toyota's list, I stated that we weren't interested in paying over MSRP. A salesperson very politely but clearly told me that that meant that we'd wait a long time for a car. I said we'd wait. While I'm not the most penny-pinching consumer out there, I do like a bargain, and paying sticker for a car just seems wrong ... but I was willing to go MSRP in acknowledgement of the high demand for the vehicle.
Months went by. We saw Priuses on the roads and grew greener (no pun intended) with envy each time. I checked on the wait times at other dealers besides Carson and either got worse replies or downright rude replies. Can't speak very highly of Toyota's soCal dealerships, but that should be for another Epinion :-)
Finally, as the spring of 2004 came upon us, we relented and I told Carson that we'd pay over sticker if it meant moving up on the waiting list. Wow - it was like I'd said "Open sesame!" It goes against every atom of my consumer mentality, but it was clear that sticking to sticker meant waiting and waiting. Carson told me how much we'd have to pay, my wife & I discussed it and agreed, and I told Carson we'd take one at their over-MSRP price. They said they'd have one for us within a month, and they did.
Supply vs. Demand
It embarrasses me to admit that we paid about three thousand dollars over MSRP for our car. Then again, there are many stories in soCal about Prius buyers who paid six thousand and more to get their cars. And if we had stuck to our guns about paying only sticker, well, we'd still be sticking to our guns and not driving our Prius.
On the Yahoo! Prius newsgroup, there is reliable information posted that said that in June 2004, soCal Toyota dealers received about 240 Priuses. There are 75 Toyota dealers in soCal. Given how many buyers for the car there must be in this region, it's no wonder that the waiting lists continue to grow. So the only way to move up to the top of the lists is to pay over MSRP. Again, simple supply vs. demand. *sigh*
For what it's worth, our salesperson at Carson informed us that the supply bottleneck is actually caused by battery manufacture. She said Toyota could make a Prius for everyone who wants to buy one, but the supply chokehold is Panasonic, which manufactures the nickel-metal hydride rechargeable batteries. I can't verify this but it's interesting if it's true.
Worth the Price and the Wait? Yes!
Despite having waited more than six months for our car, and despite paying three thousand over MSRP, our Prius delights us! It is, even considering what we paid, a wonderful car. Though it is nothing like our 2003 BMW 325i sport wagon, I enjoy driving it just as much, if not even more [in some ways -- I'll elaborate below].
I'll explain in more detail, but here's a summary of why, even at $29,650 plus tax and licensing and dealer prep, our Prius is a fantastic automobile and one we're happy we own:
- A high-tech, cool-inspiring driving experience like no other on the road right now.
- Amazing fuel economy, especially in city and stop-and-go traffic. Superb tailpipe emissions.
- Loads of interior space and a very practical hatchback design.
- That intangible early-adopter feeling ... like the first time you used a Macintosh, e-mail or a mobile phone.
The important basics of the Prius: the hybrid drive
The heart of the Prius, and of any car for that matter, is its engine. More than any other major component, the engine defines the character of the automobile. The Prius's unique character starts with its so-called hybrid drive: a 1.5-liter four-cylinder gasoline engine that's essentially synchronized to a 50-kilowatt electric motor.
This double-engined configuration is called a "full hybrid" in automotive jargon. That means that the car can run on solely the gas engine, solely the electric motor, or on both. The switching among those drive configurations is smooth and seamless, and, when you really think about it, an amazing ballet of sophisticated computer control and drivetrain management. The car utilizes whichever configuration is needed: both for hard acceleration, electric-only for low-speed rolling, 75/25 gasoline/electric for highway cruising, 25/75 gasoline/electric for city streets, and any combination thereof.
The four-cylinder gas engine puts out 76 horsepower and 82 lb-ft of torque. The electric motor has a torque rating of 296 lb-ft, and, significantly, that's 100% torque at 0 rpm. Electric motors have all their pulling power from the get-go, unlike gasoline engines which need to rev up before the accelerative power kicks in. For anyone who's driven a golf cart, you know this feeling. Step on the pedal from a standstill and the cart starts moving instantly.
