I think I'm getting out of the prius c game.....

Lots of rolling, perhaps? Or maybe every time it gets bumped from behind it bounces ahead one hundred yards without having to burn any fuel?

I'd have to research that. After learning two years ago it was a Yaris I lost interest. I drove a couple of Yaris models as dealer loaners and felt like Fred Flinstone might blow past me in a cloud of dust and foot odor.

 

Good idea

 

Very sharp of you to catch that.
The Europeans exposed Toyota too.

 

Not me. I drive my C the same way I did the 1996 BMW 3-series which was my previous car, and I still get 50 MPG.

 

That was the point I was trying to make -- no one drives that way except idiot car journalists writing a hatchet job on hybrids.

 

I'm curious. Just what cars do you consider better than the cheap Prius C? And what attributes you decide are above cheap?

 

also if you have a list of places to go start with the one farthest from you and work your way back, gets the engine warmed up, and that will save gas.

 

If one is interested in fuel economy and doesn't wish to spend a lot of money on a car, the Prius c is without equal. It can be driven moronically and still returns decent MPGs. Driven with painstaking care, it can get over 100MPG. What's not to like? Oh my, the interior has hard surfaces, acceleration is slow etc., etc.. I used to lean forward and affectionately rub the plush dashboards of previous cars and never got more than 35 MPG.

There are tradeoffs in all of life - no different here. Personally, I love the car. So there, all you mean-spirited c haters!

 

Exactamundo.

My wife chose the Honda Fit because she only drives 3 - 4k a year and we invested the money saved in PV. More miles per year, and I would have recommended the Yaris hybrid hands down.

 

My inner Spock cannot help but point out that your sentence implies the trolling so far was not excessive ...

 

I have a first model year C and it runs as a true hybrid all the time. I average over 50 mpg even on the highway and can easily drive all electric at city speeds once the car us warmed up. Agreed that the C is a cheap car in terms of finishing and handling, but it is a true hybrid.

 

What you describe sounds exactly like what Ford did regarding hybrids, in that they slapped a hybrid battery/engine into the c-max, which I hear is a regular gas car in Europe because they wanted to cash in on the hybrid phenomenon after Toyota had a runaway success with the prius.

They initially claimed it could get 47 mpg city/freeway/combined, but then had to revise that downward not once, but twice within a year after people complained about not being able to achieve those numbers even with really careful driving.

Meanwhile the c can easily get 50 mpg combined, and most drivers can go beyond that without utilizing too many hypermiling techniques. And judging by Fuelly numbers, many other people did too. Sure, the battery and engine is smaller, so you can't go in ev mode very long, but due to its lighter weight, its engine also doesn't have to work as hard as the liftback to propel it.

I think the c-max has its niche and is an otherwise okay car. But Ford shot themselves in the foot due to the mpg debacle, so they're going to have to make sure that new dedicated from the ground up hybrid they're designing now hits it out of the park. Otherwise people will flock to other hybrids or even ev's.

 

Yep!
Check my Fuelly numbers - and I'm not even trying.

I came from a 2001 Chevy Prizm which I drove till it quit and now also have my family's old 1997 Geo Prizm - the C feels like a luxury car to me compared to the two base Prizms.

YMMV