Hi All, Found this site via another forum, i currently live in the UK and run my own business in Devon (near the sea), lots of hills etc around here. My work requires me to drive around devon to customers houses etc so most journeys are between 5-15 miles with the odd one here and then being 30. I'm looking at replacing my car next year and have been looking at the Prius, what I need to know really is would a Prius be of benefit mainly from a petrol cost point of view as currently I spend close to £2500 a year on petrol and want to reduce that obviously. Now I won't be buying a brand new prius as I simply cannot afford that so a second hand model is the idea, I see there is the T3,T4 and T Spirit in the uk, which one would I see the most benefit from ? Also how much does it cost to fill up the tank completely in the UK ? I've seen people on here from the US saying it's only $30 ish, to fill my current car it costs close to £65 which i know our petrol prices here are shocking. Thanks again and look forward to any help. Spinner
welcome to priuschat! if petrol savings (quid) are your only criteria, your probably better off with the smallest gas sipper you can live with, and not a hybrid. all the best!
Is there no benefit to a Prius ? I thought there would be due to the fact I do alot of stop start due to traffic etc and going to customers. Thought that you be ideal for a prius due to the fact it pulls away in electric mode or am i completely wrong (probaby am I know sorry) I spoke to a Toyota dealer about if it would suit and obviously he said yes definitely as I will be stoping alot so regenerating the battery alot and then pulling away in electric mode I should be able to get at least 700 miles out of a tank instead of 250 at the minute.
You wont get anywhere near 700 with a lot of short trips and stop and go driving. But 500+ should be doable.
How long to you stop at each customers house? The Prius runs the gas engine to get it warm and reduce emissions. If the car cools down at each stop you have a series of short drives and will only average in the low to mid 40 mpg range. You might find that there are many small cars in the UK that would be cheaper to run in this case. If your average stop is just a few minutes then the Prius will give you mpg in the 60 mpg range (UK gal).
It is possible it will work well in your situation, but you won't know for sure until you do it. I would recommend renting one for a week and see how it does. That fact is you are paying a premium for the hybrid system and a fair number of owners will be able to recoup that cost in the long run,,, some won't.
It all depends really, sometimes I stop only for say 5-10 minutes, other times it can be an hour it really is hard to tell until I get to a customer. Currently I put in about £40 of petrol a week which gives me around the 250 miles ish or there abouts give or take so 500 would be great. Sometimes I may need to drive say 15 miles from one call to another but obviously varies from day to day. I would say it's about 30-40 miles at least a day sometimes more depending on where I need to go for calls if that helps. I will have to see if it's possible to rent one for a week where I live but not sure anyone has one around here thats the only trouble. Also I do a long drive about once/twice a year of say 400 miles each way so i'm guessing that would be where I would see the cost improvements. The plan is to get an efficient cheap car to run mainly fairly new and then keep it for say 6-8 years which is why I thought the prius would be ideal after reading reviews etc...it's all very confusing.
If you can get one used for a good deal, it could very well be the best choice. It does seem like a good fit from your description. Being close to the ocean and the salty air may cause some corrosion problems but that is true of all vehicles.
Stop and go kill's the mpg's on a Prius. When forced to do errands in town all day mfd usually says 32 mpg's. You get the best mileage on highway in CC. Any speed below 50 mph's is really good. It does not pull away defacto on the electric motor. That would be EV. You can but you have to creep so slow you would not be able to drive it anywhere. And constant stop and go will flag the Hybrid battery really fast especially with ac on. You have to be rolling pretty at a good speed and regen for a decent distance for regen to contribute anything sunstantial except for slowing you down. In town regen actually hurts you as you have to speed back up and little charge effect. In town and also worrying about gas mileage too would be really annoying. Most important point is regen as a whole is bad for good gas mileage. It slows the car down and it costs you $$$ to get it back up to speed. First thing you learn in hypermiling is how to stay out of regen by pedal modulation. Your dealer will tell you anything under the sun to sell you a car. In fact the dealer is a hot bed for ridiculous misinformation as a whole. Usually the guy giving the info does not own a Prius.
