The second-gen Toyota Prius (2004-2009) was cyber-bullied for years, particularly by automotive journalists. I was not one of them, but I did not stand up and defend the poor little hybrid hatchback; instead, I sat there and laughed. Laughed. Like some kind of heartless schmuck, I probably even commented about how much of a “beigemobile” this “anti-car” was. But now, over a decade later, I can no longer hold in the guilt — I need to apologize to the second-gen Prius on behalf of the car-enthusiast community. We need to make this right.
If the second-gen Prius never forgives us, I’ll understand. Even if its owners were often entitled greenies perched on the lankiest of high-horses, why does the car deserve the hatred? Like a person can’t choose their parents, a car can’t choose its buyer. And yet, we ragged on the poor Prius. For years and years. It was brutal and unjust.
So I don’t open up too many old wounds for the Prius, which is no doubt traumatized by the years of harassment, I’ll cite only a few examples of this unfair Prius harassment. December of 2011, my friend Raphael from Jalopnik wrote the Answer of the Day article Ten new cars we’d take to a demolition derby. Look at entry number eight:
The Prius is not the best car to enter into a demolition derby. The overhangs are tiny, they’re going to get crushed into the engine, and you don’t even know what’s going to happen to the hybrid drive.
The great thing about the Prius is, even when you lose, everybody wins.
When Jalopnik wrote Ten Worst Cars To Have Sex In, it of course included the Prius. Why? Well, because anyone driving such an “uninspiring object” clearly won’t know how to have a bit of fun. From that story:
Let’s just get this right out of the way and acknowledge that no one wants to have sex in a Prius. First of all, it’s tough to get your swerve on in such an uninspiring object, something that’s more consumer good than car. Second, you risk bringing a new life into the world, which will certainly be a waste of precious resources. Third, if you’re a Prius owner, the idea of a car being fun is completely alien to you so you have your 20 minutes of lights-off missionary-position relations in the futon like a proper citizen anyway.
When Neal Pollack wrote Screw You, I Love The Prius back in 2012, a Jalopnik editor had to write this note right up front:
(Part of encouraging a diverse, intelligent car community is attempting to understand those with alternative points of view. In that vein, I invited humorist, car reviewer, Prius owner, and alterna-human being Neal Pollack to write up an explanation for why anyone might love the Prius.
Specifically, I told him over drinks that he was basically a terrible person and completely wrong for enjoying a beige hybrid and he told me to go to Hell. Here’s his half of the story. — Ed.)
Here’s what Johnny Liebermann wrote on The Truth About Cars (one of Jalopnik’s biggest competitors back 15 years ago) in 2008:
As many of you know I manage Autofiends.com . Our unofficial motto (can’t get the tech guys to change the site…) is “No Boring Cars.” Which means as the news of the day rolls in (grist to the mill) I need to parse it to determine what is and what isn’t “boring.” For instance there’s those pics of the new Prius that Jalopnik has whipped itself into its daily frenzy over (). And through the magic of search engine optimization Autofiends could probably get some decent traffic out of the post. More traffic makes the boss happy and (maybe) gets me more money! Only problem: the Prius is dull. Like, rock in sand dull. And not fancy Japanese rocks in Zen sand, but regular Texas Hill Country rocks in Great Plains dust.
The thing about these early car blogs is that they had absolutely absurd amounts of influence on what people thought of certain vehicles. Millions of people read just a few blogs, and the young 20-somethings behind the keyboards often spouted out all sorts of hot takes and random thoughts. Readers couldn’t help but be influenced by these, well, influencers. I was one of these readers; I nodded along every time one of my favorite writers called the Prius a “blob” or a “jellybean” or a “beigemobile.” As a result, for years, in the car enthusiast community, the vehicle was considered the anti-car. But this morning, Matt Hardigree wrote something in The Morning Dump that reminded me of my guilt; here’s the operative quote from his piece:
Then, somewhere along the way, the appliance-like dustbuster second-gen car appeared and it felt like I was supposed to dislike it. In retrospect, that car was cool and I was the dork. I don’t think anyone views hybrids that way anymore, and it’s kind of amazing.
Obviously, I will keep beating the hybrids-are-good drum like Samantha Maloney, but it’s still amazing to me that there’s been such a turnaround.
Matt’s totally right. We were the dorks, and the Prius was the cool kid.