One of the unique benefits of the full hybrid powertrain, other than increased overall fuel economy, is that when you stomp on it from a standstill, you get some oomph. That electric motor with its full torque at 0 rpm is the key as it kicks in to assist the four-cylinder gas engine to get you moving. (Things peter out after 20 mph, though, and by then you're moving about as a fast as a four-banger Camry. But it's great for blowing through intersections once the light turns green :-)
I've also noticed a substantial accelerative kick when punching it from, say, 40 mph to 55 mph. Again, it's that electric motor jumping in (with its 100% torque at 0 rpm) and giving the four-cylinder a much-welcome assist. This mid-speed acceleration boost is a bit eerie because you don't hear or feel the gasoline engine revving harder as you stomp the pedal, yet the car zooms noticeably faster. There's a lot about driving the Prius that's surprising in these little ways...
Also worth noting about the Prius's gasoline engine: it's an Atkinson Cycle engine. No, it's not on a low-carb diet. The engine's valve openings are set so that the expansion/compression ratio is tweaked for better fuel efficiency, albeit with some sacrifice in power. Less power but great fuel economy.
What all this adds up to is, arguably, one of the most technologically sophisticated pieces of consumer hardware on the roadways today. My '03 BMW 325i has computer-controlled variable valve timing and computer-controlled throttle-by-wire input, but driving it is still fundamentally a mechanical sensation. This is a good thing for that car. The much-lauded driving experience of BMWs is rooted in the tactile sensation of human + machine. New models have gotten very luxurious, but unlike Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, or Jaguar, BMWs still remind you that you are flesh in steel rolling on rubber powered by explosions. By contrast, the Prius is almost like magic. There is so much high technology at work to keep your gasoline usage optimized while you drive that it's sort of like using a supercomputer rather than driving a car.
And this is where the Prius' brilliance lies. Driving the Prius is like science fiction.
And here's why...
No, you don't have to plug it in
If this unique two-fer engine weren't fascinating enough, it gets better. You never have to plug the car in to recharge the batteries that drive the electric motor. The car recharges itself whenever you drive, without you actively having to think about it or behave any differently. From braking to engine slowing, the car recaptures energy that is usually just wasted into the environment. The massive pack of rechargeable batteries (located in a flat cell situated underneath the rear bench) is essentially always being recharged as you drive, and you can actually monitor the recharging activity with one of the display options in the very cool touchscreen monitor embedded in the center of the dash.
The display will show you, with a drivetrain image and little color-coded arrows, in which direction the energy is flowing -- both energy expended and energy being recaptured. From gasoline engine to drive wheels (the car is front-wheel drive, BTW) ... from electric motor to drive wheels ... from brakes to batteries ... from batteries to electric motor ... from gasoline engine to batteries, etc. Toggle to another screen and you can watch a bar graph with little green car icons that show you how much energy [in kilowatts] you're regenerating. Brake constantly during a long downhill stretch, for example, and you'll rack up a stack of those little car icons as the heat from your braking is recaptured and stored in the batteries. Adjacent to the regeneration capture graph is another bar graph that rises up and down real-time to show you your exact at-the-moment mpg.
Monitoring this symphony of energy regeneration and fuel economy can be so alluring that it becomes distracting! You catch yourself driving with one eye on the monitor, feathering the throttle at key points and taking advantage of rolling stops or downhills to maximize your energy capture. Turning off the air conditioning to watch your mpg shoot up. Accelerating as slowly as you can without ticking off drivers behind you. Those sort of things.
Of course, this is silly and eventually you get over it and you just drive the car. But still, knowing that your automobile is doing this, as easy as pie, just like breathing, is kind of awe-inspiring. It makes other cars with their single gasoline engines and run-o'-the-mill ABS brakes producing nothing but heat and dust seem downright primitive. The Prius comes standard with ABS and traction control, BTW, and it's as much for safety as it is for energy economy: less wheelspin means more power actually being committed to forward momentum. It's almost impossible to burn rubber or peel out in a Prius, but why would you want to? That's wasting energy, isn't it?
So, no, you don't have to plug this thing in to a wall outlet. Think again about the Prius' energy regeneration system. Then think about regular cars again. Then put the two thoughts together ... and you begin to realize that there's nothing sexy, appealing, or fun about wasting energy. That you don't have to be a tree-hugger or even a mild environmentalist to love what the Prius does. What if all cars could recapture the energy they waste and burn off and convert it into stored power for forward momentum... See what I mean about science fiction?
