My Life With A Prius

A few weeks ago following a nasty storm (my local newspaper said this winter had been the worst in 20 years -- clearly due to Global Warming say the Religious Left) a chunk of ice or snow fell from the pines overhead and smacked my 9-month-old car, causing a huge dent in the right front fender and two smaller dents and a paint crack in the hood. A week after that I received a rock into my windshield. Heavy sigh. I've never before made a claim with my insurance company, and now I'd have to make two. There goes my 15 year record.

In any event, the vehicle damaged was my 2007 Toyota RAV-4 Limited V6. I decided I'd had enough of being wedged into Tuna Cans (I've most always had a small car, from a '74 Subaru GL, '79 VW Rabbit, '78 Ford Courier, '85 Chevy Sprint, '87 Geo Metro, '99 Chevy Metro) and traded my 2003 Subaru Outback Sport in for the RAV-4. As I wrote: "The Democrats, Progressives and Liberals can all kiss my ass if they think I'm shoehorning myself into another tuna can at my age and stage of my life."

Don't get me wrong; the Subaru was a great car. I moved, stacked, packed and crammed more stuff in that Subaru wagon (following my divestiture of a draining 17-year relationship wherein my former S.O. liberated all makes and models of items from my cabin which required replacement -- hence the heavy usage of the Subaru's cargo capacity! -- items removed even including the pulls from most all the cabinets. Not to even mention the selling of my dead mother's Hummel plates on eBay and the profits promised to my father going into her mystic coffers. But hey -- that's something she'll have to reconcile in her own afterlife. Three words playing in the back of my brain: "Don't be bitter!") than an entire fleet of vans. But after 89,000 tough miles, it was time to move on.

And move on I did. I acquired a larger vehicle with a much larger engine, 115 more hp and gas mileage that left the Subaru in the dust. At best, the Outback Sport got 24 mpg. I've gotten as low as 17 mpg with the Toyota RAV-4 V6 Limited, as high as 31 mpg, and recently 27 mpg on a long trip. And on regular unleaded. Somehow in my attempt to get a bigger, roomier vehicle with a larger, more responsive engine, I also managed to increase my mpg. It just doesn't seem logical. But again, though I could easily have afforded the Lexus RX350, I chose the RAV-4 because it had the same 3.5L block, same hp, only it ran on regular instead of premium.

In any event, I had to turn the RAV-4 in to the body shop I'd chosen (Maita Toyota in Sacramento, where I'd originally purchased the car and figured: they should be readily able to get the parts and match the metallic paint!), and my insurance covered a $25 per day rental. At Enterprise I asked: "What does that get me?"

They pointed to the 2008 Prius outside. "Great," I thought. "Some tree-hugging piece of shit."

The Enterprise gal showed me a few things, handed me the square key and I was on my own. I drove to a local Borders for a book (Jon Krakauer's Into The Wild) and, getting back into the car, couldn't start it. I tried and tried. The damnable thing wouldn't budge. I almost obviated my Man Card and actually called the rental agency. The same gal answered. She said: "do this and this and this and this." I did all those things. Nothing worked. "Okay," she said. "We're sending someone out."

Oh Christ, I thought. Exposed for the idiot I am. I actually relented and did the worst thing imagineable: I read the instruction manual.

1. I put the rectangular key into the rectangular slot on the dash;

2. I put my foot on the brake;

3. I pushed the Power button once;

4. I released the parking brake;

5. The blue dash light indicated: "READY"

That was precisely what the car wanted: the READY light to illuminate.

I slipped the small shifter up into R for reverse. It actually engaged. I could actually back out of the slot I'd occupied at Borders. Would wonders never cease?

I immediately called the rental company back in order to cancel their responder. I apologized profusely.

I finally realized: the car is a computer. It wants what it wants when it wants it, in the order it wants it, in the fashion it wants it.

When I gave it what it wanted, in the order it wanted it, it worked.

I first sat into the Prius seat and hated it. Just hated it.

And when it wouldn't run, I hated it even more.

Now, today, giving that car up for my RAV-4, I know I'll miss it. If I could purchase another car, for economy, it would definitely be a Toyota Prius. How did I come to this startling conclusion?

OBSERVATIONS:

If you treat the Prius something as a computer, you'll be better served. It wants what it wants when it wants it, and in the order it wants it.

The key is a rectangle on a ring. Insert it into the dash. Place your right foot on the brake pedal. Disengage the parking brake. Move the dash shifter an inch above into R for reverse. The engine may or may not engage. An incredibly annoying interior beep will commence until your backing maneuver has ended. If for no other reason than this, you will pre-plan your backing maneuvers in great detail so that you won't have to listen to that annoying beep. If this were my car, my first goal would be to pay any amount of money to disable that reverse beep.

But once I made it move: the gloves were off.

I now understand why these suckers pass me on the freeway.

First things first:

You'll hate the dash. The info station is positioned in the middle. A few extraneous info tidbits are placed in your natural viewpoint, deep, deep, deep into the dash. These bits are all digital. There isn't any bit of the car that is analog. You'd best get over that right away.

The key is simply a place to begin. Starting the car features the round POWER button. Your clue is when the dash displays: READY. Then and only then are you truly prepared to drive off.

