What are Your Thoughts of the 2016 Prius Based on the Spy Shots?

agreed, what do you think they will like about this design? it doesn't look like any of the cars my kids friends are buying.

 

Agree! a set of hot wheels on a Scion tC or the new kid in town: the 2016 Scion iM for about 19k.

 

now thats a fine looking car.

 

Mazda 3 for me versus the Scion.

 

exactly. they even buy dodges.

 

kinda shitty toyota is pushing the 2015 so hard knowing full well something new is coming.

 

agreed, they should crush whats left and put them in salvage.

 

Not quite sure the logic here!

So, they should stop selling 6 months to one year in advance since they know full well a new model is coming?

 

the thing is, no other car maker would ever do that. and dealers would much rather the cars on their lots just sit there while they tell potential customers to wait a few months/years.

 

well, they could publish their roadmap years in advance. And keep the same basic architecture but allow customers to upgrade to the latest hardware/software for a nominal fee. Like a certain new automaker does.

 

Im sorry I really thought they would steal the sytle of the corolla or the ct200h as far as the front grill. I kind of like the back. But I still think I can get a 15-IV for 24k. I know I can walk into a dealer and get a II for 19k cash. Don't see any availability in the southeast for a persona.
I think they stopped making them. This 16 is going to be atleast 27k on dealer demand for a II. A IV or V is likely to be 30++ with the roof and tech. My 2010 is worth 6k maybe!

 

Until you graduate to a Tesla, that is. Let's just hope they can bring that magic forward to the more mass-marketed Model 3.

 

Tesla's are literally non-starters for many very basic things. For example, I routinely take a short trip to visit family. With driving around while we are there it's usually about a 290-300 mile round trip with no superchargers along the way, little chance of charging while we are there, 12,000 feet of elevation change, and fairly common road closures or traffic accidents causing us to site there using air conditioning or heat for as long as an hour.

I fill up before we leave and make it home with nearly half a tank every time in my Prius. And a refill takes 3 minutes. A Tesla would likely not even make it home in all but the most ideal conditions. If they were to install a supercharger along the way at some point, that means wasting a half hour of my time (with kids sitting in the car getting cranky about having nothing to do) at least once, if not twice (depending on where it's installed) on the trip.

If Tesla is serious, they'll need superchargers at least every 150 miles on every major road, at least one every 10 miles in each direction inside every major city, at least 250 miles of range in any conditions, and the ability to capture 150 miles of driving in 8 minutes (5 would be better) while connected to a supercharger.

 

oh boy, i hope z doesn't see this.

 

There are always special cases. I was referring specifically to the driving experience, not the status of the supercharger network (which went from 0 to 500 in as few as 2 years if you didn't notice).

And I think you're overestimating how many superchargers will be needed. The magic ingredient is charging at home, decreasing the raw number of chargers they will conceivably need since the vast majority of commutes are well under the range of the Model S.

 

we need private industry that can buy cheap electrons and sell them competitively to gasoline. then they can build their own stations.

 

Nope. Elon has it wrong in thinking that travel is point-to-point. What about round-trips with no super charger stations along the way? If you go 150 miles from a station, and back, you've used essentially all your charge with no margin. What good is it if another station is 50 miles past your destination? Are you going to be willing to drive 100 miles round-trip just to fill up?

 

It has a nice personality ,,,,, just like a blind date

 

nothing some heavy make up won't cure.

 

Traditionally, Prius rear roofline gently and gracefully slopes down coupe-like. The rear styling resembled Porsche 911 or Audi TT because there were no sudden changes in curvature between the highest point of the roof and the spoiler below (or in the middle of) the rear window. Of course, Prius is a tall and narrow car which made it look very un-sporty, but the rear styling itself was very good, even sporty.

The floating roof styling can work very well in estate-type cars. The roofline of an estate in not sporty or coupe-like. For example, breaking the estate roofline visually with a floating roof works well in Citroen DS5.

We already had the information that the new Prius would a have lower center of gravity because of the new architecture. This sounded like very good news to me. If they made the car somewhat lower and wider, it would have the potential to look awesome. The technology inside has always been awesome and now, finally, there might be the looks to match that. The black testing mules hinted that the rear might be a touch longer so that the styling would get a pinch of that classic BMW coupe or Audi A5 also.

Now we are getting to the point where we got the first actual good spy shots. It seems that Toyota has gone and broken the coupe-like rear roofline with a black panel to create a floating roof. Now for several days, I have gone back to those images over and over to understand what is going on. Why on earth would anyone break the roofline of an Audi TT or a Prius with a solution like that? Side views of those cars would be completely destroyed. Taking the car as black does not help since black color hides shapes so that the gracious form of the car is not seen from all angles.

Most, if not all, of the cars that use this rear floating roofline solution, have a window in that section to improve rear visibility. I believe that the gen4 Prius has a dark window below that plastic black rear quarter panel. That would also mean that aftermarket solution is not as easy as repainting the whole of that black panel. So, I believe that this design solution was made to improve rear visibility.

That being said, I still absolutely hate the solution that Toyota has taken. Surely there would have been ways to preserve the roofline even if there is a small side window going as far as or further back than in gen3.