http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/08/08/air.car/

Toyota Prius at FuelEconomy.Gov

48 MPG City (2.1 gallons per 100 miles), 45 MPG Highway

Gas-Electric Hybrid

Price: $21,500 – $23,770

U.S. News and World Report overall score: 8.4/10 (#3 in Hybrid Cars)

Edmunds consumer reviewers’ score: 9.4/10 (avg from 136 reviews)

I’m researching the Toyota Prius first for several reasons:

• The first car I drove was my family’s 1989 Toyota Camry station wagon, and I found it very easy to drive and maintain. That, along with comments from other Toyota drivers, made me like Toyotas.
• My mom has a Prius, and really enjoys it. She drives 40+ minutes to work and saves a ton of gas. Her reasons for buying a Prius were economically motivated (her and my step-dad went in to buy a new car with better gas mileage about a year ago, and the dealer made them such a good deal, they ended up trading in 2 vehicles and coming home with a Sienna van and a Prius), and it seems to be paying off. She’s lucky to have gotten one before the demand went way up!
• The Prius is really popular right now, and dealerships can’t keep them in stock (even used ones). The bottleneck in production is the battery manufacturing.

The official City MPG listed for a Prius is 48, which is only 2.1 gallons per 100 miles (GPM). It’s the most fuel-efficient commercially-sold American car that Consumer Reports has ever tested. The fuel efficiency you’ll get varies, like in any other car, depending on terrain, speed, etc. The difference here is that in some of the worst gas-guzzling moments of a regular car, a gas-electric hybrid can use the battery to assist. The gas engine can completely shut off when not needed (such as during idle), and the car can utilize some of the energy produced by the gas engine that is usually wasted during braking using a technology called ‘regenerative braking’ to charge the battery. The benefit of regenerative braking actually causes the car to get higher fuel efficiency in the city than on the highway, which is the opposite of most vehicles.

I love watching the digital displays while my mom is driving the car – it will show you your fuel efficiency at any given moment, as well as charts of your fuel efficiency over time, and the amount used on a trip. There is also a mode that can show how the power is flowing from gas engine or battery real-time.

I test-drove my mom’s Prius on the highway, and found it to have very respectable acceleration (especially compared to my current pickup truck). It’s a light, aerodynamic car, and it doesn’t take a whole lot to get it up to speed. It was fun to drive, though I’m not a huge fan of driving a small car next to big-rigs on the highway.

In my opinion, for a person that drives almost solely stop-and-go in town, the Toyota Prius would be a great choice.

Renee’s Personal Pros and Cons

Pros: Very fuel-efficient, great user reviews, fun to drive, looks cute, lots of great standard features, safe, roomy for a small car, very trendy right now

Cons: A little pricey for its size, I personally like riding higher off the ground, the only reason I’m actually considering it is that it’s a hybrid (otherwise not really my style of vehicle), batteries don’t last forever

Do you have a Prius or have you test-driven one? Share your experiences with me in the comments!

More Resources:

• Toyota Prius on Wikipedia
• Edmunds Review
• U.S. News and World Report

Toyota Prius on eBay

Toyota Prius News on Google News

Though this blog is named “MPG Blog”, I do want to emphasize that Miles Per Gallon is not the best indicator of fuel efficiency, or should I say indicator ofdifferences in fuel efficiency. Gallons Per Mile is a lot easier for our brains to compare. Here are some recent WordPress posts I found in the tag surfer, and an NPR article, that explain the meaning of this:

jeffstern: Better Fuel Efficiency Through Better Labels

jstorey2: Savings May Be Smaller Than They Appear

tribalgrid: MPG Estimates Are Not Linear

verdavivo: The MPG Illusion

And the link to NPR (with audio):

Here’s a quiz. Which saves more gas: trading in a 16-mile-a-gallon gas guzzler for a slightly more efficient car that gets 20 mpg? Or going from a gas-sipping sedan of 34-mpg to a hybrid that gets 50 mpg?

If you guessed the second choice, you’re wrong.

Even a small improvement in gas guzzlers saves more gas than a big improvement in cars that already save. But cars aren’t advertised that way in the U.S.

If they were rated in gallons per mile instead of the other way around, people might get a better idea of how to save gas.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91703607

I’m considering getting a hybrid vehicle that gets great miles per gallon because of

1. the current gas prices (which are likely to go up even higher), and
2. to make a smaller impact on the environment.

However, I don’t think I’ll be financially ready to purchase a new vehicle for about a year, so I’ll spend that year doing some thorough research on the available hybrids and alternative-fuel vehicles so by next year, I’ll be ready to make a well-informed decision.

So, in the meantime, I’ll post everything I find here, both to help me refer back to the info I gathered, and to share my findings with all of you!

I hope to do one vehicle a week, so check back or subscribe to my RSS feed to see future posts!

If you find additional info on a vehicle I post, please add it in a comment.

Thanks!

Renee