Prius makes sense on many levels

My wife borrowed this week’s test car for a quick trip to town one day. When she came home she put into words exactly what I’d been thinking.

“I’d forgotten,” Connie said, “how much I enjoy driving a Prius.”

Exactly.

I’ve got a lot of experience driving Toyota’s Prius, and I’ve always been impressed with its hybrid technology – the car, really, that put the word “hybrid” into the mainstream of consumer thinking. I was one of the first journalists in Canada to drive a Japanese-spec Prius – right-hand drive, and all – when Toyota brought a few over here for cold-weather testing back in 1998

Later, Connie and I had a 2004 Prius longterm tester – the first year the more aerodynamic second generation of the car was sold in Canada. Those were six months of happy motoring – especially when it came time to pay the laughably small bills for gasoline on the car’s infrequent stops at the pumps.

Lately, however, my experiences with the Prius have been as a rear-seat passenger on visits to Vancouver or Victoria where growing numbers of the car are found in those cities’ Yellow Cab fleets.

When you think about it, the Prius makes perfect sense as a taxi – and I can’t understand why cab companies in other major Canadian cities, most notably Toronto, aren’t rushing to the car the way they are on the West Coast.

It’s roomy enough for three passengers, plus a good deal of luggage when you lift the hatch to the rear compartment, miserly on gas and great for the environment because the engine shuts off at stoplights. And in heavy traffic, such as big-city cabs often encounter, the Prius will creep along using only its electric motor for propulsion.

So when I saw there was a 2008 Prius available for test drives in Toyota Canada’s press fleet, I grabbed it for a week.

What’s changed between the new model and the one we had as a longterm car back in 2004?

Well, gone is the colourful instrument panel display, with wheels turning and arrows flashing, indicating the direction of power flow – from the gas engine, the hybrid battery, or both – or from the wheels to the battery during regenerative braking. The bar graph remains, however, that shows fuel used and regenerative energy banked in five-minute blocks.

Also new for 2008 are standard features such as 16-inch aluminum alloy wheels, a garage door opener, electrochromatic rearview mirror, fog lamps and a body colour rear spoiler.

Driver and front passenger seat-mounted side airbags and side curtain airbags are now standard in base models.

Some Prius drivers must have complained about the horizontal bar that splits the rear hatch’s glass, because Toyota now includes a backup camera as part of a Special Edition premium package. At first I found it silly in such a small car, but it’s the best backup camera of any vehicle I’ve driven and soon I began to rely on it whenever I threw the shift lever into reverse.

Incidentally, that shift lever is unlike anything else you’ve encountered. The fat little stalk extends from the dash, to the right of the steering wheel, and allows you to shift into drive, neutral or reverse. If you want the continuously variable transmission in “park,” you push a large button on the dash above the shift lever.

Put your foot on the brake, push another large button on the dash and the car starts while the optional Smart Key is still in your pocket.

There are easy-to-use touchscreen functions for climate, audio and trip information. Off-putting to some people is the placement of the digital speedometer – far from the driver, at the base of the windscreen, and offset a little to the right.

On the highway, there’s little wind noise, thanks to Prius’ aerodynamic 0.26 coefficient of drag, but the rumble from the P195/55R16 all-season radials can be quite evident.

And I still worry about the use of nubby cloth, rather than vinyl or leather, on the armrests. Those on our test car, with only 4,198 km on the odometer, were already showing a few dirty spots.

The base Prius is already a well-equipped vehicle at $29,500, and our test car came with the Special Edition premium package which boosted the price to $32,530. The only available option our test car didn’t have was the DVD-based navigation system which adds $2,750 to the price of the premium package.

The Prius is no rocket, and you won’t want to push its soft suspension too hard on superhighway on/off ramps. But people who buy this car aren’t going to be as interested in sports-car acceleration and handling as they are in fuel economy and the small size of Prius’ carbon footprint. It is classified as a SULEV (Super Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle).

With EnerGuide ratings of 4.0L/100 km in the city and 4.2 on the highway (although our test-car’s observed fuel economy fell short of those figures), Prius is eligible for the top $2,000 rebate in Transport Canada’s ecoAUTO program.

Other provincial rebates may apply, depending upon where you live.

This is not the fastest car, nor the quietest, but it’s a good combination of comfort and utility. Throw in decent luggage space and unbeatable fuel economy and you can see why so many buyers are going green.

Toyota Canada’s slogan for the 2008 Prius says, “The future is now.”

For more than 700,000 Prius owners around the world, the future is already here.

Fact file

2008 Toyota Prius

Price as tested (pre-taxes): $32,530

Options: Special Edition premium package ($3,030) includes vehicle stability control (VSC), premium JBL audio system with Bluetooth capability, AM/FM radio, 6-disc in-dash CD changer, MP3/WMA player, auxiliary input jack, 9 speakers, Smart Key system and backup camera

Freight: $1,240

MSRP: $29,500

Configuration: Front engine, FWD 5-door hatchback

Engine/transmission: 1.5-litre hybrid gas-electric/continuously variable

Horsepower: 110 @ 5,000 rpm

Torque: 82 lb.-ft. @ 4,200 rpm

Observed fuel economy (L/100 km): 5.9 combined

Warranties: 3 years/60,000 km; 5 years/100,000 km powertrain

Report Card

Fuel efficiency: 5.0

Value for the $: 4.5

Styling: 4.0

Comfort: 4.0

Performance: 2.5

Overall: 4.0

Competition: Honda Civic hybrid

Strengths: fuel economy; reliability; low emissions

Weaknesses: acceleration and handling; cloth upholstery