Because of my abject paranoia about crashing my Jag again before I can get it successfully sold this weekend, we rented a car from Enterprise today. A supremely delightful university student named Katie picked us up at our flat and took us to the Enterprise office in Bracknell -- the next town over from us. It should have taken us 15 minutes to get there, but took 25 because of the usual UK propensity for tearing up streets for utility repair or something and just leaving them that way --with no one actually working on the utilities at all. Katie knew a slick route around the trouble or we'd have sat an hour in the "queue".
The car she picked us up in was a Toyota Prius -- a hybrid. I'd heard about them, never seen one up close, and never ridden in one. It was really cool and now we're thinking that this may be the car for us in the US.
To start it you push a "Power" button next to where the key goes in and the dashboard lights up like a video game. Otherwise, it doesn't make a sound. The gear shift is a little knob on the dash that you basically move to D or R. There's a button above the knob labelled, funnily enough, "Park". It didn't take a real long time to figure out the controls.
Only problem is that the only indication that it's running is that the dashboard is alive. It doesn't make a sound. You step on the gas to go forward and unless you've run over a cat that was sleeping under the tire (and didn't hear you start to move either), there's not a sound. A cute little animated diagram shows you whether you're running on battery or petrol (gasoline to the colonists). It also shows whether you're recharging the battery. It shows miles per gallon, which for substantial parts of the journey back to our house was pegged at 99.9 mpg. Can that be right? I guess so because, as we were signing the paperwork for the car, the office manager told us that he drives one and averages 50 mpg.
The transmission is apparently seamless. Somehow there must be only one gear in there. You just smoothly accelerate and there's no automatic transmission 'jump' at all. Cool again.
It rides nicely. Wife says that it's bigger inside than our Jag. And it does feel roomy. I had to have her hug the hood, or bonnet if you're reading this in UK, of the Prius and then show her that the Jag was too big to hug before she believed that the Prius wasn't bigger. I'm pretty sure you can fit a couple sets of golf clubs in the back.
We checked out some Houston Toyota sites and it looks like the going asking price is between $25,000 and $30,000. Steep, but in the same gradient as Mini Cooper that was Wife's choice up until a few hours ago.
Toyota also makes a hybrid version of the Camry. I'm sort of a Camry bigot, so maybe Wife will get Prius (pronounced Pree' - us in the Toyota video) and I'll get a Camry and we'll just be green as heck. That'll shock the heck out of everyone that knows me.
2 comments:
I've owned the Prius since September last year, and the more I learn about my car the more I appreciate it.
I thought the fuel economy was the only cool thing about it-- Not even close. Only when I started learning about the drivetrain technology did I realize I got something that is truly different from the conventional car that has been around for the past 100 years.
The transmission in the Prius has just 22 moving parts. Just one gearset. No heat-generating torque converter, no clutch, no belts. No gear-shifting wear-and-tear of a normal car. This makes the Prius transmission far more reliable and durable than normal cars.
The Prius uses regenerative braking to recover energy that is otherwise lost through friction braking. But wait-- There is another benefit to this system: It saves wear on the brake pads. I was surprised to learn the Prius does not need a brake pad change until 100,000 miles! That's compared to 20,000 miles for my old Land Rover Discovery (not insignificant considering a set of brake pads for the Disco cost $300, before labor).
Technology such as shutting off the engine while the car is idling just makes so much sense. I find it a travesty that it took the carmakers 100 years to put all this stuff in a car.
After driving the Prius, normal cars feel DOWNRIGHT primitive. I am NEVER going back. ;-)
Hubby and I drove a hybrid on a vacation and loved it, too. We started to play the "Who Can Get the Best MPG" game, too. You're right about the quiet. If they weren't so darned much money and so darned hard to get (last I heard there was still a wait list-- a queue to you folk on the other side of the pond) we'd get one. I'm so proud! A green daddy!
Post a Comment