The Prius never really appealed to me. The MPG is good, but I drive so little each year I think FE.gov said it’d take almost 20 years for me to pay off the price difference between a Prius and a Matrix.
I almost bought an Escape hybrid, it was in the top 3 choices; I like the ground clearance of the crossovers.
I think the Pruis generates such an reaction because most of the buying customers ( not all ) ARE the in-your-face tree huggers that insist you know their stance on such matters. That’s why they make it a point to buy the most obvious one. ( they can’t be satisfied to just drive their own pace and mind their own business like others posting here…they have to FORCE everyone bhind them to stack up like cord wood. )
These are the same people who have no clue about just what it takes to MAKE the car in the first place ,ie the production processes and all that entails. Guaranteed no greener that any other automotive product out there.
My wife has an Escape hybrid and my son in law a civic hybrid ( he can use the HOV lanes in D.C. ). We just blend right in with the crowd.
The Honda Insight does look very similar, but the slightly sleeker design is at the cost of headroom if you are taller than about 5’9". We looked at lots of other cars but in the end the Prius was the only one mom really wanted, and dad prefers to take the prius for around town driving since it gets roughly double what his CRV gets. Going 100miles longer on a tank that is 3 gallons smaller than the previous car does add up, but comparing the cost vs a Corolla/Matrix only really applies if you were considering one. Dad figures that by driving the Prius as much as possible he doesn’t have to feel as guilty about how much gas the 28 foot boat uses.
After driving the same car for close to 20 years we felt it was time for mom to have the car she wanted rather than just whatever we could afford, for a little over $23,000 she drove off a happy woman. Many people give her the thumbs up for driving a hybrid but she’s a simple person who drives cars she loves, not just what appeals to all.
Maybe most buyers were ‘in your face tree huggers’ when the Prius first came out. Not now, not here.
And KG’s Prius drivers are sloowwww, while others ‘cut in and out of traffic’. Not much of a consensus there.
The Prius never appealed to me, but Honda introduced a hybrid around the time the Prius was introduced that I thought looked really cool. I can’t remember the model name, but someone in southern NH commutes every day on the Everett Turnpike in one. And it still looks cool.
Honda Insight with the rear wheel well covered…
The newer Honda insight does not get as many good reviews as the Prius and gas mileage is not as good.
Then there is the Civic Hybrid, not being a Hatch, it has less room inside, but if you really don’t want to join the Prius gang, then it is an option.
Priuses don’t inspire anger in me any more than my gas-guzzling V8 probably inspires anger in Prius drivers. I considered at one time getting a custom license plate “antiprius” though. (more in the theme that my car is the anti prius than that I’m against them)
But different strokes for different folks and all that. I guess my only beefs with it would be that while they do get good mileage, that the illusion of “being green” is offset by energy used to produce and ship the high-tech materials used in their construction, as well as the possibly exploitative labor in the countries where they are obtained. That and the utter complexity of the system means only a very few dealers can work on them properly. For all that, they seem to be pretty reliable though based on what others have said here.
I don’t think that Prius owners are trying to send a message. I think a lot of them are just duped into buying one because of the marketing hype telling them how much money they’ll save.
It’s the same with many SUV owners…who think that now because they own an SUV they car drive during a snow storm like they do in the summer on a nice sunny day. They are victims of marketing.
This conversation reminded me of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smug_Alert!
I would have posted a link to the actual episode, but it’s rated TV-MA. The best part of the episode is when hybrid drivers get so smug that they fall in love with the smell of their own farts.
@Whitey: Yeah, there is that annoying “hipper-than-thou” factor of Prius owners, which are who I occasionally take issue with. Not the car itself: technologically, it’s pretty cool.
I used to enjoy the irony of the “smug Prius driver” and that “Prius” was derived from the same Latin root as “Priapism.” Seemed fitting…
Later, I found out that wasn’t linguistically true…but, dammit, it makes a better story if it were!!
The only Prius " dislike" I have felt myself was a few years back when I used to grade the entire 2 miles of road we live on instead of the back mile or so. The people at the front are what I call flatlanders as they are those who should live in a development instead of a steep dirt road. One " neighbor" in that area had a Prius that could not get over the lip I left without draging the front valance after grading the road. Her ex husband would then have to come down and rake it smooth.
I don’t know what kind of arrangement he had with his ex wife and her live in boy friend with the Prius, but when he hassled me about it, the Prius dropped from my “cars I liked list”. I kindly told him when he jabbed me about having to do the work…" look, I appreciate your not wanting to rake out the end of the drive. Would you rather have to rent a grader and do the road the last half mile from her house to the main road so the Prius can drive over the ruts in the road itself ? Cause of it causes you this much consternation, I’ll just stop grading at the end of her drive." The hassle stopped but it took a while to like a Prius again with so little ground clearance.
