This Prius was pulling away from me this morning, as you can see from the HUD I was already going 83. Just love it when I see people drive their Prius like that.
The Prius maintains high speed well. 100mph+ sustained is easy in the Prius and more than what it needs to do. People generally only notice things that are not "normal". The mentality that perseveres is that the Prius is slow. When people see a slow car they get annoyed. When people see a slow Prius, they get annoyed, angry, and build up anecdotal evidence that all Prii are slow. When people see a really fast, loud, flashy, strangely coloured, or whatever other non-normal car, they also take note. So driving a Prius fast will hopefully start to disintegrate the Prius=slow myth that still prevails. I use my DMC12 for that. And the speedometer only goes to 85mph.
That's exactly what I have been trying to do with our Prius, but Rome was not built in one day. We just need to get more people to do it and not worry about their MPG too much.
That's why we hear so many stories about unexpected purchases after a test-drive. Their perceptions quickly fade away when taking the step to actually get behind the wheel and try it.
I see plenty of aggressive buttheads trying to prove this as well though. That's for another ongoing thread but it does show the car isn't always slow.
Funny as a non Prius driver (yet) I actually notice when someone is driving fast in a Prius and think to myself, "what was the point of buying a Prius if you're going to drive like that?" but then I think, "They're still probably getting 40+ mpg" lol.
Actually, because of the way that the accelerator is set in ECO mode, I came away from the test drives feeling like the Prius was underpowered. I tried it in POWER mode, but the salesman rebuked me, saying something about wrecking my gas mileage. I bought a Prius anyway (not from that dealership). It wasn't until I'd owned the car for a few weeks and adjusted to the accelerator, the rearview mirrors, and the sounds and response of the engine and motor did I start to really drive the thing. The last vehicle I'd driven was a V-6 RAV4, so there it took a little getting used to. Now having driven the Prius the better part of a year, there's nothing that I did with the RAV4 on the highway that I haven't managed to do with the Prius. If I need to kick it to merge into a spot in traffic, it has sufficient power to do it. One thing it hasn't been able to do is get up my upgrade gravel driveway with 5-8" of uncleared snow though. But I'll take double the fuel efficiency over the RAV4 any day.
I drive it like I stole it with grippy winter tires and manage mid to high 40's without trying. Doesn't matter what I do in the city with the DMC12, I get 8mpg... Highway is double that, but rarely does it see highway.
I remember when I didn't own a prius. They were passing me left and right. I own a fairly fast subaru(347hp fast) and I was thinking to myself I wish I had prius. Haha! The only difference is how fast it can go from zero to 60. My subaru just gets up there quicker. But as long as it gets there it's fine. Cutting people is a whole different story.
Funny. Do you remember the stories about people speeding in the Prius? *They* weren't happy about that either! "The whole point is to save fuel. Here we have people driving 80 in a Prius in the HOV lane!" Funny thing is, it's probably still using less fuel at 80mph than their vehicle at 60mph. Every winter, I remind myself that when I complain about "poor gas mileage" in the winter, it's still better than the highway mileage of a Yaris at 80km/h.
I used to love growing up, when I would beat my buddies in their 5.0 mustangs with my 4-door Chevy Nova. I created a great sleeper with the small block. They'd get so mad. Now I get excited when I beat a Smart Car or Suzuki out of a red light!! Although I did hold my own against a giant Chevy pickup. I think he was very surprised that off the line, I stayed right with him once the motors kicked in.