The hate for the Prius was wrong. Obviously, as I said before, much of it stemmed from the holier-than-thou attitudes of its environmentalist drivers, but some of it also stemmed from weird styling and poor vehicle dynamics. Still, we should all have realized what the Prius was: A technological marvel. Just look at the love the BMW i3 gets. It’s a car journalist-favorite; I am about to buy my second because I’m an engineer and I think the i3 is an absolute engineering masterpiece. But why didn’t we see the Prius in that same light 15 years ago?
The thing was fascinating; its powertrain featured an eCVT that — along with world-beating aerodynamics — helped the car get roughly 50 MPG all the while scoring top crash-test scores from IIHS when equipped with its optional side-curtain airbags. I strongly suggest you spend about 8 minutes watching this video, because the eCVT’s function is truly fascinating, using two electric motors and a planetary gearset — all embedded inside the transmission housing — to propel the vehicle forward, either alone or along with the assistance of a 1.5-liter Atkinson Cycle four-cylinder gasoline engine:
Total output from that tiny 1.5-liter engine is just 76 horsepower, 82 lb-ft of torque, but motor output is 67 horsepower, 295 lb-ft of torque, yielding a total system power of 110 horsepower (the two are not additive) — I’m not sure what peak torque is, but it’s probably pretty high given that motor output figure.
Powering the electric motors in that eCVT are 28 7.2-volt Nickel Metal Hydride battery modules (which each are made up of six 1.2-volt cells) that together yield an 86 pound 201 volt pack with a capacity of about 1.3 kWh. It’s an air-cooled pack, as you can see in the image below (those are the ducts on the right side of the pack):
But it’s more than just the tech under the hood/rear bench that makes the 2900-pound hatch compelling; the car’s looks have grown on me (just as the i3’s have), it’s legitimately comfortable and practical, and I think the car is a lot of fun to drive.
I had a chance to pilot my friend’s Prius in Germany, and I was fascinated by the screen that showed me you when I was driving full-electric, when I was generating electricity via regenerative braking, when the gasoline motor is assisting the electric motor, and on and on. It was juts fun to see what was happening, and to adjust my driving accordingly:
I reached out to my friend, Andreas (who has written here before — he’s shown with his wife Josi in the image below) to ask him for his diehard car-enthusiast take on the Prius, and whether or not the thinks the enthusiast world got the Gen II Prius wrong. Here’s what he told me:
I absolutely do and I did so myself before I got one into my life.
I feel like most arguments I can bring for the Prius sound like stereotypes, but I guess they are stereotypes for a reason. It’s simply a bulletproof vehicle that still after all these years has decent fuel economy for it’s size. It’s a roomy car after all (for European standards). It’s comfortable and quick enough for daily driving. And it has it’s own “aura of enthusiasm”, it’s hard to describe but while other cars motivate you to go faster and drive crazier the Prius motivates you to chill and to hypermile.
That may also come from the CVT screaming at you whenever you punch the gas, but you get used to that fairly quickly and once you’re on the autobahn it gets a quiet bachground noise anyways. And I’m still surprised on how technologically advanced it was all these years and how many firsts it had. Keyless entry/go, big touchscreen, navigation, …. I’m not lacking anything even though the car is 20 year old now. I even think it looks pretty good now, maybe that’s because the car industry overall got more and more alien-looking over the years, but I like the clean look and even the stance, especially with the factory magnesium rims. And while it seems a complicated car to work on at first it’s just a regular toyota and parts are cheap and simple. and remember, I even repaired the HV battery.
Yes, that’s right, Germans apparently spell the word “background” with a “ch.” That’s the power of Magnificat.
Andreas continues:
And I know not everybody is able to have multiple cars but I stand by the fact that it’s way better to have different, specialized cars than one car that has to do it all. And if the daily is practical and has good gas mileage then the other cars can be even “dumber”
The only reason I’d like to get rid of it is because I am conviced that whoever is able to use an EV for his daily life should do so, I’m an engineer so energy efficiency is the key criteria for the vehicle that has to do the most miles. But otherwise I’d drive the Prius easily another 220k km (current ODO readout)
and last but not least: literally every single dog in my life loves the Prius like crazy, I don’t know what it is but they all want to ride in it, and who can argue with dogs? they have better senses then we humans
So on behalf of all car enthusiasts who besmirched your name for no good reason, dear gen-two Prius, I’d like to offer my sincerest apologies.
