Consumer Report responds to criticism of their review

consumer reports claims a c gets 37mpg city. i didn't see them post the listed mpg for this car. 37 mpg city is hogwash. in my test driving i didn't come anywhere near 37. way over that and i am not going to be a hypermiller at all. the drivers seat didn't seem to have any less space than a fit.
i would rather have a new c than a two year old 45000 mile bigger prius. i keep vehicles a long time and put many miles on them, so their used option is not an option i would go for at all. maybe bob lutz is an investor at consumer reports !

 

You can't just say "buy a used...instead" in a car review. That's ALWAYS the case that it would be a better deal and you can ALWAYS get more for your money. It's not even saying anything at all, it's just arbitrarily pissing on the car cause you want to cause a stir. And the reviewer is an outright liar, the C handles being tossed around like a champ.

 

Why would anyone buy used when you can get a new car for roughly the same price and with a longer warranty? Makes no sense. And the Prius C does pretty much everything the regular Prius does in 3/4 the size. For those of us living in the city, size does matter!

There are other things...
Did the previous owner break-in the car properly?
Hidden defects?
Items that need replacement at certain mileage? Tyres, brakes, etc...
Others...

New car owners don't need to worry about these items.

Poor advice from Consumer Reports and those who support it.

 

They must have been drag-racing the c to such get low mileage. Regardless, the Prius family is the 3rd best selling car in the world in the Q1 of 2012. That speaks far louder than CR ever will.

 

no. all i want is full disclosure. if the car is capable of much better numbers than their standard test, then they should mention it. i surmise that they dont want to outright say their test misrepresents exactly what the car can do, because that would open a can of worms for them. it would cast doubt on the validity of their testing. if one car is misrepresented, then how many others? they have to be an "authoritative" source, their word taken as gospel, and so they just turned a blind eye.

all of us and basically every other review on the car, ALL praise the mpg and ALL got higher numbers. yet they dont mention this. sure there is an explanation of "how they test" but that says nothing about if the test is appropriate for a hybrid. so again, im left wondering if it is IGNORANCE or ARROGANCE??? perhaps they dont know about warming the car up, perhaps they dont know about pulse and glide, etc. to that i say, they SHOULD know. that's their job for cryin out lound... and what if they DO know, and CHOOSE not to report it...

again, this comes back to the fact that hybrids ARE different. and if your regular tests dont correlate to what we see in reality, then they should mention it. its as simple as that. an explanation.

i can sum up the prius c in 2 sentences: its a cheap nice person car that gets great mpg. if you can overlook the former to get the latter, then buy this car...

 

regarding fuel economy, YMMV. Look at my thread where CAFE numbers are published to get an idea of a ballpark maximum fuel economy. For every person complaining that published test figures are to low, there are more drivers complaining the figures are too high. LOL

For the 'c', 95% of drivers probably fall in the 40-80 mpg range. Is that helpful ?

 

Well, it's not like the other Prii are sporting padded dashes and door panels! The hard, lightweight plastics are used throughout the lineup, so why the C was singled out for that I don't understand. It's a small car, so the ride will be rougher, I doubt the Sonic has a "Mercedes" ride, lol! Toyota really has no competition in the hybrid market, so if a harsh review can get them to improve some things, great! In any case, they'll easily sell every C they can ship, and CR will eventually eat their words and reccomend it like the liftgate and the V!

 

Who's job is it to decide what a car's designed function is or to determine the way it "should" be used?

Why? Why would they have such an agenda? For what purpose?

 

Who is to say what test is appropriate for a hybrid?

If hybrids are so different from other cars that they require a special driving technique, then maybe the manufacturer should disclose that to the consumer. Otherwise, how would a testing organization like Consumer Reports know that they are supposed to alter their testing technique to accommodate the special needs of the hybrid?

 

Sigh... for people who keep complaining about the 37 mpg city test result, please see Consumer Report responds to criticism of their review | PriusChat and 2013 Toyota Prius C doesn't get much love from Consumer Reports | PriusChat.

CR intentionally does NOT drive any cars differently, hybrid or not, just like the EPA test doesn't call for hybrids to be driven differently than non-hybrids. Once you start changing the test, the results are no longer comparable.

 

It is different. Per the print version, the Prius c did the 0-60 mph in 11.3 seconds, which is significantly slower than the liftback and v wagon results at Consumer Reports - Fuel economy vs. performance. Best & worst acceleration hasn't been updated yet to include the c, but you can see, it's pretty slow.

Per the CR web site (w/the portion that you'll need to pay for access to), here's are the 1/4 mile time and speeds for the 3 vehicles:
Prius c: 18.4 sec @ 76.2 mph
Prius v: 18.1 sec @ 78.0 mph
Prius liftback: 18.0 sec @ 79.3 mph

 

Didn't CR say it gets great MPGs, however they test their cars? The reviewer was complaining about things in a tone that showed a personal bias against the Prius C, and again in the rebuttal about criticism of the review! Personal feelings and attitude should be reigned in when supposedly doing a fact based review!