No shifts (other than the paradigm one)
There's another important factor in the Prius' mileage performance: the car's transmission. The Prius' automatic transmission is a CVT, or Continuously Variable Transmission. It doesn't sport regular gears and shift points. CVT, available in some Audi's also, is a system that progressively varies the drivetrain's transmission ratio. The "gears", so to speak, are infinite, rather than fixed in 4, 5, or 6 steps. This allows the engine to remain at its optimum RPM, rather than revving up and down and up and down, wasting fuel.
CVT translates to better fuel economy and lowered emissions, which is why, I suspect, Toyota chose it for the Prius.
The driving experience with CVT is odd until you get accustomed to it. The engine simply gets up to its optimum rpm and seems to remain there, no matter how fast or slow the car is moving. Accelerating, in particular, is eerie without traditional gears. But it all works, and it adds (subtracts?) to the car's overall quietness and lack of rumble.
Smell that? Me neither.
Besides phenomenally improved fuel economy (more on that coming up), the hybrid drive with regenerative energy capture also produces -- or doesn't produce -- superb pollution levels. Driving anything other than a hydrogen-powered fuel cell car hurts the environment. There is no way around that truth, at least not today. There are some models of Acuras/Hondas, Mazdas, and Volvos that burn 91-octane gasoline pretty darn cleanly today, clean enough to be rated ULEVs and even PZEVs by the EPA (Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle and Partial-Zero Emissions Vehicle, respectively). That's laudable and good. Again, as with the inherent coolness of regenerative energy capture, what's sexy or fun about polluting our air? Nothing. Being clean is cool.
The Prius, measured on a real-world daily basis, is one of the cleanest vehicles on the road today. The EPA classifies the Prius as a SULEV (Super Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle) and AT-PZEV (Advanced Technology Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle). These mean that our car produces 90 percent fewer emissions than it would if it were conventionally powered. In Los Angeles, this is important.
But forget the do-gooder aspect. Do you enjoy New Car Smell? Is that one of the reasons you pay the markup that's baked into all new-car sales prices rather than do the smart thing and buy a slightly used certified pre-owned car where the first owner has eaten all the depreciation? Of course it is. Well, you'll love the Prius with its SULEV and AT-PZEV performance because about all you'll smell is your New Car Smell. Our car is so clean-burning it's shocking sometimes. I've gotten used to it, so much so that "regular" cars all smell like diesel trucks to me.
When parked in a shade-less supermarket parking lot on a hot sunny day, we've sometimes kept the car on while my wife tended to our baby inside and I ran a quick errand. Do that with a regular gasoline car and by the time you get back to it, there's a quavering halo of heat and fumes surrounding the sheet metal. It may be nice and frosty inside because of the A/C, but the amount of heat and pollution your idling car sloughed off into the atmosphere is sickening. By contrast, our Prius can sit powered-on and idling for 10-15 minutes and it's no worse than leaving your desktop computer on overnight. And unlike your PC, the Prius doesn't crash while idling ;-)
There's that science fiction feeling again ... the smell of burning fossil fuel mated to fixed gears is positively Neanderthal. But the Prius as it wafts along on sips of gas and the electic motor, the CVT pulling seamlessly along without jumps or shifts, well, it's all very Jetsons.
YMMV
Besides the exterior styling of the car (more on that later), the one aspect of the Prius that gets everyone all het up is the EPA's stated fuel economy for the model. They said 60 mpg in the city and we, just like everyone else who heard that, thought "fantastic! I want one!". It's the one feature of the car that total strangers even know about. "Hey, how do you like your car? I heard it gets sixty miles to the gallon."
Read it and weep: The truth is that you won't average 60 mpg in the city or anywhere else except maybe outer space (no wind resistance or gravity :-) I've read that the EPA tests new cars under supremely ideal conditions, and perhaps they tested the Prius in outer space. Whatever the factors, you in fact will average, at best, about 53 mpg and, at worst, as low as 33 mpg. What affects your fuel economy and how to maximize it are two of the most-discussed topics among Prius owners. Prius owners can be downright fanatical (okay, say it: cult-like!) about the topic.
There are web sites where Prius owners post their daily fuel economy, sort of like a blog for your Prius. I've seen lists of how to maximize your fuel economy that border on the insane. But no matter how little gasoline is in the tank (to minimize curb weight), how much you've turned off all the interior electronics (stereo: off, A/C: off, fan: off, interior lights: off, nav system: off), how few things you're lugging around (totally empty backseat and trunk), and how slowly you accelerate (can we say Flintstones?), you will not get 60 mpg in most normal driving conditions.