Images: Toyota
The 3rd gen Prius fixed a lot of the 2nd gen’s aesthetic issues as well as created everyone on here’s (not in the actual market, hence its discontinuation) favorite, the Prius V. Plus the 5th gen hit it out of the park on looks, especially after the lemon-sucking origami mess of the 4th gen. If there were a Wikipedia entry (no one reads printed dictionaries anymore) for “trying too hard”, it’d have a picture of the 4th gen Prius near the top.
But here’s the real hot take: NO generation of the Prius should ever have existed in the first place.
Toyota, the automotive enthusiast community and the world in general would’ve been far better off if they’d just brought out a hybrid version of the RAV4 and/or Camry. They could’ve said, “Look at us, we managed to get subcompact econobox fuel mileage in a larger (read: “safer” in the eyes of the average consumer) vehicle!” But no, they went the risk-adverse corporate route and tied the technology to its own model in order to “test” the technology in the marketplace, which of course ended up costing them more money initially as they had to spend it on the additional development and marketing costs. Fortunately for them, it paid off and became a hit.
But in the process, they created a lightning rod for controversy on both sides, one being the holier-than-thou vegan eco-freaks saying anyone who’d drive anything else hates our Mother Earth and other being the “V8 or GFTO, I don’t wanna look like no treehugger in one of those” auto enthusiast crowd. And now not only have we set ourselves back two decades in terms of eco-friendly vehicle progress but we also have to package our EVs as existing-consumer-friendly crossovers and giant trucks to avoid threatening anyone’s fragile masculinity with-GASP-“Prius vibes”, both of which create the biggest problem many people have with EVs (besides charging times) – range anxiety.
You’re right about the 3rd gen, but for the point about a Camry, they did at the same time as the 2nd gen Prius: https://pressroom.toyota.com/album/2007-2009-toyota-camry-hybrid-first-1st-generation/#
I own a second generation Camry hybrid. My take is Toyota should have put this drivetrain in EVERYTHING.
I do think it still made sense for the first couple generations to make a purpose-built hybrid. But by the 2010s, they really should have done as you say, spreading it out to other model lines much sooner, rather than try to make the Prius sub-brand. Which they were doing in other markets internationally.
The Camry hybrid as referenced below was out there and they were slowly but surely expanding that, but the Highlander hybrid (which predated the Camry hybrid even) remained a rather quiet offering, retail sales mostly being loaded examples in the early 2010s.
the prius was a stand out success wtf are you on about? they sold millions of them.
I never said otherwise. Did you read my post entirely?
I still see a bunch of examples of the second-gen Prius in my neighborhood and on my commute.
I always did like the looks inside and out (well mostly, the nose is a little dorky but the liftback styling I liked), and the interior was a nicer design than the 3rd gen. Even so, I laughed as well. When they brought out the Prius Touring with “sport-tuned suspension” and bigger wheels I scoffed even, that’s not what a Prius is for! But now I wouldn’t hate picking one up if I found a decent one cheap and I don’t even have a need for one. I’d have to make sure to disable that incessant warning beep when you shift into reverse, ugh.
Nothing wrong with a car that does its intended purpose well as others noted, but it was the hybrid version of the 7th gen Camry that began to shift my perception on how hybrids could drive. The Prius was still soft off the line, the engine would roar, all that…but the Camry actually had some shove. It wasn’t a fun car so much, but it was nicer to drive and a much more comfortable car. Which of course it should be, it was bigger in nearly every way from passenger space to the engine.
The touring at least was a loaded version of the Prius with all options. My Scangauge ll was able to silence various noisemakers and I’m sure Carista would be able to do even more.
And even at the time, I thought the Touring wheels did look better too.
Through a couple jobs (valet, lot porter) in college and just after, I drove a number of gen 2 and 3 examples with the beeper on. Some noisemakers like a seatbelt warning I don’t mind, but the beep when you’re trying to concentrate on reversing seemed like having a bunch of people shout the rules of a board game at you. I don’t think hybrid Camrys had it, it was more because of the joystick shifter.
I had a red Gen2 just like in the picture. It was a decent enough car that got reasonable mileage but it had one big flaw in the snow belt.
I lived on a street that T’ed onto a more traveled street, and there was a small uphill from my street onto the main street. If there was snow on the ground, the wheels would detect the slip and stop the car. I had to pump the gas and, in a jerky fashion, get it onto the main street. There was no way to disable the traction nanny, and I ended up selling it over that issue.
I found that the Prius made for a pretty good taxi – despite the taxi drivers in SF who were so awful that some douchematic tech-bro felt the need to start Uber.
