Article In Autocar Magazine

September 28, 2004

A work colleague of mine was showing me a small article in the latest addition of Autocar magazine. They're doing a 12 month test of the 2004 version of the Prius and a few things I read were interesting:

- Worldwide, over 240 000 Priuses have been sold (both version).

- So far, about 2400 Prius cars (Classic and 2004) have been sold in the UK.

- This year alone, there have been over 1000 new car registrations of the Prius.

- Toyota are confident in meeting their 2004 target of 1600 Priuses sold.

The tester said that he was still quite happy with the T-Spirit: still doing 40+ MPG. The only grumbles he had were: the alarm going off twice when it rained heavily; the driver's door not shutting so snuggly; and the central cubby lid coming off (?). Lifetime MPG was 44.7 which seems okay though not spectacular. So far it's done 15 000 miles since the start of the year.

Finally, he concludes that Toyota needs to bring out a really good-looking car to attract more hybrid owners. I guess that the current model is helping a lot. If they could bring out a cheaper hybrid, that would help for sure...

paul - patiently waiting for his Prius (3 more weeks, 3 more weeks...)

September 28, 2004

Interesting that his mpg is so low - my guess is that he's not adjusted his driving style to get the best out of the Prius.

Lifetime mpg on mine is 50.6 @ 14,000 miles and I think some folks are doing even better.

paul - patiently waiting for his Prius (3 more weeks, 3 more weeks...)

Hang on in there :yes:

October 5, 2004

You can be sure that they have not adjusted their driving style. I have had an Audi A2 for three years and have always returned around 52 mpg no matter what - Autocar could only manage 48mpg so i don't know how they were driving. Besides , 50 mpg from a family sized car is pretty good considering my miniature turbodiesel with inferior performance can only just match it with sensible driving. I had a 2 litre automatic octavia for a while and even with the lightest foot it only scraped past 30 mpg occasionally ( and it too had inferior performance).