Toyota Prius Hybrid Review
Just drove a Toyota Prius for the first time today, so here is a road test review for anyone considering buying:
Keyword here is: "smooth". Everything in this car is smooth-- acceleration, braking, cornering. No shifting, which adds to the feeling of smoothness. Feels more like riding in a train than driving a car. The whole gestalt of this car seems to forfend reckless or even aggressive driving, which is probably a good thing.
Driving it, surrounded by conventional automobiles, you feel like an early mammal surrounded by dinosaurs. "Hah! They think I'm weird now, but soon, they'll all be extinct!" A calm, deliberate mammal, though. Those dinosaurs all seem skittish and jumpy by comparison.
It's weird to think, as you drive it, that by stepping on the gas pedal-- uh, I mean, the accelerator pedal-- you're doing something completely different from the norm. That is, the accelerator pedal does NOT have an direct mechanical linkage to a fuel valve. What you're doing, when you "step on it" is sending an electronic message to the car's mammalian brain, which the car then processes, and uses to determine the correct proportion of... oh, never mind, it's all very electronic and complicated.
Unfortunately, in my view, Toyota opted to emphasize the electronic nature of the beast by doing away with the conventional dashboard instruments, and replacing them with a purely digital readout. The readout is positioned way, *way* forward in the cab, several feet further away from your nose than you're used to, which makes it hard to read in my humble opinion. The scant information on this display (MPH, fuel gauge) is supplemented by a little screen on the right, which controls just about everything (radio, air conditioning, etc.). If you wear polarized sunglasses, or if the sun is beating in through the windows just so, you can't read either of these displays worth a damn, which leaves you completely information-free and feels sorta like driving at night with the lights off.
For me, the ideal vehicle would be a car that looks and drives like a Mini Cooper, with a Mini's stylish and functional interior, but the brains and drivetrain of a Prius. Should be available in a couple of years; just wait.
Oh, one more thing about Priuses: they're awfully quiet when the gas motor shuts down, which it does quite often in city driving. This could have some unintended consequences: as a pedestrian, it throws you off, because you can't hear them coming. I'm wondering if they shouldn't install some artificial noisemaker to warn pedestrians away-- sorta like the ultra-sonic sirens some folks use to scare away deer on rural routes.
Keyword here is: "smooth". Everything in this car is smooth-- acceleration, braking, cornering. No shifting, which adds to the feeling of smoothness. Feels more like riding in a train than driving a car. The whole gestalt of this car seems to forfend reckless or even aggressive driving, which is probably a good thing.
Driving it, surrounded by conventional automobiles, you feel like an early mammal surrounded by dinosaurs. "Hah! They think I'm weird now, but soon, they'll all be extinct!" A calm, deliberate mammal, though. Those dinosaurs all seem skittish and jumpy by comparison.
It's weird to think, as you drive it, that by stepping on the gas pedal-- uh, I mean, the accelerator pedal-- you're doing something completely different from the norm. That is, the accelerator pedal does NOT have an direct mechanical linkage to a fuel valve. What you're doing, when you "step on it" is sending an electronic message to the car's mammalian brain, which the car then processes, and uses to determine the correct proportion of... oh, never mind, it's all very electronic and complicated.
Unfortunately, in my view, Toyota opted to emphasize the electronic nature of the beast by doing away with the conventional dashboard instruments, and replacing them with a purely digital readout. The readout is positioned way, *way* forward in the cab, several feet further away from your nose than you're used to, which makes it hard to read in my humble opinion. The scant information on this display (MPH, fuel gauge) is supplemented by a little screen on the right, which controls just about everything (radio, air conditioning, etc.). If you wear polarized sunglasses, or if the sun is beating in through the windows just so, you can't read either of these displays worth a damn, which leaves you completely information-free and feels sorta like driving at night with the lights off.
For me, the ideal vehicle would be a car that looks and drives like a Mini Cooper, with a Mini's stylish and functional interior, but the brains and drivetrain of a Prius. Should be available in a couple of years; just wait.
Oh, one more thing about Priuses: they're awfully quiet when the gas motor shuts down, which it does quite often in city driving. This could have some unintended consequences: as a pedestrian, it throws you off, because you can't hear them coming. I'm wondering if they shouldn't install some artificial noisemaker to warn pedestrians away-- sorta like the ultra-sonic sirens some folks use to scare away deer on rural routes.
posted by Chicago MBA, Stanford BA at 10:30 PM
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