Toyota Prius

November 22nd, 2009

Had a chance to drive Toyota’s Prius recently when Nippon Rent-a-Car didn’t have what I wanted. So I though, meh, why not give the “eco car” section a try. There were only 2 cars, Honda Insight and Toyota Prius. Being a frequent customer of Nippon Rent-a-Car, I had in my possession, a ¥4000 discount voucher.

What the heck, I’ll just go with the slightly more expensive Prius.

In case you were wondering, renting a Prius will put you back about ¥12,000 a day. The total amount does depend on a few other factors such as insurance, petrol charges etc. But split 5 ways, it’s still pretty affordable.

So how much do I like the Prius. It’s a nice car to drive in. I didn’t really care for the “eco” mode though. It felt like the car was struggling whenever it was in eco mode. Only turned it on when going downhill. Seemed to work best then.

Regular drive was … regular. ^^. Power mode was enjoyable! Would have loved putting it on power mode all the time, but I didn’t. Figured it would ruin the experience of driving an eco car.

The interior is comfy. There was no ignition, but there was a button. If you had been following my tweets on Twitter, you might have read about me having problems starting the car. ^^.

I have this habit of starting the car from the outside. You know, stand next to the car, put the key into the ignition and starting the car. Having drove in hot countries, sometimes one just likes to start the car and turn up the air conditioning before entering. Bad habit?

“Vrooom”

I pushed the button, but nothing started. It seemed the button wouldn’t work unless I was in the driver’s seat, with a foot depressing the brake pedal. This car will break my habit.

The only other thing I didn’t like about the Prius was having the dashboard in the middle of the car for all to see. Specifically the speedometer. I know Toyota probably had good intentions for doing so, but sometimes, it’s quite stressful for the driver and his passengers…

There’s a good reason for having the dashboard in the middle though. And that reason is shown in the video below. There’s a panel with a whole bunch of real-time information about how the hybrid system works. The car also analyzes your drive and plots a mileage chart so you know how many litres of petrol on average you’ve spent on the last few kilometers or so.

Toyota’s Hybrid System currently consists of an electric motor, a battery and the engine. You can read more about it here. But for now, you can see how the system works when one accelerates/decelerates or brakes. It’s quite interesting. The red arrows shown when the engine is being used.

And no, I did not record the video while driving. Left that job to the passenger on my left. ^^. If you’re driving, you have to be responsible for the safety of your passengers. No hanky panky when driving!