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What the Hell Kind of Park Job is That? Four Days in a Prius
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I rented a Toyota Prius from Hertz to get around while helping my Mom move out of Portland Oregon. here are my impressions of what has become the apex of style and political correctness in SF.First the shock: the pillbox in the rear is NOT because of a huge battery like I thought it was: its all trunk back there. The rear window has lousy vision -- I mean a mere slip of a slot that is utterly unnecessary as its all trunk back there. I heard, or thought I heard, it was a side effect of the big bulky battery and basic hybrid stuff. This is a mistake on my part -- there is no real reason to have such lousy rear vision other than plain stupid design. Much of this has to do with a bar that divides the rear window and obscures almost half of it .
The mileage is, of course, good. You can swing a "Mission accomplished" banner across the hood in that it delivers what you'd expect in the mileage department. A byzantine bar chart computer will even demarcate exactly how much energy you are saving to push your smug meter into overdrive. I do wonder exactly how much energy is wasted by the onboard smugness-generation computer but that's neither here nor there.
I will say this: I rented it blind without reading the manual and had a "Panic moment" when I couldn't get it started because it will not start unless your foot is on the break. The Prius, you see, delivers all the joy of a personal computer, including built in "What the hell" moments. It has a key AND a power button which is of course utterly redundant -- why yould you stick the key in the ignition if you DIDN'T want power? I spent a half hour pounding the power button frantically and staring at the "Break" LED, as well as pumping and unpumping the manual parking break (which puts the total number of break devices in the Prius at three: one standard brake pedal, one electronic break button, and one manual break lever as backup - analogous to the brake lever we're used to have over the cupholders, except its on the floor.) I then made a call in to Toyota and between unanswerable questions relating to the fact that it was a rental and their unwillingness to answer/ask some basic questions, they were useless.
Fortunately, the people at Hertz were able to provide support without jacking me around like the people at Toyota and asked some basic questions that got the whole issue resolved. Kudos Hertz, and Fuck you very much Toyota.
So having figured out how to turn the Prius on, I tooled around for a while on it. Portland's perrinial rain made for a good test of handling under adverse conditions. One of the adverse condition is that I'm used to driving a Jetta that has both a manual transmission and an inactive spedometer that forces me to guage my cruising speed through a combination of engine noise and gear. The Prius has of course, neither, so I often found myself drifting into higher speeds than I would normally. What the Prius also doesn't have is the Jetta's ability to take off like a rocket when I slam on the gas pedal. I'm not saying the Prius is a slug, but it is no speed demon either. This is of course not as much a condemnation as an observation; if you are desiging a car to NOT burn gas, you aren't going to give it the ability to blow a load of fuel for quick acceleration, but it did kind of make me want to go out and get a nitrus injector for those special moments when you want to spit gravel in someone's face.
One thing the Prius has well under contrl is the dashboard. Its electronic transmission and high-mounted, giant digital spedometer are quite cool. And it is comfortable, has a solid suspension, good general handling and a huge trunk. Its turning radius is not all that amazing, but all in all I'd call it comfortable. I noticed it most in my inability to elegantly parallel park as I'm used to doing with my Jetta. Someone left me a note with comment to that effect on my windshield which is where the article gets its title.
So let me be honest: I'm probably not the greatest of car reviewers. I'm not someone who gets to drive a lot of different cars on a regular basis. But I think its fair to say, when you buy a Prius you really are making a donation to the environment. You are not saving nearly enough to justify the price, nor is the car in any way worth the price you'll get for it. For instance, the Smart Car's 40 MPG is pretty near the Prius' and for the city driver, it has a lot of advantages beyond pure fuel economy.
And I have to say: blowing off the poor rear visibility as an "oh well" type problem is kind of cavalier. In the four days I had it I had two situations where I'd actually tried to see what was going on before I made a turn and still ended up nearly sideswiping people who were in my blind spot. I think that is fair to obsess about "one little flaw" when the one little flaw is both a safety hazard and one that a lost weekend at the drafting table could have easily overcome. Proof of this is the hybrid Civic which has all the features of a standard Civic -- and in fact, the same body styling -- with hybrid engineering built on over it.
To me this is a case of "Because we're a hybrid, the whole car needs to be radically different, even when different sucks" vs. "Its a hybrid, but its a CAR, like, you know, the other billion cars we make and sell." Toyota really pushed the different factor with the Prius and in some ways the experiment is inferior to the status quo. Honda just messed with their success a bit by slapping the big green "H" on their line of best selling Civics, and I have to say: way to go Honda.
Combining the likelihood of not being able to see what is going on around you with the lack of ability to pour the gas on in order to avoid the catastrophe that your blind spots have created seems like a real bad mix of liabilities.
I may have to rent the Civic for a week to see what they have done there and I'll let you know what I think when I do.
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