They were roomy, relatively comfortable, and carried a lot of luggage.
If Jonny Lieberman hates it – That’s one more good reason for me to love it.
Anyone who respects great engineering never hated the Prius in the first place.
A lot of “enthusiasts” forget that it’s the engineers that create the things they love, and like a Chevy LS engine, the Prius’s entire drivetrain is one of the strongest examples of great engineering.
A car that does it’s function well isn’t necessarily a good car. My dad bought one new (commuting in a supercharged 454 3/4 ton suburban didn’t make much sense) and drove it to about 150,000 miles. His brother took it another 100,000. But it was a turd new and didn’t get better. It was loud, slow and cheap. Any money Toyota spent on the drivetrain they stole from the interior. Awful seats, paper thin plastics etc. His was a top spec and it felt like a punishment.
No. The 2nd Gen Prius is a bad car that does economy well.
Most importantly it was downright dangerous in the snow. Even with winter tires it couldn’t get grip and it’s over intrusive traction control would just… Stop. You’d just have entered the intersection when it happened.
I hadn’t read down the comments first. You mentioned the same snow problem I had, which was really scary. I had 4 Blizzaks mounted for the winter (which one does in northern New England) so it wasn’t an “all-seasons” problem.
Jumping in here. I didn’t have these problems with my 3rd gen. I commuted 120 miles daily on back roads of the Hudson valley NY for 5 years. I ran studded Hakkas during the winter and never got stuck.
I didn’t have to turn off traction control often, but when I did there was a procedure to follow.
https://www.reddit.com/r/prius/comments/a4py2y/how_to_turn_off_traction_control/&ved=2ahUKEwjVwtXkj5eGAxW3kIkEHWjnB7QQjjh6BAhMEAE&usg=AOvVaw1GsTyRzS3ZchQ9isvWBu_Z
The gen2 Prius could have shipped a “sport” model that changed nothing at all except some 8 inch wide tires and a traction control tune. The car has apparently some 300 lbsft torque and Toyota, perhaps afraid of the electric beast they’d created, really locked down the wheel spin. The combination of skinny tires and traction control makes it needlessly dull. But you can change that. It fits 8×28″ tires with a hint of BRRRRR and the added rubber makes the thing pretty fun to drive. It’s not fast, but it can be quick.
It’s a good car.
Personally I never had a problem with the prius per se, but with the insufferable douchebags that so frequently drove them around me. Those asshats have generally moved on to teslas at this point, so now the gen 2 prius is an excellent candidate for conversion into a road tripper/microcamper, or even just the struggling to make ends meet family that needs to get from here to there as they’re relatively cheap and roomy enough for all the kidlet stuff.
Like any Toyota appliance, they deserve cred just for how stupid reliable they are. Doubly so considering how new the hybrid tech was at the time, yet I see many of these beat-up and still running with over 300k miles on the clock. Also the kammback hatch shape is far more practical than the sedan Corolla or Camry so it’s really a better beater than either of those, not to mention it’ll be more fuel efficient than them too. Secondhand Prii are basically a cheat code for cheap, unlimited transportation as long as the battery is still good, and even if that goes it’s a one-time fee for probably another decade of cheap, unlimited transportation.
I rode in one for the first time a few months ago. Buddy has 2 suburbans, a dualie truck, new Challenger, and bought a Prius with over 300k for a daily.
Man, there was SOOOOOOOO much smarmy douchebaggery in those old anti-Prius articles and they exemplified pretty much everything wrong with car “enthusiasm”, which fetishizes a narrow range of what cars are “supposed” to be
When discussing some cars, an appliance comes to mind. They do what they are designed to and not a whole lot more. My ’06 Prius was a fantastic appliance. got 300k miles out of it and got about 45MPH average for that whole time. As a car, not it handled well, hauled a lot of awkward objects, and try hauling five teen girls on a long trip sometime! Only due to my negligence did it fail (failed to top up up oil) and it overheated and warped the head. When I sold it, it had peeling clear coat, cracked windshield, overheating engine, filthy seats, an older HV battery from the ’07 I bought to replace the ’06, and I still sold it for $1000. My son has the ’07 while I have a ’20 AWD Prius.
That’s the thing: the Prius was always honest about what it was, and it was brilliantly engineered for exactly that purpose. That’s what made it A Good Car.
I test drove one once, with an open mind and open wallet. The community’s first take was correct: it was awful and boring.
