Road Test: 2004 Civic Hybrid, Prius, Insight, 2003 Prius

I have no idea where that journalist is coming from. I find the Prius to be the smoothest accelerating & braking car I've ever drove. Even two people I let drive it thought so too. I have also not had a problem with the tires tracking grooves with zeal. And as far as not being great to drive day in and day out, there are plenty of people here that would beg to differ (myself included!). Makes one think the media wants to see hybrids fail miserably.

 

did anyone read this article... well skip the BS and read page 11... it comes up with weird stats.

"Applying the same formula the EPA uses to achieve combined fuel economy, our mileage champ was the Insight at 59.8 mpg, followed by the 2004 Prius at 53.0 and the 2003 Prius at 51.7, with the Civic Hybrid well behind at 45.9 mpg. That the big, heavy, roomy Prius trailed the feathery Insight so closely and outperformed the Civic so decisively proves the value of Toyota's more complex full-hybrid approach.

To correct the EPA's raw figures to match our test results would require an 18-percent correction to the city and highway tests. To bring window-sticker estimates into closer alignment with customer-reported real-world driving would require correction factors of just under 30 percent to account for cold weather, air-conditioning, and congestion worst than what we encountered. Of course, even if the granite were re-chiseled today with these new correction factors, your results would probably still vary."

ok... the Prius got 53 mpg... which is just about what i average. so how is it that we need to adjust the EPA's rating by 18%?

the EPA rating for the Prius is 56.1 so 53 mpg is a 6 % difference...then they said to add additional congestion and cold weather performance deduct 30% which would make drop the figure to 37 mpg??

i have heard people in cold weather getting figures that low, but i live in a very congested area and it was 99º today and im still getting about 52-53 mpg...

 

Odd, that the magazine that gave the '04 Prius its car of the year award, would seem so cool about it here. They talk a lot about the idea of hybrid, and become downright tedious about fuel economy. And they clearly like the '04 Prius more than any of the other hybrids. But the best they can say about it is:

To give them credit, the "not satisfying to drive day in and day out" remark refered to the Insight and the Classic Prius. Still, what happened to Car of the Year?

 

They started out pretty well in the article, too bad it was clear they were out to slash the MPG of these cars. I wonder if they really checked out discussion boards (read: priuschat.com)....

 

yep as usual it seems that the Prius has become so bulletproof that the only (supposedly) effect method of attack is to attack the mpg of the vehicle.

i have no complaints about my mpg. here is a screenshot taken today while on my way back from Bellevue. the situation,

driving I-405 and I-5 speeds ranging from 55-70 mph.

air conditioning running at med fan speed set to 72º (my god did it feel GOOD!!)

now if the air conditioning impacts mileage, it obviously doesnt to any great degree. as you can see it was 99º (i can testify that it WAS ALL OF THAT if not more) i was very comfortable and the best part was when i got in the car after it had been baking in the parking lot when i left Bellevue, it took less than a minute to transform my car from a convection oven to a very comfortable and cool place to be (I WAS TOTALLY IMPRESSED!!)

as you can see from the bar graph, on the freeway, i exceed the EPA estimate of 51 mpg.

http://www.geocities.com/daveinolywa/image...es/hot54.2.html

 

My only thing about that claim is, that after nearly 27k miles, including two trips to Denver, CO., and one to Haliburton, Ontario, Canada and back, totalling over 3,000 miles in of itself, I can easily state that the Classic Prius is PLENTY liveable every day. I am an individual that can have some pretty serious issues over cramping up if I cannot get a good driving position.

 

First of all, if MotorTrend is picking their Car of the Year the same way Time picks their Sentient Being of the Year (and I don't know for certain that they do, but it seems likely), then the distinction does not necessarily convey a value judgement, as in, "This is the absolute best car on the market in 2004". Rather, the intended statement is, "This is the car that most *defined* the year, and the direction of the market". It could at least conceivably be a perfectly awful car, but if it signalled a trend in perfectly awful cars, or became a massive kick-in-the-nice person to the industry, it might well become the Car of the Year.