Btw, we are on pretty friendly terms now and had a laugh later over his not understanding the word “consternation” …he thought I must have ment “constipation”.
I noticed in my last years as a university professor before I retired that I had quite a few colleagues who were driving Priuses. These colleagues were of two types. I have a good friend who is a physics professor and he was intrigued by the engineering and electronics. He and his wife put a lot of miles on a car, so I think it pays for them. Their other vehicle is a Ford Escape Hybrid. He is also now retired, so it isn’t as if he is a younger “tree hugger”.
The other purchasers are the younger “tree huggers”. These people are trying to make a statement. I’m not exactly certain what they are saying, however.
I went through the same thing almost 50 years ago when I was a new faculty member and the car to drive was a VW Beetle. I had a lot of colleagues in their late twenties through their mid 30s who owned the VW. In fact, I was the odd ball of my colleagues because instead of a VW I drove a Rambler. The Rambler fit my needs better than a VW and when we went to out of town conferences, I was the one who had to drive as the Rambler sedan was more comfortable for carrying four or five people.
When I go back to my dad’s generation, the car to drive among his colleagues on the faculty in the early 1950s was the Nash Airflyte. I guess these “inverted bathtub” Nash cars made a statement.
The car I would really like to own to make a statement would be a Mazda Miata. The statement that I would be making is that I am really not a geezer. However, it wouldn’t serve my needs. This past Sunday, I had a six people, a violin, a viola, a cello, a French horn, a clarinet, a flute and a box of music, and six musicians as we headed to an out of town gig 50 miles away in my Toyota Sienna minivan. The rear seat passengers adjusted the rear temperature control to make themselves comfortable. I don’t think I could fit this crew into a Prius.
@triedaq
Retired college prof. You must be rolling in moolah and have little need to make a statement. It (Miata) is just a great fun car. A friend from accross the lake dropped by this summer with his new / used 2011 Miata. We spent the next 2 1/2 hours wringing it out over the paved two lane mountain roads by our houses. It was a blast ! The best things were, it road pretty well, had plenty of room for two and the trunk was big enough for all the instruments you named . . Of course you need to make 6 trips with one instrument and one player at a time. But it’s worth six trips just to drive the car. There ! Problem solved. Get your Miata.
@dagosa–I wish I were rolling in the moolah. About five years ago, my physician wrote out a prescription for me on his pad that for my mental health, I should have a Miata. Unfortunately, he checked the box that the prescription could be filled with a generic substitute. Mrs. Triedaq took that to mean that any vehicle would do.
Our mulitple prius owning friend also owns a late model Miata as well as a Toyota Tundra for the camping trailer. He seems to have stopped buying vehicles for now but has been known to take one Toyota into service and spend the waiting time looking around the lot.
@Triedaq
I tried.
@Whitey December 17 edited December 17 This conversation reminded me of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smug_Alert!I would have posted a link to the actual episode, but it’s rated TV-MA. The best part of the episode is when hybrid drivers get so smug that they fall in love with the smell of their own farts.
Rated for mature audiences? That rules us out.
I have ridden motorcycles nearly all my life and now own a bike that gets 70+ mpg, allowing me to even look down my nose at Prius drivers and it allows me to spew out a particularly toxic cloud of smug. I usually don’t name my vehicles but maybe I’ll name this motorcycle “High Horse”. I even talk with my eyes closed sometimes. Excuse me, I need to savor my flatuence.
Isn’t it fun to sit on your motorcycle at a red light and look down your nose at the hybrid drivers? I’m thinking, “Yeah, buddy, I’m getting better fuel economy than you, and my machine only cost me $7,000 new.”
I’ve been thinking about getting one of those 70 MPG bikes, but I just can’t see my fat 6’2" frame on a machine that small. I look silly enough on my little Honda Shadow Aero 750.
I used to enjoy the irony of the "smug Prius driver" and that "Prius" was derived from the same Latin root as "Priapism." Seemed fitting...
`When the Prius first came out and I’d never heard the name pronounced by anyone, I pronounced it Pr’eye’us; the way Jeremy Clarkson pronounces it on Top Gear. Then I hear people calling it the Pr’ee’us. I flip back and forth on how I say it, but I generally go with the British name. American name sounds too much like a piece of male anatomy.
I would go with the British pronunciation, the BBC accent exudes smug like no other. That’s why nobody watches CNN anymore, the volumous cloud of nausiating smug that billows from the TV when Piers Morgan speaks is too much for the unenlightened to take as he insults the American simpletons.
Thanks to a new one piece riding suit, I can now ride my 70 mpg motorcycle in weather that previously had me staying home, allowing me to go on a planet saving motorcycle ride instead of sitting at home on the weekends. Also it allows me to savor my own flatuence even while riding. (breeeep) Aaaahhh! Rotting wildebeest carcass with overtones of sauerkraut and egg salad with a subtle hint of phosgene.