Grasp the miniscule shifter lever on the dash, then move it up into REVERSE. The car will physically clunk into reverse. Let the interior beeping commence. Your goal: shift out of reverse as quickly as possible. When you're done driving and you stop, there is no place for the shifter. See the rectangular button marked P? There you go; that's P for PARK. You push it to park.

When you're done backing, shift down quickly into D for drive. Jesu Christi -- the beeping actually stops!

The Toyota Prius has a CVT -- that is, a Continuously Variable Transmission -- there is no 1st or 2nd gear or such -- if you floor this baby the engine sounds as if it will shake its moorings. And if you expect to feel a shift, well, you won't. Remember the old Honda mini-bike "centrifugal clutch"? A CVT is something kinda sorta like that, only different. A CVT is a poor choice for a vehicle with real power; and an acceptable choice for a vehicle whose driver's goal is as light a pressure on the throttle as possible. The Prius doesn't shift; it just moves.

About that throttle. It's not a linkage. Think of the throttle as an electrical rheostat -- kinda like the round knob on the wall that dims your dining room lights. You'll find that the gentler on the throttle you are, the more the computer game dashboard becomes fun. More on that in a second.

Absent all the other exquisite oddities displayed by the car, it's essentially a remarkably stable platform. The heavy battery pack exists on the very bottom of the chassis. This helps to lower the CG of the car and overcome its inherent crappy, thin factory tires. Thinking that it would understeer horribly, I was encouraged. It tended to stay on track pretty well, the wheel centered up readily, and it didn't display the nasty buckboard ride I was expecting. Suspension was good, compliant over bumps (but not mushy like a Buick Roadmaster), with acceptable body roll in turns. Not a Honda S2000, but not a Geo Metro either. More akin to the Toyota Corolla.

I couldn't ever completely figure out its regenerative center dash display -- when was it running on its 1.5L engine, and when was it running on the electric pack? Make no mistake: I could readily tell when the car ran on juice or gas. But what conditions would yield gas or electricity -- that escaped me. Oddly enough, the transition from juice to gas was darned near seamless; much, much less intrusive than I ever would have guessed.

I'd been told that the car would transition from electricity to gas at 25mph. But that wasn't always true --I'd seen the display indicate electric power right up to 40 mph one time. It all has to do with how much electricity created or stored over the course of a given trip. I suppose if I'd read the owners' manual I'd know how to read the energy display.

About that center dash display: just about everything runs through that touch-screen display. Want to turn the fan on or off? Press CLIMATE on the display and touch the screen. Want to fade or balance the radio? Press AUDIO on the display. Want to see how much juice you're generating on a trip or your average mpg? Press INFO then press TRIP. If that center dash display ever goes tits-up, you are just about entirely toast.

There are darned few manual controls on the dash. Some manual controls can be found at your thumbs on the steering wheel, to include front and rear defrosters, radio controls. The cruise control is standard Toyota: a small stalk on the right side of the wheel.

The brakes on the Prius are oddly twitchy. You'd have to call them "sensitive" at best. Certainly they stop the vehicle and don't require legs like a Russian weightlifter to activate (like my former Subaru). But as the vehicle slows and the CVT engages or disengages it can tend to ramp up their sensitivity geometrically. If you have no feeling in your feet you'd best advise your passengers to be completely belted in because, if you're ham-footed on the brakes, you'll send them through the windshield. You'll come to appreciate the judicious pressure you must make on both the brake and throttle pedals.

You tend to start driving the car like it's a computer game. You check the info display to see how long you can keep it in electric power, and you likewise constantly check the MPG display to see how deep into the rheosta -- er, throttle you are. It's as if your goal is to wring every last mile out of each gallon of gas.

I acquired 46.3 mpg overall, during my 12 days with the Prius. Most of my driving was on the freeway or at speeds over 50 mph. If you become landlocked in heavy city traffic, your mileage will be better as you'll be running a good deal on electricity.

Can it compete with traffic? I drove it up I-80 into the mountains twice, passing most every vehicle at 70+ mph. It does not lack for power if you use it appropriately. Fear not: you won't have to drive it like a Hamms Beer delivery truck. And when you pass the black Cadillac Escalade the smugness just seems to exude: dude, you paid $75,000 for that P.O.S. and you still got passed by my Prius.

The interior is pretty roomy, the cloth seats comfy; the back seat area is amazingly roomy. The cupholders are a bit funky and won't hold your tippy drinks very well. And because it's a hatchback there isn't a massive amount of stowage to the rear, though there is a rolling sheet to cover and hide your purchases and possessions. Pull up the tab on the floor and you'll find this is where the jack and its handle and such live. Pull up on the black tray and you'll finally discover the mini-spare tire beneath.

One big issue with me: the view to the rear. Not unlike the much earlier Honda CRX, there is a horizontal bar running smack dab in the middle of your viewline from the driver's seat -- see the photograph. This stupid bar occludes a good deal of your available view to the rear. Obviously, the designers of the Prius wanted to reduce the Cd (coefficient of drag) by radically sloping the front and rear. This results in your looking out the rear through the hatchback, like the gunslit of a German bunker. There is a lower viewable section below the slit, heavily tinted. But the horizontal hatch support removes much of your field of view to the rear. Important safety tip: back up very carefully.

When all was said and done, I despised the car before I even sat down. I despised it even more when I couldn't get it to move. But when I finally understood the car, I liked it. A lot. I actually kinda miss it.

Would I buy one, if I wanted an econo-transport?

In a heartbeat.

BZ