What I don't like about the 2016 Prius

You bought your car extremely new like I did. You have rattles because the car has only been out for two months and the squeaks and rattles haven't been worked out yet. This is the drawback with buying a new model car.

 

From photos of the 4WD posted some months back you can see that they rerouted the exhaust pipe under the rear suspension, presumably because the route used in the 2WD was blocked by the 4WD components.

It is very low and it looks as though the risk of high centering the car and losing the exhaust system would be significant.

 

Not sure that I've heard allot of people say the gen 2 and gen 3's are "ugly", so much as boring and plain. In my personal opinion this gen 4 is actually quite ugly. The front end is okay, though I like it better in photos than in person, but the rear just baffles me. It's just the most odd looking design. It's not even something that I think would grow on me in a positive way. It wouldn't surprise me if a re-design of the back end is not far off. I've heard so many negatives and mostly on how bad that rear looks. But to each his/her own.

 

The upsweep of the rear door lines give gen4 a more aggressive stance at the expense of a little loss in rear window height and view out. The extra crease near 'fang' taillights and black floating rear roofline don't seem to be things that will keep buyers away. The big increase in front headroom is a big plus to a tall guy like me. More upright windshield and new window layout below A pillars increase front view. Interior design and materials are big pluses and good riddance to the gen3's floating bridge console with it poorly placed front cupholders!

Toyota won't be redesigning the rear end of the Prius ... until the next generation. Probably have a small change in taillight design for 2018, maybe small bumper / grill changes, but they won't be modding the extra crease or black plastic floating roof.

Some people just don't like 'Prius like' rear roof lines and those same probably don't like new Civic's either. I'll bet most of them like 2 door coupes with cave-like rear seat. Make sure you're good and agile to crawl in and out.
New Civic,is an awfully strong competitor to Prius (I think some will cross shop it) but its roof height is over 2" lower. Its Touring is feature packed, but it's hybrid 52 combined vs. conventional 35 comb.. We'll see how well Civic's ACC with low speed follow stacks up the Prius full speed DRCC.

I think Prius sales are going to start taking off once its seen on the road more and especially when gas prices start to head North.

 

Oh I've heard ton of people say Gen2 and Gen3 Priuses were ugly. I mean, I always thought that but it wasn't like I'd go up to a Prius owner and say that. And I do look the look of the Gen4.

 

I don't think gen2 and 3 are so ugly, just a little odd and tame. Toyota has walked tightrope with gen4 to have more conventional hood and windshield and keep the Kammback rear. More upright windshield pays dividends in front view out.
I think Toyota did an amazing job on the gen4 design inside and out. Sure, there's a little loss in glovebox and underfloor tray, but it's on par with most of rest of their lineup. gen2 and gen3 needed the extra glovebox and storage space to make up for the other things they lacked, except for MPGs.

 

Oh and I saw a new Honda Civic the other day, I was a little baffled by the grille, it is just an odd looking design. The car itself didn't look bad but that grille is not a design choice I would've made.




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Coming from a car that had a smallish glovebox but a full size trunk, the thing I miss is side trunk storage. My last car had small cargo nets on both sides of the trunk to store small things. I could put a few grocery bags on one side and a jacket on the other side or whatever. I may end up getting a trunk organizer at some point but so far, I am happy with the large cargo net that it came with and am able to use that for groceries.

 

But don't you agree that in general cars which are low for better fuel economy will be less capable in snow than ones with more ground clearance (I'm thinking Subaru here at 221mm)?:

10 SUVs With The Most Ground Clearance for 2015 | Autobytel.com

I high-centered my Gen 3 in snow in New Hampshire. From that experience, I got the impression that it didn't matter whether I had AWD or winter tires, once the snow got deep enough to high-center the car, I wasn't going anywhere. What that might do to the underbelly panels was an additional worry.

Following on with that line of reasoning, if 5.3" of snow is enough to high-center the car, how useful will AWD be in a low-ground-clearance hybrid in deep snowfall?

