I'm 57, going on 135 in car years (based upon all of the cars that I have owned) Always have been concerned about gas mileage; sometimes over safety. With the Prius I get both plus utility
i'm 19--- i convinced my parents that we should get a prius, since i commute to school and my past car was beaten up
38. Looking at the chart, it's a nice bell curve somewhat centered on the baby boomers - except for the 40-45 group - what's up with that? Are they following Jack Benny and staying at 39 for a few years of denial? I've heard the demographics of Prius owners skew toward the upper end of the baby boomers. The PriusChat audience is probably a little on the younger side of that due to its medium (although one of my first purposes of internet usage was genealogy research, and I ran into quite of few retired people on the internet that way, and that was in the mid-90's). I've always bought fuel-efficient cars (except my last one, a Subaru Outback, but that had the best mileage you could get for an AWD vehicle that is good in snow and interior size of a mid-to-large SUV). I'm an engineer and a bit of an environmentalist, so efficiency is always an interest of mine. The design of the car really didn't appeal to me at first (kind of a mini-Aztek, which I thought was ugly from day one) and I didn't know about the high-tech features (other than the HSD), despite reading a fair bit about the car beforehand. But the performance met what I needed, it cost as much as my previous car, had reasonable room for 90% of what I need, gets great mileage and reduces green-house gases even more than that from reduced fuel usage alone. The only thing that can stop global warming is peak oil, and neither option lets me drive a gas guzzler with a clean conscience. (I'd really like an EV or PHEV for a reasonable price, but this will do for now