I would not have bought my Prius if it looked like a previous generation. I felt the old design looked terrible.
Me too! My wife and I use very different seating positions. The Rav4 Hybrid (probably our next vehicle as replacement for our Murano) has seat memory in the higher trim level. The Prius should also.
But the RAV4 Hybrid is a more expensive vehicle. In Canada, it's $6,000 more (for memory seats) and almost $9,000 with TSS-P/JBL Audio/Bird's Eye View Monitor
No Avalon Hybrid in Canada. The interior is quite a bit of a step up from the Camry. Much more than previous generation Avalons.
It really is a Lexus at Toyota prices. Has almost all of the luxury features. My 2014 was 6K under MSRP.
Wow, they charge a lot up north. On the Toyota USA site, I just built a Prius Four with Advanced, Premium convenience and floor/cargo mats for $33,350, A Rav4 Hybrid Limited (which includes seat memory) with Advanced tech (which includes Birds Eye and JBL) and mats for $36.155 So. the difference is $2805 and that includes All Wheel Drive and sun visor extender. I'm not promoting the Rav4 over the Prius. I want one of each.
I'm in the same boat. Had the 2009 era not looked like an egg, I would have chosen the Prius over the Camry. They redesigned the Camry to look less conservative, and I jumped. They did the same with the Prius and I jumped again. Love the new design, inside and out.
That's understandable if the armrest is as badly misplaced as that of the 3rd generation! I do the same thing.
Another thing TOYOTA could address is the AUTO PARK - which: 1) PriusChat members have reported doesn't work really well; and 2) Isn't available at all in Australia
Yup. Of course there are still differences like stricter (tighter) panel gap allowances, leather-wrapped overhead grips, fabric covered pillars (all of them) and slightly better plastics (I'm talking ES350 vs. Avalon). Oh and the paint choices are quite nice (Atomic Silver). But yeah, I agree, especially with the current generation. The interior design is quite nice for a Toyota. The smoked chrome is a bit much for me (but I'm probably not the intended audience). Also, in Canada, they gimped it and only offer the 6.1" Display Audio (the one that everyone hates) for the 2013-2015 Avalon. While the Camry XLE V6 and XLE Hybrid had the higher resolution 7" LCD. Made no sense. It's been rectified for 2016 with all Avalons getting the 7" screen (still no hybrid. Don't blame them. They sell something like 5-7 Avalons a month). Our cars are generally more expensive because we purchase 1/10th the number of cars (lower economies of scale), our Freight/PDI (what you call Destination Fee) is twice as much in absolute value, and our sales taxes are higher (5%-15% depending on how much the province charges for the sales tax. Federal tax is 5%. Provincial is 0%-10%). For example, TMS sells about 400,000 Camry sedans a year in the U.S. TCI sells about 35,000-40,000 Camry sedans here. (The Corolla is the #1 seller for Toyota Canada). Last year, Toyota & Scion sold 187,000 cars & light trucks just to put things into perspective. The equivalent would be a Prius Technology w/ Advanced package (both carpet and rubber floor mats are included in Canada. Cargo mat is extra) for $31,900 MSRP (PDI is $1,690 compared to $895 in the US) RAV4 Hybrid Limited w/ Technology Package is $41,190 (PDI is $1,750 compared to $895 in the US). The RAV4 is superbly popular here so that's probably why TCI can charge a bit more (why not, right?). Even with the exchange rate, it's cheaper to purchase in Canada (Current exchange rate is 1.3x to the USD but of course they use a different number since it real exchange rate fluctuates. I suspect it's somewhere between 1.1x and 1.2x). A while back (launch of the Gen 3), they said they wanted to make the Prius their leading hybrid seller (back then, and I think it still applies, the Camry Hybrid is the best selling hybrid in Canada). The more aggressive 2016 Prius pricing might be reflecting that push to get more people to buy the Prius over the Camry Hybrid. However, most of Canada will only get the base model. The Li-Ion models are only available for sale in 3 major metropolitans but I think you can order/trade one in if you live outside (esp. if you're near the "border" of what is considered part of the metropolis).
