Well had one of these for a 2 day hire, did 450 miles. Wasn't really looking forward to it but pleasantly surprised in the end.

After day one and the jury was still out. Warmed to the drive train. Eco mode is pretty sluggish. Normal if just fine and I must admit it has a bit of poke in power mode. Really liked being back in an auto, realise how much I miss my DSG and confirmed what box my own next car will have.

Mpg is good but only by a couple of mpg over my own diesel Mazda.

Have to say that on the second day of use - which consisted mainly of a run up the A9 I was pleasantly surprise by how relaxing this car was to drive. Stick in D, set the cruise control and that was a bout all the involvement I had really

MPG was reported on the OBC at 59 over 450 miles. Mazda does 3 genuine 53 (55.5 OBC) , so an improvement but probably not enough to make the economics stack up.The bad?

The bad - Ride is terrible on potholed roads - fine on a decent trunk road. Seats don't suit me to well, found them to high at thigh support. Visibility is poor and the dash too busy. Boot would be too limited for me for regular use - very shallow - I presume due to batteries.

The one thing that really bugged me was the fact that on the gear selector R was forward and D back, this is the wrong way round for my limited mental thinking and must have put the willies up the driver behind me when I went to move off again after a stop at temp traffic lights!!

You forgot to mention that the boot is small. Went on a business trip and only one largish case and a 2 cabin cases fitted in the boot. The other case sat on the back seat. V poor. Mpg was about 50mpg over 190 miles at 70 Mph and standing tfc all on A roads or A1 M25. not impressed.

Edited 2 December, 201213 yr by Redboy

You forgot to mention that the boot is small. Went on a business trip and only one largish case and a 2 cabin cases fitted in the boot. The other case sat on the back seat. V poor. Mpg was about 50mpg over 190 miles at 70 Mph and standing tfc all on A roads or A1 M25. not impressed.

nope - Boot would be too limited for me for regular use - very shallow - I presume due to batteries.

Agree MPG is not that startling - very similar to a modern diesel. A lot of my mileage was at 60 mpg - A9 is limited to this in most places and there were long periods at 50ish

I have not driven a Prius yet but I heard they are not a bad steer if you are not in any great hurry. One thing that might put me off is the CVT box but apparently it works ok with the electric motor

'Box works fine and is pretty smoorh

Its a 1.4 Petrol

1.8 petrol (the earlier model was a 1.5 I think)

I work for a Toyota dealer and don't get me wrong there isn't a single Toyota I would spend my own money on because there just not my type of car but the Prius can give awesome MPG if its driven in the right modes at the right time. I don't know myself which mode is for when (that's Januarys training course) but they are capable of it. And your right they are 1.8 petrols in the 3rd generation and 1.5 in the 1st and 2nd generations.

Trouble is lots of cars are capable of awesome mpg, but none deliver what they say in real life.

I did 450 miles in the Prius last week and got 59mpg on the ODC at and average sped of 38 mph, I have had a new model Cee'd for the last 2 days and it did 53, again the ODC figure, over a similar route where it average 40 mph.

My own Mazda has recorded 55.5 on the OBC and a genuine 53.2 (good accuracy as in my experience with other cars in the past the discrepancy between OBC and real is often closer to 10%)

My point is that the slightly better mpg would struggle to justify the price premium for my needs.

The problem I have being a service advisor is the figures printed for all manufacturers are absolute rubbish! There done by the ministry of transport and not the manufacturer, the only way to get a fair test is indoors on a rolling road with no wind or hills so the figures printed are always higher than what's realistically achievable on the road with the wind, traffic, hills and now you have roads with extra grippy surface which will lower the MPG. There's no weight drag on a rolling road aswel where there is on the open road. Loads of things lower it down. Don't get me wrong I've drove the hybrids from Toyota and I can't get a good MPG out of them either because there slow if you want good MPG

If you are buying the car yourself, the Prius doesn't seem to make financial sense. The real world mpg doesn't seem much better than good diesels. As a company car however the emissions make it a bargain.

59 mpg in a prius ? hhhmmmmm 0-60 7 seconds 140mph vRS fabia....

:p

(bet I was still going quicker than the prius doing that )

*runs

'Box works fine and is pretty smoorh

It does work fine, that's cos it's not a CVT gearbox, it's an electronic gearbox that uses a constantly variable style. It's called a E-CVT box. I work for Toyota too so know a bit about em.

And you have the gall to drive a vRS and not a Prius, disgusting

Yeah but I'm still under the age of 50!