 

Maybe Toyota needs to put a disclaimer on the Prius c window sticker that explains the "intended use" of the product to consumers so as to dissuade people from trying to mow their lawns with it.

 

Yes per Toyota Prius C | Toyota Prius C Reviews - Consumer Reports Road Test.

Per The most fuel-efficient cars and Best vehicles for city & highway mpg, there is NO currently sold non-plugin vehicle w/higher city mileage on their test.

 

Well, if CR was trying to mow their lawn with it, it would explain their numbers. Just driving it like any regular driver sure doesn't.

What's the point of a test if its results are nowhere near those seen in the real world? Can you explain that?

As for your earlier, deliberately obtuse questions regarding "who's to SAY what the purpose of a hybrid car" is... I do not know, Toro, what do you think? Why would someone spend an extra four or five grand for a HSD? Hmmm...

 

Yes, this is what we were already discussing.

The problem is that the test, as it stands, gives nowhere near the results reported by actual drivers of the Prius c (or even the EPA, for that matter, who reported numbers that were already low). The test's numbers are wrong and they mislead people.

What's the point of conducting a test that gives completely inaccurate results? Isn't not reporting anything at all better than reporting incorrect numbers?

 

I doubt their numbers are "wrong", "incorrect" or "inaccurate". I trust that those ARE the numbers they got in their respective tests for their test cycles and procedures.

Your issue is that their city numbers don't jive w/what you and many others on Priuschat observe in your city driving. The problem is that there is not a single test nor a single test result that reflects EVERYONE'S driving.

I find it very likely that if someone's city drives are similar to CR's city test, that they'd get similar numbers. Are they too low compared to someone w/a longer city drive or someone who knows hybrid driving techniques or uses some of the Prius c's built in aids? Yes, probably.

Not all Prius c drivers are on Priuschat. Not all of them know how to properly drive them for mileage either.

I think that anyone that sees those numbers need to put them in perspective and compare them w/other numbers that CR got on other cars. A subset's at Best & worst fuel economy (e.g. a Civic EX gets only 18 mpg on the same city test and from my other URL, the best automatic non-hybrid non-plugin got 30 mpg which is the tiny two seater Smart ForTwo). More can be found by looking at a particular car's review, either in print or online.

BTW, if you want to read about the EPA's tests in more detail, see Car and Driver: The Truth About EPA City / Highway MPG Estimates | PriusChat.

 

No. I'm not just talking about city numbers. I'm talking about overall tank mpg.

I just went over to fuelly.com to check out the numbers others people are getting there. Their chart shows a range between 45 and 62 miles per gallon for those who register their fuel consumption there.

Now, admittedly, those are self-selected people who track and go online to report their fuel consumption. There MAY- and I say may- be a slight upward bias in the numbers because of that. But I don't report my consumption at fuelly, and I get over 60 mpg per tank. (Edit: I just now signed up- I got over 60 mpg on my last two tanks)

The numbers reported there, if taken as a representative sample of what all Prius c drivers get in mpg, are damning to CR's test. Given them, I feel very comfortable calling CR's test results wrong. Here's why:

To begin with, the median mpg (not mean, or average- and I'm only eyeballing this) in the chart given looks to be 54 mpg. This fuelly-reported median is a full 25% higher than the 43 mpg individual average reported by CR. That, just by itself, is a gross inaccuracy on CR's part.

That's not all, though. There are 121 Prius c's being reported on at fuelly. Care to take a guess at how many reported at 43 mpg or lower, out of those 121 cars? I counted.

3. 3 out of 121 Prius c's reporting at fuelly are reporting 43 mpg or less.

That means that the 43 mpg that CR reported is lower than the mpg reported by 97.5% of drivers reporting their fuel economy at fuelly. The number CR reported is unbelievably skewed.

CR simply did not conduct a fairly representative mpg test on the Prius c. So why did they even conduct the test? If you can't do it right, don't do it at all.

 

CR's MPG numbers are generally on the conservative side, not just for hybrids, but for all the cars they test. I think that's a good thing.

If a person bought a car based on what CR reports and found that their actual MPG was worse, I think they would feel that CR's report was misleading. But if they got better than what CR reported, would they curse CR for underestimating? No, they would just be happy. I think CR would rather err on the low side and have people be happily surprised, rather than disappointed.

The EPA rates both the Prius and Prius c at identical overall MPG of 50 MPG. CR also reports the Prius and Prius c having about the same overall fuel economy, except because CR's test is different from the EPA's test, CR's numbers are lower - 44 and 43 for the Prius and Prius c respectively.

If the numbers should be higher for the Prius c than the regular Prius, then why aren't the EPA's own numbers higher for the Prius c?

I'm certain that if CR discovers that they have published inaccurate numbers on the Prius c, they will disclose that and update their report accordingly. They did something similar with the Chevy Volt.

But they only publish numbers from their own testing. They never poll consumers to ask for their gas mileage numbers, so don't expect to see that happen.

 

A 3 mph and .4 second difference is hardly noticeable.

SGH-T989 ? 2