Poll for your reaction of the Gen 4 - so far.

love it! way better than i expected upon seeing the initial teasers. there's so much more to this car than exterior design!

 

Bisco, seriously: don't operate any heavy equipment today.

 

Neutral. Neither love it nor hate it. My first thought is it is too much of a compromise that will alienate many current owners.

Personally, I'm a NPNS (no plug no sale) so I'm more interested in PIP news.

 

Not pleased about the lack of storage. A bunch of wasted space on the useless wireless charging area, one single tiny glove box, no little storage space on the dash like on my Gen 2. Really, all that storage is one BIG reason I bought the Gen 2. The step between the cargo area and the folded down seats isn't a show stopper for me, but it's a strange design decision. If the front seat doesn't fold down flat with the folded down back seats (not sure, but it doesn't look like it), that would be another hit.

For me, the Prius is about practicality. I use it to carry large and/or long cargo all the time (several times a week, on average), and I have all the storage spots in my Gen 2 filled up all the time. Getting rid of all that practicality is a pretty sharp detractor from this car. If I want fun to drive, I'll drive my turbocharged sports coupe. The Prius is about taking my stuff and my family efficiently and comfortably. Having to kluge together some way to replace all the storage they removed doesn't result in comfort, it results in annoyance. This is one of the big reasons I never really looked at a Gen 3, and I thought they would repair that mistake in the Gen 4, but they've gone the other way and made it even worse.

I'll have to see it in person to see if there are reasonable workarounds for this issue.

 

Will have to wait and see it in person before making any final judgment. Based on what was shown here on PC, I really am not that much impressed. The one thing that really caught my eye was the interior with the center dash display. I don't think that is a very good idea.

Looks are one thing, usability is another.

Ron (dorunron)

 

One too many for me...I need a management summary

 

Far too little information for me to vote or to give a balanced comment.
Some things sound good. Others raise concerns. I'll wait until specs are available and I can actually see and drive one.

 

Neutral, only because I don't feel I've really seen "anything" yet.
That "reveal" showed me nothing other than Las Vegas has lights, and that The Prius can be suspended by wires.
Both things I already knew or suspected.

I think I'm going to have to really pull back from too much opinion about it until I get the chance to see it inside and out.

I'm not adverse to the styling changes which simply MUST happen with the passage of time. But the fact that they can now make a Prius that looks much more like a Hyundai Elantra than before, really doesn't personally mean much to me. I've always appreciated The Prius as a function over form vehicle anyway.

The interior looks improved from a materials and styling aspect. However, still has a 70's squarish look to me.

Even though I've learned to accept the flying buttress, which now becomes Prius History, I'm glad Toyota seemingly has abandoned it.

That's about all I can say at this point.

In an amazing feat of engineering, Prius designers pushed the envelope of possibility and actually found a way to make the Prius rear end look even more unappealing.

 

My wife said the rear end looked like a gen 3 was hit hard and they just smoothed it over.

 

Can't find any specs of the new Prius, anyone have a link?

 

Meh - back to blockiness, really?

The commercial...Very dubstep-ish now, like the Corolla commercials. Trying to make it hip. I hope they don't raise the price otherwise they'll lose another customer.

 

Too much shiny plastic that will look like crap in a year or two. Too much wasted space with the gigantic phone charging spot in the console. The overall design just screams "trying too hard to be cool" all while sacrificing usable space. And the clock, really? That was dated in the 2nd gen models...

 

A better presentation?

Prius Preliminary Specifications (North American market)
Figures in square brackets [ ] indicate dimensional changes from existing models
Length 4,540 mm [+60 mm]
Width 1,760 mm [+15 mm]
Height 1,470 mm [-20 mm]
Wheelbase 2,700 mm [±0 mm]
All Worldwide 2016 Prius 4th Generation Press Releases | PriusChat

2016 Toyota Prius, Prius PHEV - Rendering

 

Right now I put my phone in the slot under the CD player and then have to fiddle around with a micro USB cable. A space to drop the phone where it won't slide around, will be kept charged, and I can glance at notifications? Massive win. My favorite feature of the new interior.

 

What's the blue car is my question. I like that better. Oh, supposedly it's the PHEV version. So this video seems spot on, we should see the PHEV version sometime next year...

 

Neutral - That rear end is a mess, but I'll wait until we see some real specs (e.g. mpg, ground clearance, spare tire, etc.) and find out about ease of maintenance for the typical items (oil change, headlamps, etc.)

 

Supposedly the Phev variant! There is better information in the video and the article.

From "what drives us" discussion:
Base model - spare tire,
Touring model shown in red - no spare tire.
Another word: 15"(spare tire), 17"(no spare tire)

 

In the absence of knowing about any functional specifics...

The front of the car, despite remaining a step backwards from function-determines-form, is growing on me. There were some spatial relationships and 3-dimensional forms that were not as readily obvious in the limited still photos we had access to.

The rear of the car remains exactly as I knew it prior to the "reveal": questionable, and mostly just trying to accommodate a singular design element as best as it could. That singular design element is the "lip" at the trailing edge of the rear fender, leading edge of the corner light assembly... now extended nearly the full height of the fender, and defining a pseudo-silhouette to match the same defined in the front end by the headlights. There is an aerodynamic purpose to having an abrupt transition between the side surface of the car and the rear surface (you can see this in a lot of modern cars these days, and you can also see a version of this in the 3rd-gen)... But the 4th-gen is insisting on fetishizing this.

The side of the car is the biggest disappointment. I think by dropping the front edge of the beltline and slightly raising the rear (all undoubtedly helped by the blacked-out C-pillar; this is the true intention of this particular styling decision; the "floating" roof was secondary), they have finally arrived at too much of a wedge. Yes, they are trying to position the 4th-gen as the aggressive, "sporty" Prius. But it's still a Prius, and it still rides on small wheels. It looks cartoonish.

The greenhouse side view is particularly awkward around the rear windows: the high-and-sloped beltline + the roofline they adopted to work with the "floating" roof makes the rear window curiously small, and imparts the top of the rear window with a wee bit of a compound curve. This may not actually be present in reality, but it is certainly suggested by the blackout-defining line of the C-pillar. I find that form particularly displeasing.

Scallops. I know they are trying hard to keep the now even-more-slab-sided form from manifesting as so... but there are better ways of execution. The bigger question is: why did they even opt for the pseudo-silhouette-defining lights front-and-rear if they weren't going to embrace being slab-sided a la Nissan GTR concept (2010) and Infiniti Concept 2020? Simple. This is a compact car and you can't shrink the beltline to define fender "haunches" a la 2016 Nissan Maxima. They fell in love with a hard-to-execute design element (for this size and intent of car) and decided to push through with it anyways. This is why everything looks weird.

I don't think I need to say anything about the iPod-white trim in the interior. But I am particularly dismayed to see the white accents manifested in what are some of the most terrible wheel covers I've ever seen. Yes, they are evoking some Momo rims from the '90s. No, those Momo rims were not directional (and I doubt these are really directional in the sense of having mirrored designs on the other side, which would at least *suggest* functionality for their swirliness.)

 

The interior upgrade alone is worth $3k in my book. I have been interested in a 2015 Prius Persona since the first of the year, but I have hesitated on purchasing one because of the interior being so dated (and news of the redesigned model).

I imagine the exterior looks of the 2016 will grow on me a little over some time. I don't think it looks bad, but I don't think they knocked it out of the ballpark. I'm thinking a bright white model will tone down the exterior lines a little. Tint the windows and you've got yourself a pretty slick looking daily driver.

If a well optioned 16 can be had for under $30k, I will probably pull the trigger.