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

My thoughts:

• The exterior design is horrible, especially the rear end
• It looks like the hatch has lost cargo area
• I had center mounted gauges.

Our 2005 will be due for replacement sometime in the next few years. It won't be replaced by a new Prius unless the Prius V does something to fix the rear end. Most likely a Volt, another TDI, or an EV will find its way into our garage.

 

Toyota should have copied the Model S presentation. Watching a car lowered on 4 wires is boring and we see that it seats two in the front. That was just a waste of time. Call me when you're ready with some real info.

If the improvements are only incremental and at a higher price it'll make everything from Tesla look like a better deal.

I don't expect to be in the market for at least another five years so my opinion doesn't count for much.

 

TSS is already on sale on Yaris and Auris HSD in Europe and on our forum we start to have some feedback. Some critical behaviour in particular conditions. But what i cannot understand is why the road sign recognition is available only for Europe, what's the matter with US road signs?

 

Yes, I have heard of "them". I can also ignore them and see past them.. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I like the interior styling of the 16 better. To me, the Gen 3 dash looks like it's straight out of 2005.

 

It seems that it wouldn't take a lot to save this model for me. A larger glove box, ideally an upper glove box though that probably went away with the lower dash, a center console designed for storage instead of the useless Qi charger, a removable false-floor for the version with the lower rear deck, and a front seat that slides forward far enough to fold down flat with the fronts of the rear seats.

 

looks like your out of luck.

 

Assume you mean "hate", not "had". Yeah, I had them too, lol.

 

Then your expectations were too high. A 10% improvement was all the previous gens managed.

If it is the gap I think you are referring to, then it might be needed for air bag deployment.

 

I have no recollection of any post that touted the upper glove box or the under floor storage. Now, the lack of both seems to have become important issues.

The more I think about the images we have seen, I'll stand by my first evaluation that the front and side are better than I expected.
I think the rear is another matter. The color of the vehicle will be more important than before. I have said on another thread, that from directly behind, the rear reminds me of a pick-up. The rear sheetmetal, framed by the dark glass beneath the "wing" on the top, and the blacked out bottom panel, remind me of a PU tail gate. Then with the tail lights stacked on either side, well, it looks like a PU's rear end.
Darker body colors will minimize that effect; light body colors will emphasize the effect.

I wish I could claim credit for this, but someone called the white dash components "bathroom fixture white."

 

Yahoo thought the presentation was just awful
New Toyota Prius Goes To Vegas, Embraces Middle Age

I'm not sure who they are trying to sell. IMHO this reveal will only work for dealers, not milenials, they seemed to miss that target completely. Probably not current prius drivers either. Still the bad advertisements haven't seemed to kill sales. Hopefully when people drive it it will work better than it looked on the reveal.

Toyota Gets Weird to Make the Prius Different Again | WIRED

While I don't agree that its refesthing, at least 6 people in the poll on this site really like the look. I think it will sell inpite of the design, not because of it, and with gas prices low, 2016 may not be much better than 2015.

 

Why the Toyota Prius is LA's best car

 

Well, I am in the extremely small minority of the extremely pleased folks.

The only thing that I would wish for would be to go even more extreme with the styling. Let's face it: all cars on the road look the same these days. You can't tell apart a BMW or Mercedes or even a Bentley from a Toyota and so on. Generation 2 and 3 Priuses? They look simply extremely boring and outdated after so many years. Car designers should do radical new styling, and Toyota did it. I give them two thumbs up.

 

I've looked at all the pictures of the 2016 Prius. Front is OK, but from the B pillar back it's a different story in my eyes. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This beholder sees no beauty from any angle back there. That tail is bizarre. That's the best I can do.

The Darth Vader helmet outline of the mid dash/above console, makes the interior a near perfect goofy fit for the rear of the car. So it doesn't even matter that the speedometer and info is still centered above Darth's helmet, an not behind the steering wheel.

Prius has turned into a Car-Toon with this iteration. I'm at a loss to figure out what Toyota design is trying to accomplish here, other than to maybe test core owner loyalty? I hope it doesn't turn out to be the Edsel of our times. I hope they sell. I'm sure there are folks out there that will buy it. Hope they will. Lot's of hope on my part.