As I get it, conventional wisdom is that AWD won't help much on ice (need studded tires for that), it's mainly to deal with situations where traction is low but not that low. But on snow or mud tires with poor traction can be limiting even with AWD.

It seems to me that the current situation is that people substitute AWD for winter tires: they drive around in winter on all season tires (some of which are OEM and have lousy traction in snow). Ideally for winter one would have high clearance, AWD, and winter tires. But is a hybrid with full winter tires reasonably equivalent in everything but ground clearance to the typical SUV with AWD on OEM all-seasons?

Sorry, this is way OT.




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I too am basically very happy with mine. I'm trying to learn to ignore that swooshy bar that runs across the dash that I guess is intended to add "style"? Has anybody figured out a way to use the ledge behind it for anything? I'd gladly have traded it for a larger and/or double glovebox.

 

It takes significantly deeper snow than a car's ground clearance before it gets stuck, how much depends on the snow's moisture content, the tires, and so on. Due to suspension travel. Typically with wet snow it'll be somewhere between 10" and a foot.

 

Hi 'LectroFuel
Re: My vibration and rattle in the '16 Prius

Thankfully, I have not experienced that issue again, since it occurred several days ago. It may have been a vibration that started in the engine(?) and resonated up into the dashboard. I heard an odd vibration, and then the right side of the dash started rattling. A one time event, hopefully.

I've been very lucky with vehicles. Drove a '95 Camry for 10 years, it never made a squeak. Then drove an '05 Camry SE for almost 11 years, and the interior was rock solid. Never had a rattle. (just the usual wind/tire noise in those cars.) Time will tell how the new Prius holds up.

 

YOU have rattles already? UHHHHH

 

Interesting. I wonder if they a really different or if there is a different measurement protocol.

The photo I saw had a cell phone leaning against the side of the exhaust pipe and I assumed this mean't the clearance under the pipe was a lot less than 5" (127mm). Maybe it was a really really big cell phone.

Even if it's not the lowest spot under the car, a low and unprotected exhaust pipe midway between the rear wheels would be of concern to me where high centering is likely to be an issue (e.g. heavy snow country or back roads)

 

is that dumb duck butt of a tail on the car. Its up way too high. I don't get it. It really ruins the entire rear of the vehicle among other things. If they dropped it down like the Gen 3 it would look 10 times better. I could photoshop it but I just dont have the time. I hate it.

 

some people just don't like ducks

 

Shake a tail feather

 

To speak from my own experience, I didn't really encounter any problems with an AWD Matrix, which had significantly less ground clearance than the Outback I traded for it (despite the car chassis, or maybe because of it, the jacked-up Outback has better ground clearance than some "real" SUVs). I'd have to know the difference between a 2004 AWD Matrix XR (the XR added spoilers that reduced clearance a bit) and a 2016 Prius w/E-Four to say whether that's a relevant observation. I should also clarify that while the roads I traveled were often less than perfectly cleared in winter, they were also mostly city streets, not remote rural county roads, so it wasn't like I was plowing through snowdrifts.

It definitely doesn't - that's the job of anti-lock brakes, which can't change the physics of stopping distance, but do prevent locked up wheels from throwing you into a skid.

AWD comes into the picture after you stop. When you're at rest with your primary drive wheels on a slick surface, they can easily spin to no purpose if your other wheels are in a bit of snow or otherwise encountering resistance. AWD solves that problem nicely, distributing power to all four wheels depending on available traction. This is useless if you're truly stuck (e.g., too deep in mud or snow), which is why so many 4WD drive vehicles wind up needing a tow after their inexperienced drivers mistake them for hovercraft (the real morons can blow up their drivetrain by thinking they can just muscle their way out with enough revs....).

 

I think you're forgetting the c.1990 All-Trac wagon. They were admittedly odd-looking with different body panels from other Corolla models, but they were definitely sold here as Corollas.