But get this: You will average far better fuel economy than if you were driving any other comparably equipped and similarly sized car. We were disappointed at first by how "bad" our fuel economy was, but that's because, probably like most other Prius owners, we were expecting 60 mpg. (It's all about expectation, isn't it?) Expect 43 to be realistic, and then be shocked and awed when your after-dinner errand blast to the local grocery store for milk snags you 53 mpg.
(Worth noting: Some Prius-haters point out that 43 mpg is not that fantastic when compared to a, say, diesel-powered VW Jetta that the EPA rates at 37 mpg. The fair comparison shouldn't be real-world mileage vs. EPA rating but real-world mileage vs. real-world mileage. I've read in some auto magazines that that Jetta really nets in the low-30s, or even high-20s if driven hard. And then there's the whole emissions thing.)
All this focus on fuel economy with the Prius needs to be put into some perspective. If I had a 2004 four-cylinder Toyota Camry and carried myself, my wife, our baby, and a stroller and some stuff, I'd be averaging probably 22 mpg in the city (Los Angeles - lots of stop and go and hard acceleration). By contrast, our real-world city average in our Prius with all that weight is about 39 mpg. That's not 60 mpg, but relatively speaking, it's wonderful.
Oh, and: The Prius' engine burns regular unleaded, so that means not only do you put fewer gallons in the car, but you're buying the least expensive grade of fuel. (Toyota specs 87 octane; I'm not cheating by ignoring a higher-grade manufacturer spec.)
Here's another way to look at it: We've put about 1,000 miles on our car since picking it up with four miles on the odometer and a complimentary full tank of gasoline (about 12 gallons). Amount we've actually spent on gassing up our car since then: $24. And I don't expect to put more gas in the tank for at least another two weeks from now.
Space shuttle? Alien egg pod? Jetsons' mobile?
The thing about cars, right, is that very few of us select them based solely on pragmatism and logic. Automobiles hold a special place in our emotional centers just like houses, jewelry, and swimsuits. I love cars. I am unabashedly emotional about them, though I try to infuse logic and rationality into thinking about them whenever I can muster the clarity.
If Americans chose their cars with logic and rationality, we wouldn't be driving SUVs, Hummers, VW Beetles, convertibles, pick-ups that aren't used for picking up, any German- or Italian-made car, or any of the new Chrysler models. We'd all be driving Honda Accords and Odysseys.
But cars are statements about our personalities, about our net worth, about our ambitions and longings. That's why, in large part, how a car looks is so incredibly important to us. The sheet metal, so to speak, matters. The shape of the Prius matters.
The Prius' shape polarizes. Some think it's sleek and futuristic, some say it's ugly and ungainly. The majority probably just think it's odd. At first, before I saw one on the road, I told my wife that in online photos at least, the car looked weird, like an alien space pod. She thought it looked cute, if a bit swollen. I also thought it looked like it would have a small, cramped interior.
Now that we've owned one for about three months, I can tell you that I've grown to love the shape. It's reminiscent of nothing less cutting-edge than those shuttlecraft that Star Trek characters piloted around in. I actually once posted a jpeg of the original Star Trek shuttlecraft on a page next to a digital photo of our car and I'll be damned if the Prius didn't look like the next gen of the shuttlecraft. With wheels. If our car was white and I painted "U.S.S. Federation" on the side, I'd be mistaken for Mr. Sulu driving it around Los Angeles, I guarantee it.
No matter what you might think about the look of the Prius aesthetically, you should know that there's much form following function going on here. According to several auto magazine reviews, the Prius' 0.26 coefficient of drag is about the lowest ever for a production car. And it does that with negative lift at the front and just a small, 0.074 coefficient of lift at the rear. This means the car slips through the air better than most cars. Again, another design success toward fuel economy.
But the added effect, besides its Star Trek look, is quiet. The Prius is a very quiet car and it achieves its silence not through weight-busting sound deadeners and panels but through good ol' intelligent wind-tunnel testing. It's slippery, the shape, and that's cool.
The odd shape also contributes to a very surprising interior space. There's more room inside the Prius than there is inside a Toyota Camry - really. Doesn't look that way, does it? The eye is fooled by the radically sloped, huge front windshield and large back arch. The car is not a compact box; it's a mid-size sedan with a very large hatchback area (yes, split folding rear seats, for when you want to carry a bookcase or ladder) that just looks small because of its shape. (How tiny the wheels look inside their wells should be the giveaway. The wheels aren't actually tiny, they're normal non-sports car wheels.)