I don't think I could buy one, and we are happily on our second Prius.

 

I agree that all cars on the road look the same these days. For that reason I applaud cars like the Fiat 500, Nissan Cube, and others like them. So I also applaud Toyota for doing something radical with the Gen IV. If it were only looks I would lean more toward the Chevy Volt. But looks are not what attract me. To me it's all about practicality.

- Price
- Reliability
- Cargo space and rear leg room
- High MPG

So the Volt, while it looks much better than the Prius line, fails on Cargo space and rear leg room. Hence I'll go for the Gen IV. How the car looks just isn't that important to me. It isn't even in my much longer list of 10 or more items.

 

In my Prius, I notice things while driving: Am I sitting up to high in the car, or down where I'd like to be. How does it look, how does it feel to sit in, how does the car handle bumpier roads, how easy is it to get where I want to go. The 3rd gen makes getting around pretty easy, it's not hard to drive.
John B mentioned right away when sitting in 4th gen that he felt lower in the car. That seems a bonus. Might be a little tougher to get in and out, but once you're in, the reward will be good. Double wishbone rear suspension should iron out the side to side jostly feeling I get in 3rd gen on bumpier roads.

I am not a fan of the floating bridge in 3rd gen. The 2 exposed cupholders and cell phone tray in gen4 are something I would use all the time. I could put a bottle or something else in cupholder.
As for the single glovebox, that wouldn't seem a big deal: Word is the center armrest box is large, so one could easily put stuff they would have put into glovebox in the center storage area. Problem (?) solved.

 

Speak for yourself; I can tell them apart just fine. There is considerably more variation in car design today than there was in, for example, the 1950s. This new Prius face is an attempt to make it "sportier" or more exciting, but in the end I think it will prove a misstep on Toyota's part as it polarizes customers of an already-polarizing car.

 

Ditto!!! I practically cried when I read the Gen 4 is shorter, and I guess this confirms it:

My '07 has been the best vehicle I've ever owned, but this is very likely a deal breaker.

When the Lexus CT first came out, I test drove it. With the single exception of taking curves at the fastest possible speed, it was terrible to sit down that low. I suspect many people buy SUV's or pickups, only because they don't like driving in such semi-reclined positions.

I think the Gen 4 looks "nice," but I really don't care that much about how it looks. I guess I mostly care about style, in the peculiar sense that all discussions of style distract the manufacturers, customers, and the press, from focusing on important things. The white trim looks OK to me, but why is there 10 times as much discussion of this insignificant item (as long as there's no glare/reflection issues) as about the black interior? I've owned two cars with no A/C: one light interior & dark exterior; one dark interior & light exterior. On the light interior car, I didn't miss the A/C all that much. The dark interior car was absolutely terrible with no A/C.

Maybe I'll look at the hybrid RAV4. Since most of my driving is between often too narrow parking spaces, I'm not eager to go with anything wider than my current Prius. I could bitch about lots of things on my '07, but in the main, Toyota made all the right compromises. Since I can now afford to not have my life dominated by old car problems, I may well buy some new vehicle, but keeping my '07 longer sounds pretty good, right now.

By the way, we've owned a Nissan Cube Krom, and a Chrysler PT Cruiser, in part because of the ingress/egress/driving positions, but also because we like cars that are different. I'm mystified that so many people regard any deviation from the most vanilla sedan as "ugly." I think almost anything that looks different is a plus (Yes, I loved the 1970 Plymouth/Dodge colors!), but again, I overwhelmingly care about function.

 

I will have to check out the ingress/egress of the Gen IV. I doubt if it will be so much lower as to be a problem. I do like sitting up straight and find a laid back position to be uncomfortable.

I bought a 1997 Honda Civic which I drove for a few years. The car is still in the family and super reliable, but I gave up driving it after a couple of years because it was too low for me to exit easily. At that point we bought a CR-V which was great until it was totaled. Then came the Gen II which has been great. I haven't noticed it being difficult to enter or exit, nor have I felt uncomfortable driving it.

I don't expect the height change on the Gen IV to be an issue but we'll see.