That's surprising, but we know my biases on the matter. Most Prius sold (Two Base and Three/T) have spares, so perhaps that's part of it. Any sense of how many of the owners even had Two Eco or Four? A solar roof to cool the interior would be welcome in sunny NM, though I'm sure it would have been bundled into some mess o' gilded toys for the Four as previously. Big fan of eAWD - I would almost certainly have bought a Prius in '04 if E4 had been offered (got the AWD Matrix instead); one of my big disappointments when Nissan brought the Cube over was that they didn't offer the JDM eAWD option. We didn't buy another new car until after we moved out of snow country, and we have no occasion for roughing it, so the issue hasn't been on the table since. Electric PB seems a good idea - maybe then my wife would use it! (She hasn't broken a pawl or otherwise discernibly damaged her tranny yet, so cannot be convinced of the necessity). For those not aware of the alternative, check out an old Matrix (after '04 I think) - a similarly short visor could telescope out along its support rod when pivoted to the side, allowing positioning to block wherever the sun was hitting you (I actually think the feature was designed for the Vibe from the GM side of the project). This was so obviously useful I've never been able to figure out why it didn't become standard on everything. At least one enterprising so-and-so is selling cut sheets of plastic and elastic bands for $20 to fix this (see amazon.com/Gray-Visormates--Window-Visor-Extenders/dp/B002JR949K). Pretty unlikely. That's really more like it, though I'd add that new car sales appear to be off across the board. Hybrids have an additional burden, in that car buyers in the aggregate, like most collections of people, act neither intelligently nor even rationally, making a durable goods purchase decision based on this week's price at the pump, and those prices are stupid low right now. I'm not anticipating a collapse in oil supplies, but I do think it more likely than not that during the decade I'm planning to own our 2016, there will be significant increases in carbon taxes, perhaps phased in, that will better align consumer behavior with the need to lower CO2 emissions. That's going to cost the 15mpg crowd dearly, but hey, that's Tomorrow Guy's problem, am I right? Since I don't have to give up anything I much care about to own a Prius, it does seem an obvious choice to me, but that's clearly the opinion of the tiny minority indifferent to the pleasures of tooling around in some PoS faux Humvee. No argument here. The Prius is a widely-respected engineering triumph, but when you consider overall comfort, utility, and economy, the Avalon Hybrid is the quiet miracle of present day hybrid models. I'm not normally disposed to spend that much on a car but we did entertain the thought in the weeks prior to seeing the Gen4 for ourselves, when we knew we needed a new car but weren't sure what the Prius would be like. For those in that segment, though, the A-H comes very close to a no-brainer. Then again, I suppose no-brains is the norm .
Gen III looks terrible? What looks so bad? It looks pretty sporty to me and I love the bridge designed interior, I wish they had kept it in the Gen IV.
There's no direction for this discussion to move along in a constructive manner so I'll just say, to each their own. The Gen 3 looks sporty in the same way that a suppository does. I'm not saying the Gen 4 is good looking, but it's a big improvement over the Gen 3. My biggest issue is that other than the taillights I find the Gen 4 to be plain and boring. It's not offensive to me, but it's dull. I've had the car for two months now and I use it as my near daily driver. I still walk right past it in the parking garage and wonder "where the hell did I put that damn thing?" or worse, walking up to a civic and grabbing for the door handle. I imagine I wouldn't have that issue with a Gen 3, find the ugliest car in the lot, walk near it, make sure no one is looking, then quickly get in.
Does this look boring? You can always improve on a cars design, its a blank slate waiting for your input.
LMAO touche That looks like a high schooler was given his mom's Prius as his first car and has spent every cent he makes flipping burgers at the auto parts store finding whatever newest part Lund makes that he can attach with double sided tape..... What's with the Mercury hood ornament btw?
Out in California and in Japan, custom Prius are becoming the norm, and it takes $$$$ to make them this way! So you may laugh, but there is an entire industry dedicated to Prius and aftermarket parts. Here I will share some pics, enjoy.
