My Last Post About Prius

I like to call this photo "Mini Goes To Hell". Regular readers (those who regularly read what I irregularly write) know that I love my Mini. Recent readers also know that I am troubled by my Prius. Actually, I hate the Prius. And it's not really mine anymore; it's the company Prius, since the firm actually owns it. And I feel somewhat less dumb for buying it, since my partner is now using it while his regular car (which itself is not regular at all, but he'll have to post about that!) is being repaired from a little accident.

But, because he's using it and parking it next to my Mini and because the fellow who parks on the other side of my Mini also just happens to have a silver Prius, I was horrified to come out one day and find my poor little Mini surrounded by a flock of horrid, silver Priuses. Sort of like the movie "The Birds", an Alfred Hitchcock classic, brought up to date.

Here's why I hate the Prius:

1) The car treats me like an idiot. I already described this in a previous post. Bottom line: In order to get the benefits of the Prius, you have to drive it the way the engineers designed it to be driven. So the user interface of the car is designed to encourage and even require that behavior. Personally, I don't like being told how to drive by my car. (Fortunately my Mini also has a navigational system, so I also don't need to ask for directions!)

2) The marketing and management of Prius is so insecure about their product that they feel the need to overstate the truth and even, from my perspective, outright lie in order to sell the car. I've also already written about this, so suffice it to say that Prius advertises its car as saving 325 gallons a year (do the math to figure out how much you would have to drive to save that much in one year); getting 60 miles a gallon in the city (I get a little more than 40 in San Francisco so maybe Oklahoma City residents would get 45); and being zippy (yes, actually heard a radio station ad that claimed the car was zippy!).

3) The coup de grace, for me: Driving a Prius makes you personally invisible. I'm 55 and take great personal pleasure in the fact that the pretty young women walking along Chestnut Street in San Francisco's Marina district turn their heads when I drive by in my Liquid-Yellow Mini. It allows me the fantasy that they are amazed by the good looking, fit and youthful guy driving the car. When I drive the Prius down Chestnut Street, they appear to look right through the car and me.

So I hate the Prius: The car treats me like an idiot, the manufacturer treats me like a schmuck, and driving the car makes me feel old and invisible.

Comments

[Jim Dempsey]

Stewart,

Sounds like you need a Tesla Rosa: http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php

This all-electric car is very green, but extremely sexy...and fast -- 0 to 60 MPH in 4 seconds!

However, despite the car's visual appeal, its near silence at high speeds might still make you feel invisible.

Almost 7,000 LAPTOP computer batteries wired together power the car. I would have thought they would have manufactured a single battery better suited to the purpose.