Approaching a year… overall impressions

2018 Gen 4 owner here, Canadian base version. Still enjoying the Prius.This is my first hybrid. I have learned a number things these last few months and the car has divulged a number of final “secrets”.

Not knowing much about hybrids, I was surprised about the relationship between weather and mileage. So, the colder it got this winter, the worse the mileage, especially with snow tires. In addition, the type of driving also has an impact on mileage, especially short trips and highway travel. As a result, we have seen variances of 3.5 to 5.0 l / 100 km (measured between fill-ups).

This a light car. For the most part, it handles well and our kids often prefer it to our small SUV. The drawback with a light car is that it does not always feel planted even with snow tires. So, when cornering in the snow I've had instances of "Tokyo drifting" unlike our SUV (which also has snow tires and is FWD).

I have become addicted to the dash display (the large speedometer numbers) and the adaptive cruise control. It is hard to go back and forth between the Prius and our SUV.

As for the final “secrets”, there is a few things that I clued into rather late. I had no idea the car had a tire pressure monitoring system. Next, although I understood that there was keyless entry it was only after a couple of months that I was able to set it (menu) to automatically open all doors. Only later did I learn (on Prius Chat) that you can lock the doors just by touching the driver's side door handle. Also took me a long time to understand where the light that illuminates the shifter and console was coming from (a tiny LED). Lastly, after looking for an answer online and in the manual, I convinced myself that there was no low washer fluid light. And there isn't. Instead you get a menu pop up saying that the washer fluid is low.

So, that is my Prius story so far.



Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Good question. I did, but approached with the idea that the base version was rather spartan. What I needed to do was get my hands on a Prius brochure where I could quickly compare model versions. However, our dealer did not have a paper brochure and we were shopping for a base version anyway based on price. Ultimately got more cool stuff than we thought, so good on Toyota.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.