 |
Search |
 |
|
|
Search |
|
|
Note: some updates at the bottom of the page.
Earlier in 2005 we bought a 2005 Toyota Prius hybrid. There is certainly lots of information on the Prius on the web, but I thought I would just pass on our reactions after the first 10,000 miles.
The Jelly-Bean Car:
We were listening to Car Talk one morning, and Tom and Ray were trying to tell a caller that a Prius would probably be a good choice for him. His response was something like "yea, but it looks like a jelly-bean". Ever since we have called the Prius the Jelly-Bean car -- what a nice association!
Pro and Cons:
In summary, we Love It. We are not alone in this. In the latest owner survey of new cars by Consumer Reports, the Prius got the best overall buyer satisfaction rating of any car (90%).
Pros:
It gets great gas mileage -- its amazing to pull into a gas station after driving 400 miles, and fill up on 8 gallons!
It is a very comfortable highway cruiser. The seating is good, ride comfortable, and it is the quietest car I have ever owned.
Its fun to drive.
It has plenty of room for 4 people (or two people and big dog :-)
I like the gadgets. I'm an engineer, and I like the feedback that the LCD panel gives on "Energy" and "Consumption".
It does not feel small, as we feared it might.
Everyone likes to drive it. We also have a Honda Pilot SUV which cost a good deal more than the Prius and now just mostly sits in the driveway.
It lowers pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, which I feel good about.
It handles mountain pass driving well (this was one of our concerns before buying).
Cons:
It's a little bit marginal on luggage space, but this has not really been a problem so far. You can get a roof top luggage rack for it.
The view out the rearview mirror is a bit distorted by by very flat slope of the rear deck window.
Toyota does not recommend towing with a Prius at all. It would be nice if a small trailer could be pulled to get a sheet of plywood or whatever.
It is not an AWD, so in the depths of winter the Pilot will still be needed after a snow.
To be honest, I really had trouble coming up with the cons -- there is just not much to dislike about the car.
Mechanical:
We have had no mechanical or other problems with the car so far. The only maintenance has been the 5000 mile oil changes.
One of the concerns about buying the car was its mechanical complexity, but the long warrantee on the hybrid parts got us over that.
There has also been a lot of talk about the expense of replacing the battery pack, and how long the battery pack will last. I have seen thinks on the internet as nutty as "it has to be replaced every 2 years and it costs $12000". As far as I can determine, Toyota designs the battery pack to last the life of the car. The 150,000 mile warrantee they provide in some states would tend to confirm this. While I have not asked the dealer what the replacement cost would be, the most authoritative estimate I have read says its $3000. I expect this will go down some over time as the battery pack product gets more efficient with higher volume production. A statement on the battery from the Toyota site:
How long does the Prius battery last and what is the replacement cost?
The Prius battery (and the battery-power management system) has been designed to maximize battery life. In part this is done by keeping the battery at an optimum charge level - never fully draining it and never fully recharging it. As a result, the Prius battery leads a pretty easy life. We have lab data showing the equivalent of 180,000 miles with no deterioration and expect it to last the life of the vehicle. We also expect battery technology to continue to improve: the second-generation model battery is 15% smaller, 25% lighter, and has 35% more specific power than the first. This is true of price as well. Between the 2003 and 2004 models, service battery costs came down 36% and we expect them to continue to drop so that by the time replacements may be needed it won't be a much of an issue. Since the car went on sale in 2000, Toyota has not replaced a single battery for wear and tear.
More from this site on other Prius issues: http://pressroom.toyota.com/photo_library/display_release.html?id=20040623
Economics:
I have kept track of every drop of gasoline that has gone into the car, and the overall total gas mileage
is right at 50mpg. This includes city driving, highway driving, and quite a bit of mountain driving. The best mileage on a tank of gas was 56mpg, and the worst was 47mpg. If you think this mileage sounds to high to be true, take a look here: http://www.hybridcars.com/2005-mileage-study.html
At $2.80 per gallon, this represents a saving of 276 gallons or $770 over the US average gas mileage of 21mpg (coincidentally, it is the same same saving over the Honda Pilot that we would be driving if we weren't using the Prius). At this rate, I expect to recoup the $1000 to $2000 extra that the Prius cost over an equivalent Camry in not much more than a year. I think that's amazing. This may turn out to be the best investment I have ever made.
 |
Gary
9/29/05
Winter update -- 1/4/2006:
Our gas mileage has dropped off to an average of 47 MPG on the last 3 tanks, which have been winter driving. I think this may be due to changing over to winter snow tires on all four wheels. It may also have something to do with the colder temperatures (although I don't understand why). This is not a big deal, but I just thought I would pass it along.
The Prius drives fine on the snow. The only time we revert to the Pilot is in the period following heavy snows, where the greater ground clearance and AWD of the Pilot can helpful.
Another Update -- 7/23/2007:
We are just over 40,000 miles now. No problems -- still very happy with our Prius, and we still use if for 90% of our driving.
By my numbers, it has already paid off the extra we paid for the hybrid features in saved gasoline. How I come to this conclusion is explained here. By estimate, we have reduced our energy consumption by about 48,000 KWH (1300 gallons of gasoline), cut our greenhouse gas emissions by about 12 tons of CO2, and saved us nearly $4000 in gasoline bills. This all compared to driving the Prius instead of our Honda Pilot.
In our program to cut our total energy use and green house gas emissions in half, the Prius has been BY FAR the most effective single project -- its amazing.
We have been having very hot weather here in Bozeman (100F+), and we do find that the gas mileage drops down to about 48 mpg under these conditions (lots of AC on time). We recently did a road trip to Seattle and got a grand average of 54 mpg with the cruise control set at 69 mph.
Another Update -- May 31, 2008:
We have 55,086 miles on the Prius.
No problems of -- still very happy with our Prius, and we still use if for 90% of our driving.
The only repair since the last update was replacing a burned out tail light and routine oil changes.
Looking down the mileage notebook since 40,000 miles,
Worst tank of gas: 42.5 mpg driving through some really awful weather
Best tank of gas: 60.1 mpg in mixed use (next best was 55.3 on road trip to Spokane)
Overall average since last update: 49.68 mpg
In contrast to the sometimes heard statement that hybrids don't do well on the highway, we get our best gas mileage on the highway. I usually cruise at 70 mph (speed limit here in MT is 75 mph).
With gas nearing $4 per gallon, a fillup after driving 400 miles has gone up to about $30, but that's a whole lot better than the $80 I put into our "small" SUV the other day to drive less than 400 miles (we drive SUV very little now -- but its still needed occasionally to haul lots of people or for bad bad snow).
We have decided to get a Yakima or Thule style roof rack for carrying odd size stuff and trips to the lumber yard.
Here is an interesting article on how hybrid battery replacements have gone in North America... Bottom line is that the replacement rate is negligible -- well under a tenth of 1%.
Another interesting article about hypermiling in a Prius...
June 17, 2008 Payoff Period for a Hybrid
Its always seemed to me that some places in estimating how long it takes to payback the extra up front cost for a Prius in saved gasoline really stacked the deck against the Prius. They do things like comparing the Prius it to a Corolla, when its actually closer to a Camry in size.
Well, here is a calculation from the Toyota Open Road Blog -- a source that is no doubt biased in the other direction.
Maybe you can get to the truth by averaging the two.
http://blog.toyota.com/2008/06/irvs-sheet-the.html#more
They compare the Prius to the lowest level, 4 cylinder Camry.
Comparing these two cars, and using $4 per gallon gas it takes 0.1 year for the Prius to pay back the $97 in initial price in saved gas.
I suppose this is a bit silly, but I liked it :)
Gary