To give you an idea of just how big the Prius actually is, we once parked it in a mini-mall lot between a Toyota Sienna minivan and a Toyota Corolla sedan. The Prius is taller and wider than the Corolla and only a hair shorter in height than the minivan.
The car's height is interesting and worth noting. The driving position (the seats don't have height adjustments, only fore/aft and seatback angle) is somewhere between that of a sedan and a minivan. The beltline is lower than you'd expect, given how tall the vehicle actually is; there's a lot of glass around you and I like that for visibility reasons. (I've owned two Acuras and they both had great sightlines and big greenhouses.) If you've ever driven Toyota's Matrix model, you know what I mean when I say that the driving position is sort of like a mini-minivan. My wife loves the vantage point and visibility. I like the visibility and roominess (I'm 5'11").
I can carry four adults and lots of junk in the hatchback with nary a pinched elbow or squashed kneecap.
The car weighs 2890 pounds, BTW. That's light for a mid-size sedan. It achieves this through generous use of aluminum, a trick that many high-end cars employ.
If there's one part of the exterior design that I still haven't grown fond of, it's the rear treatment. It looks like a Pontiac Aztek, to be a bit harsh. That chopped look, complete with smoked glass horizontal panel a la Honda CRX, isn't sleek nor futuristic. The rest of the car is cool, though, down to the two longitudinal creases along the top of the roof and the headlight array that I really love.
Other geeklove things (and some nerdy not-to-like things)
All the sheet metal praise notwithstanding, I must point out that the interior fit and finish is pure economy-Toyota-grade. Meaning, it feels, inside at standstill, kind of like a $20,000 Toyota. It is, of course! By contrast, our '03 BMW 325i feels positively wealthy, with elegant materials and a tolerance-fit that's worthy of such a valued marque.
While nothing rattles of breaks off in your hands (and everything works), the interior has too much cheap-looking plastic and doesn't feel solid like a steel ingot. I do wonder how the interior will look and feel in five years (I don't wonder that about our BMW; it'll look exactly like it does today - almost new). And when you touch surfaces in the Prius, you seem to always leave smudges.
DVD-based nav system with voice command
Speaking of fingerprints, the touchscreen-based DVD navigation system is pretty good, though we actually have to keep a canister of screen wipes in the central console storage area to wipe off the screen from time to time. Otherwise it gets so dirty you can't see the display info. It also gets washed out in direct sunlight.
I don't have a lot of experience with other cars' nav systems, so my evaluation of the Prius' is somewhat in a vacuum. My feeling is that it works okay but the UI could definitely stand a round of usability testing and iteration. It's simply not intuitive enough. There is a voice guidance system option once you've inputted your destination and hearing the little beeps followed by a woman's voice saying "Next right in half a mile" is sort of cool. Again, like Star Trek. I actually found myself saying "Computer?" just like Jean-Luc Picard. And if that allusion is lost on you, then all my Star Trek allusions are for naught :-) Seriously, the voice guidance option is useful because it means you don't have to look at the screen while driving. Just listen for each step and do what Missy Prius tells you.
The voice activation also works in reverse; you can control more than a hundred different functions of the car by pressing a little voice icon on the steering wheel and then clearly saying a one- or two-word command. For example, press the icon and say "A-C on" and Missy Prius replies, "Turning air conditioner on", and the A/C comes on. Press the icon again and say "seventy degrees" and Missy Prius says "Setting temperature to seventy degrees" and the climate control switches accordingly.
Undeniably, the voice-activiation system is very geek-cool, but sadly, it's not really documented at all in the owners manual. Apparently the dealers know this, so when we picked up our car, our salesperson said she'd e-mail me an Excel chart of all the voice commands that the car recognizes. I printed that out and we keep it in the glove box. The other thing is that you have to say the command pretty clearly or the car doesn't recognize what you said.
Back to the touchscreen: It's located at chest level in the center of the dash and its location allows both the front passenger and the driver to manipulate it. You control not only the nav system but also the climate control, stereo, calendar (yes, like a PDA!), Bluetooth wireless phone connection, and fuel-economy status using the touchscreen, though, thankfully, most of those systems have redundant controls on the dash itself with hard buttons and on the steering wheel. Dedicated buttons and redundancy are good things in car controls. Ask anyone who owns a 7-series BMW with iDrive....
