I already posted about my Prius. (I finally watched the entire South Park episode, "Smug Alert"; even better than I'd heard.) Now I'm feeling like a shmuck for buying one, mainly because Toyota can't seem to keep itself from over-reaching, now that the car is pretty successful.
I saw two billboards for the Prius on Friday. The first: Save 325 gallons a year. The second: 60mpg, city. Very simple, powerful messages. If true. But I would love to see the evidence of these truths.
The first one nailed me, sitting in stop and go traffic, because 325 gallons translate to saving 9/10 of a gallon every day. If the second claim is true as well, then you would have to drive 60 miles just to use a gallon, much less save one. But if a regular car (say my Mini) consumes 30 miles per gallon and a Prius really does use half as much gas, then -- to save 325 gallons -- you would need to drive something like 27 miles a day to save 9/10 of a gallon of gas every day. It's hard to drive 27 miles a day in the city, so you'll perforce need to drive your car A LOT to save that much gas. I thought the objective of responding to global warming was to drive your car less, not more.
But the second one just flipped me out. I own one of these cars and it does NOT get 60 miles per gallon. Ever. In the city or outside of it. And the car itself tells me that. Indeed, when I saw that second billboard, I looked at the results for my car, which reported that over the past 300 miles, it had gotten 40.6 miles per gallon! Maybe I wasn't paying sufficient attention to how I was driving. So I pulled into a gas station, refilled the tank, and reset the mpg counter to zero. Over the next 12 miles of driving, very carefully to optimize use of fuel over both highway and city driving (in San Francisco, with its hills), I managed to get 44 miles per gallon.
Toyota made a completely unsupportable claim, so now I feel like a schmuck for buying a car from a company that resorts to making false claims, even when it doesn't need to. The Prius is a very successful car. Why the heck does Toyota need to lie to sell more of them? (It turns out this is a reported controversy; what makes the billboard I saw even worse is that the EPA has backed off on the 60mpg rating for the Prius.)
Stewart,
That's unfortunate about Toyota's inaccurate advertising. But it is still good to hear that you bought a more efficient vehicle.
I just got back from Italy where everyone drives efficient, small manual transmission cars. I wish more Americans would do the same as you have.
I was surprised to learn that many of the Europeans are unlikely to move away from manual transmissions toward continuous variable transmissions (CVTs), which offer similar efficiency. Apparently they are hooked on the control offered by the manual, while Americans decided years ago that convenience was more important.
Another cool thing about your Prius, I believe, is that it can travel extremely quietly at slow speeds on battery power--reminds me of Michael Knight's (David Hasselhoff) KITT car's "silent mode."
Posted by: Jim Dempsey | April 14, 2007 at 10:35 AM