Eh…idk if the enthusiast has anything to apologize for. This era of Prius was gutless and had a penalty box interior rife with shitty seats and hard plastic. It was derided because it was typically driven by insufferable people who were in it for the hair shirt environmentalism where the world can be saved if you just would take cold showers.
Even Toyota understood this and the marketing for the current Prius is “it’s fast now”. Hybrids are having their moment now because they’re combining the fuel economy with a good driving experience. Take the current gen Accord – the interior is a nice place to be, it won’t have trouble merging into traffic, and yet it still gets Prius-level economy.
Sorry, David, but as a life-long car enthusiast, there is still absolutely nothing about this appliance to be enthused over. My Harvest Gold 1976 Maytag anything is more exciting. I owe this car nothing, and please do not apologize to it on my behalf.
I want your fridge. Do you also happen to have an intercom system in the kitchen?
The “Listen” button has been broken since about 1981 🙂
The drivetrain sounds similar to the one in my Pacifica Hybrid. Imagine that with a 16kw battery plus 3.6 pentastar.
Car weighs as much as a pickup but gets 30 mpg.
It can simply walk away from most vehicles on a mountain pass, right up to 105.
I kind of prefer my wife’s fuel saving method of an actual pickup that gets 25+ with the 3 liter ecodiesel over the massive weight of a battery pack personally. But she kind of needs a pickup for her equine babies so. . .
How’s that Pacifica hybrid holding up so far? Genuinely curious, I have a voyager and the PHEV is fascinating, but I’ve heard people have had nothing but problems with it.
It’s been recalled and fixed many tines
The car is a champion
My one time driving a Prius, it was a 2nd generation model that I rented from DFW airport. Fuel economy was, frankly poor. Perhaps that’s because most of my driving was on freeways, but I was deeply disappointed with how much fuel I had to put into the tank.
Also, driving it wasn’t a pleasant experience with jerky engine/motor combination switching between power modes.
Sounds like it may have had a bad traction battery if that was the case
Thanks Dave, great article. Long commute drove 2 different Prii for 14 years, around 400k total and saved a boatload compared to the old SUV. Now have a loaded RAV4 Prime and for a rav it’s kinda wow. 302 hp 5.4, 0 to 60. Rarely use gas. Main shortcoming is it’s heavy and not the quickest handling but it is surely planted l.
I don’t recall the intense hate, but I’ve driven one, and ridden in countless as Ubers. They’re FINE. It feels like it’s in fashion to have revisionist rose colored glasses.
I was a relatively young dad and suddenly felt a lot of pressure to have a car that was economical.
I was heavily swayed by Top Gear, and, sticking my middle finger up at the Prius, I bought a Ford Fiesta instead. Their review was so fun (again, I was young, so therefore dumb), but man that car was just terrible with it’s transmission issues and general ergonomics, and it wasn’t even that fuel efficient.
I swapped it at a big loss for an old Mercedes, a W201, that I bought from a kind old lady at the church who babied it. It was fun, and the cost to buy/repair was cheap, but the downtime was high at a time when I desperately needed to make it to work on time every day.
I spent months researching the right answer to my problem, and I kept coming back to the Prius, which I despised based on my perception as a self-titled “car enthusiast”. I finally swallowed my pride and bought one, a 2008 with 144k miles.
That car singlehandedly changed my perception of cars. It did everything I asked, and took hate from all sides (it got RUN OVER in a parking lot once), but damn it, the thing wouldn’t give up. Finally, someone stole the catalytic converter, and I rolled it down to the nearest Toyota dealership to replace it with, of course, another Prius.
Ok, now you have to tell us the run over story.
Cool. Now do the PT Cruiser.
I ordered a 2004 shortly after they announced them. It appealed to me because of the then innovative technology it contained, the great fuel economy, and the roomy interior. Plus, I knew it would be reliable, and the price was reasonable. The styling isn’t exciting, but I think they did a good job from an engineering point of view. It’s not easy to have all that interior space and also have low drag. They are not exciting to drive, but that was never the point. I didn’t end up buying the car when it arrived, because the dealer wanted me to pay for $500 worth of stuff I didn’t want. Years later, I bought a used 2006 Prius for my son to drive after he graduated from college. He still has it, 7 years later. Alas, he never got the car enthusiast gene.
Was the hate for these a bit overboard? I was almost willing to concede that it was, but then I remembered the first time I drove one and goddamn it f*ck the Prius and its dumb f*cking shifter.