Audio system
Because our Prius came with every option available ("Option Package 9"), we have the 9-speaker JBL in-dash 6-disc AM/FM cassette stereo. It's very good but not mind-blowing. The low end is missing and the advanced settings are too difficult to fumble your way through to. Also, while the in-dash changer is convenient, it sure makes a lot of noise while swapping discs. However, it's terribly impressive to your passengers when you utter "Next disc" and the car says "Changing to next disc".
The CD player portion of the system can read disc and track titles if that data is embedded in the CD. And the radio portion of the system is RDS and PTY, so if the station you've tuned broadcasts that meta-data, you'll see "CLASSIC ROCK/Led Zepplin" show up on the screen next to the station frequency.
Climate control
The system is fairly standard and the fully-auto mode works well. Just set the temp you want and let it decide everything to reach that temperature. You can control the climate control in three ways: your voice commands, the touchscreen, steering wheel-mounted controls. The system is not dual-sided and there are no heated seats.
Storage compartments and the rear hatch
American drivers like to keep things inside their cars. Mobile phones, boxes of facial tissue, candies and snacks, empty beverage containers, blankets, toys, books and magazines, you name it, we want to use our cars like attics or closets. The Prius has abundant and clever storage compartments.
There are two gloveboxes in front of the passenger, with the doors to each swinging up and away from each other when their respective buttons are pressed. The bottom glovebox in particular is large. There's a central console between the front seats that has a built-in armrest whose cover hinges upward to reveal a very deep well, deep enough to stash CD jewel boxes and a canister of screen wipes and still have room left over. In the bottom front edge of that central console, there is a hidden drawer that slides forward.
There are two cup holders in the front center that can be open and closed shut independently. There's another hinged cupholder for the rear passengers (it holds two cups) and there are curved sections to the door panel wells that allow bottled water to be stashed upright without fear of tipping.
There's a sunglasses holder tucked into the headliner just aft of the rearview mirror. Press it once and it descends open, press it again to close it shut.
The rear hatch opens like a giant maw, allowing you to put things into the rear easily. You can fold the rear seatbacks down independently of one another for even more space. Our car also came with an elasticized cargo net that hooks across the rear opening to hold small objects back there so they won't fly around the cargo area. Finally, there's a vinyl cover that can be pulled, like a window shade, across the cargo area so that whatever's inside is hidden from casual view.
Suede-like upholstry
The interior only comes in one finish: a suede-like material that's very grippy and pleasant to the touch. I'd prefer a leather option, but I've heard that animal-rights supporters say that goes against the environmentally friendly nature of the car. Whatever. I also eat hamburgers.
Our car's interior is the tan option and it goes beautifully with the blue exterior.
The "dashboard"
Why in quotation marks? Because the Prius doesn't have a traditional dashboard, per se. Where the dashboard would be located in a regular car, the Prius instead slopes away in smooth plastic to the bottom edge of the inside of the front windshield. Located along that bottom edge, a good three feet away from you, is a horizontal luminescent readout showing speed (in digits; no dial or graph), transmission selection, odometer, lights status, and whether the A/C is on. Continuing along that horizontal panel are a bunch of idiot lights that only come on if something is wrong, so most of the time the strip just looks like smoky black plastic.
It's disconcerting at first to not be faced with a dash right behind the steering wheel. And that speed display in digits three feet away from you takes some getting used to. But now, I just think of it like a video game display ... sort of like what Nintendo would design if they made car cockpits, with the main "action" being the road in front of you through the windshield and your score/lives remaining status in a row of icons and numerals along the bottom of the screen ... and it makes sense. I kind of like it now.
The other unconventional part of the dash that always gets remarks from passengers is the big "Power" button. It even has the universal symbol for "on/off" (|/O) on it. You press that button to boot up, er, start the car.
The "gear shift"
Why in quotation marks? Because the Prius' shifter works like no other car's. It's a toggle, mounted vertically on the dash to the right of the steering wheel. It's sized and shaped like a joystick and you slide it from P to N to D to R but it always springs back to the center position, rather than clicking into place in, say, "D". You only know what drive position you're in by looking at the readout on the dash ... or by the beeping that tells you that you're in reverse or the long steady beep that tells you that you're in neutral.