Second of all, there is clear evidence in all of the mainstream automotive media, particularly that produced here in the US, that the mags are under very strong pressure from entrenched (and currently anti-hybrid) interests. The result is some surprisingly twisted prose used anytime they have something really nice to say about a hybrid car and can't bring themselves to fib about it. This article is, IMO, a good example of that. They play up the 'disappointing mileage' angle while completely failing to emphasize that, even if you factor in all of their tweaks to the EPA-style test, the result is still monumentally better mileage than any conventional gasoline-engine car on the road, and at least on a par, if not better, than any conventional diesel, and with far lower emissions!

 

i think the backlash does have something to do with pressure from oil and american car interests.

i do consider it a rather amazing about face here. its one thing to bash the mileage figures. but that is hardly enough to warrant their criticism. definitely seems like an unseen agenda is at work here.

 

Based on Wolfman's report, that the Classic is satisfying to drive, I'll assume the reviewer's disappointment is because it's not a sports car. If what you really want to drive is a Porsche, a Classic Prius would be disappointing.

As for the mileage issue and the EPA numbers, this is just beating a dead horse. It's fine to publish more realistic numbers, but when half the article is about the mileage controversy, that's a bit much. They could have done one short paragraph: "The EPA mileage figures are based on a very optimistic test. You'll get those numbers under the right conditions, but you may get less, especially driving in cold weather or short trips." And the rest of the article could have been about the car itself. They say nearly nothing about what makes this car really interesting.

 

I didn't get past paragraph 3 before I thought "BULL!". I rented an '03 Prius last July in So. Cal for 10 days, about 450 miles most of it freeway up to 75 mph (and still had power to increase speed on a steep grade) and I NEVER had 1) to constantly correct to stay in the freeway lane 2) jerky acceleration or braking. It did come in shy of the mpg, about 49 for the 10 days, but the A/C was on most of the time and I wasn't doing 55 on the flat. Unless there were changes from the first ones off the boat in 2001 and M/T got one of those, I don't know where they came up with their description.

Rented one of these too. Didn't notice this problem either. The only odd thing I (and my daughter) noticed was we kept thinking we were hearing sirens is the distance until we figured out it was the regen brakes.

I noticed their 2003 Prius pictures were labeled as 2004.

A fact noted here many times.

 

If you want to see some decent reviews of the Prius, check out some UK sites. I've seen hardly any undeserved criticism. Here's a recent long-term test report: honestjohn.co.uk

But then we're probably buying under 1000 a year here, so it's more a novelty than a threat, and we've got no domestic car manufacturers worth mentioning to pressure anyone .

 

Well, the thing is, like so much else about the American culture these days, the reviews of the Prius seem to follow a Bell Curve.

At the low end are a few reviews that absolutely pan the car. These reviews are often so slanted and so actively going out of their way to say bad things about the car that the author is either a total SUV zealot, an oil baron, or in Detroit's pocket. It's impossible to know for certain which, and at any rate, impolite to speculate.

At the high end are a few reviews that absolutely adore everything about the car. These reviews are so often slanted and so actively going out of their way to say good things about the car that the author is either a total Hybrid zealot, a Panasonic stock holder [they make the batteries ], or in Toyota's pocket. It's impossible to know for certain which, and again, impolite to speculate.

The vast middle ground basically want to be positive, and on balance are positive, but the way they word things make it clear that they're under some degree of pressure -- not necessarily deliberate or conscious -- to be conventional and conservative and think that the Prius is just too weird and Not All That.

Within this huge middle pack, some are very honest about the fact that, while their test drive only netted an average of 40mpg, they spent most of the test drive driving 85mph, or kept taking it out for five minute milk runs, or both. And more to the point, that 40mpg is still a vast improvement over just about any other similarly-sized car, and their tailpipe put out a far cleaner trail of nastyness per mile than any other similarly-sized car.

So...it's not so much that you can't find a good review. It's that it's hard to find a review that successfully untangles itself entirely from either side's prejudices and preconceeptions. In short, it's a microcosm of American politics, mapped onto automotive technology. Kinda scary, really...

 

This is one of the most balanced articles I've seen in the mainstream press especially in terms of the real world mpg test results. I've seen so many articles that just parrot some supposed quotes from dissatisfied (lead-footed) Hybrid owners that this article was refreshing in comparison.