Username checks out.
The piece from TTAC is on brand for that rag.
“The hate for the Prius was wrong”
Amen.
I was saying that back in the mid 2000s when Toyota couldn’t build them fast enough. I recall having some really big arguments with those who claimed “hybrids don’t make sense”
And you know what else is wrong?
BEV hate.
I’ve observed that at least some of the BEV haters of today used to be the hybrid haters of the past.
Naturally that’s because BEVs are even more scary to them than hybrids.
I know why this happens… and it’s not for any one reason.
There are a number of reasons for the hate which may include:
-people find new tech to be scary
-a lot of people like to have their life choices validated. So they view someone else buying something completely different as a threat… making their choices possibly look ‘bad’
-the person works at a company that has nothing that can properly compete with that new tech (like a legacy car company that doesn’t have any competitive BEVs shitting on Tesla)
-the person works a company or industry where the new tech makes their product obsolete or in much less demand. For example… BEVs need a whole lot less oil… thus the oil industry has been behind a lot lies and disinformation spread about BEVs.
I would add that I don’t understand all the animus toward people that drive hybrids and EVs. I’m sure some are “holier than thou environmentalists”, but I think most of us are just people trying to do what makes the most sense for us.
A couple years ago I had to get a new chainsaw to have on hand to help out at a family rural property. I was sick and tired of the two stroke/no start routine of having a rarely used tool not work precisely when you need it to along with the more maintenance (dealing with aging fuel etc.) effort than actually using it. I splurged and bought a then pretty expensive cordless electric model. It turned out to be a revelation. Easier to maintain, lighter and surprisingly good torque.
I told a friend who owns a landscaping business. He shat all over me. Gasoline or nothing! I lent the saw to one of his sons who mans one crew for a bit. Every tool refresh they have done since has been battery powered. Their customers are mostly urban/suburban. They especially love the battery driven lawnmowers for the quite and odour free operation.
Of course, none of this is mentioned in the Bible, so there are plenty of people who will never ‘get it’.
I have replaced all my gas-powered lawn and garden equipment with electric, because they’re so much easier to maintain, not because I’m trying to make any sort of environmental statement. I am enjoying the lower noise and clean air, though! I will say that one disappointment I’ve had is with expensive batteries not lasting as long as they should. Even with that, I’m never going back.
I’ve never particularly liked hybrids, mostly because they don’t make much sense for my use cases of very little stop/go town driving (I’d rather bike if possible), and not much to gain on long highway trips.
A decade ago, I was certainly an EV skeptic, but now feel bad about buying into/spreading the made up BS about them. They certainly have issues, but once I actually did some research several years ago, quickly realized that there was a lot of false info out there. Now, over 6 years into having an EV, I’ve realized just how many shortcomings ICEs have as well that I was just used to dealing with, that now getting an oil change in the old Jeep every couple years seems like a real pain.
I’ve certainly had some awkward, not very nice conversations with others in the auto industry, who still continue to claim that EVs can never work, but quickly run out of things to say when I tell them I have no real issues with an EV as a primary vehicle, parked outside with only a standard outlet to charge, in a place that regularly sees temperatures of 0 to -20F in the winter, and is hours away from a town with even a 5 figure population.
Part of the hate is from making resistance to change a deep-seated part of your identity. Embracing change is a weakness because it shows that you were wrong liking the old stuff or that you changed your mind, and changing your mind is for sissies. Or something.
No talk of driving a Prius “fast”? That’s the thing I’ve loved about the Prius, I literally floor it everywhere, you jump out in front of all the traffic because apparently no one actually accelerates faster than a Prius in their day to day driving. It handles corners quite well, and it still gets 45 mpg using the throttle like an on/off switch. You are also faster than everyone in the city, since acceleration and braking are the best way to make time in the city, I floor it up to the speed limit and it takes a mile before the people going 5-10 over catch me. But I’m usually going 5-10 over too. Prius is a dream, plus it’s legit a 5kw generator. I leave it running all day camping and it uses way less than a normal generator because it only needs to run for 5 mins every 30 mins or so. Plus it add heat or AC to your camping trip, and there’s enough room for me to lay flat in the back at 6’3″. I can drive all over the country only needing $5 worth of gas a night to have a hotel room. Y’all are sleeping on the Prius and I’m sleeping in one.
I’ve been seriously considering getting a Prius for this purpose. Do you ever wish you had a Prius V instead for the space?