To go to neutral, toggle the joystick to "N". To set the car in park, you press the rectangular "P" button right above the joystick.
This all sounds unnecessarily complex but it's not, not in practice. It takes about a week or two to get used to it but after that, it's intuitive. And kind of fun. There's that adjective again!
SmartEntry and SmartStart
The voice-guidance and command system aside, by far one of the neato-est tricks of our car is the so-called "SmartEntry and SmartStart" system. Again, this will sound complicated, but in practice, it actually makes your driving life simpler. And passengers always go, "hey, that's cool" when they see it in action.
The keyfob is a radio transmitter that does two things. You press the "lock" and "unlock" icons just as you would on many a car's keyfob to lock and unlock the doors and activate the alarm. But if you've got the keyfob on you ... say, in your pants pocket ... and you're within a few feet of car, when you pull the driver-side door handle, the car will unlock itself for you. Then, when you're sitting in the car, as long as the keyfob is within a few feet of the car, you just press the power button and the car starts up. So you never have to actually pull the key out of your pocket and insert it in anything.
Conversely, to lock the car once you've shut the door, you can press a little square rubber-covered button on the driver-side door handle or on the hatchback release handle and the car locks.
It's the closest experience to telepathy I've experienced in a car to date :-)
Compared to a $50,000 car...
If all this hasn't convinced you that this is a wonderful car, consider this: Before we took delivery of our Prius, I sold an old car we'd owned and then rented a car for eight days to bridge the gap. That car was a black 2004 Mercedes-Benz E320 with 2,000 miles on the odometer. I looked it up on Edmunds.com and it lists for about $48,000.
How can one compare a $50K Merc with a $26K Toyota? Well, dare to compare. I'd take the Prius over that M-B any day any way any where. Honest. The Mercedes, while certainly plush on the inside, was overweight, slow, noisy, difficult to use, and garnered about 15 mpg in the city on premium unleaded. I could never figure out the COMAND computer system and I could never brake smoothly (the E320 is a brake-by-wire system, too, but it's terrible compared to the Prius' system -- and the Prius' braking recaptures lost heat and recycles it into battery juice!). The Prius doesn't have all the armor plating of the Mercedes, but the Mercedes needs all of it to quiet the ride for its occupants -- and then the result is that the car is way too heavy for the inefficient V-6 that powers it.
By contrast, the Prius never feels underpowered. Then again, some people like that I'm-driving-a-tank feeling that Mercs impart. Me, I'd rather feel fleet of foot.
The Mercedes would impress people at the valet station, mostly because it tells people you have too much money, but it wasn't a particularly fun ride. And that fuel economy - ugh.
The Prius, by comparison, is always fun.
To boldly go where no one has gone before...
I want to quote a review of the Prius from Autoweek, the industry trade maagazine:
"I loved my weekend in the Prius. Here’s why: For about $20,000, you get Camry room, 45 mpg, Toyota build quality, all wrapped in a seamless driving experience. There’s so much going on under the metal I can’t begin to describe it, nor do I pretend to understand it. I know this, though: It works. Acceleration isn’t brisk but is adequate, the power runs smoothly through the continuously variable transmission, the steering is light at low speeds, but firms up nicely as speeds increase. The ride is particularly impressive. The car is not wallowy, and doesn’t crash and thrash over road imperfections. The Prius is nearly the perfect people hauler. I jammed four adults in it for a run to Mexican Town and it was just fine. It’s not a rocket, but it will cruise happily at 80 mph all day long and get 45-plus mpg doing it."
I quote that review because I couldn't have said it better myself. In a nutshell, that sums up how I feel about our car, after three months and 1,000 miles of ownership.
The Prius is nimble and light on its feet, extremely quiet (inside and out), suprisingly roomy (great sightlines - the beltline on many cars nowadays is somewhere around your shoulder or even neck ... on the Prius, the beltline is between my shoulder and my elbow), and super-high tech. But all that high technology is happening intelligently in the background and if you should so choose, you can completely ignore all of it and own and drive this car as if it were a Camry or Accord.
But it's not one of those regular cars. It is actually very, very special.
You feel like you're piloting a shuttlecraft and not driving some old mechanical beast invented in the 20th century. In short, driving a Prius feels like the future.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 29650
Condition: New Model Year: 2004 Model and Options: Option Package #9
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
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