Priuschat is such a popular community I was wondering how you all first found out about it? I think I found it by just doing a Google search on Prius message boards or something like that. I'm sure glad I found it. Another thing. Before the Prius (BP), I, for one, had hardly spent any time at all on my car, except for the things I had to do. Now, I spend much of my spare time in Priuschat reading about others' experiences and adding my own, and spend a lot more time washing and waxing it and worrrying about tire pressure, etc. than I've ever spent before on a car. I guess it's because of the new technology and wanting to get the highest MPG possible. Were any of you that enthusiastic about your other cars BP?
Since I was obsessed with Prius way back in very early 2000, it was a long & painful wait for a diverse online Prius community to finally emerge. So, I was well aware of the PriusChat founding. As for the BP experiences, they were a nightmare. I had to routinely dealing with automotive problems. So my discovery of Prius was actually a welcome relief, there was finally hope. It provided engineering to deliver better reliability than I had experienced in addition to much improved emissions & efficiency.
hi. i heard about it from a prius friend from the town in which i live. i'm very glad for this. i will admit the prius people do love their cars, i know i sure do. also the prius folks do seem to have a kind of a bond that i cant seem to explain.its just kinda there i guess. you kind of get to know each other a little without talking to each other that much but we just talk almost like putting our differences aside we are like a close knit bunch in a way. i remember when i was young my sister and i were not the best of buds at times but when she was up against something i was there! and i guess i guess that is the way we prius folks are. am i kind of right???? pete
About 12 hours after I brought Bruce (my Pri) home, I googled "prius 2006 disable backup beep," which led me here. BP (or BB!), cars were just cars. Now...it's not just a car: <strike>it's a floorwax! It's a dessert topping!</strike> It's a whole buncha computers to mess around with! It's an obsession! You mean it's an automobile TOO? Wow! B)
I believe I happened upon PC last August when I was looking to get a new car. DH and I were looking to expand our family in the following year or so, and my 9-year old compact Saturn coupe with almost 180K miles on it was far too small to use as a family car. I was looking at Camrys, Accords and was thisclose to getting a Mazda6; then my boss mentioned something about hybrid cars, and I began looking at Civic hybrids but felt that I would be going from one compact car to another. My boss then said something about ths "Prius" car which I'd heard very little about, and he mentioned he'd looked inside one a few days earlier and it looked really roomy compared to the Civic, so I googled it and voile!! Priuschat...the cult of all Prius cults. And I've been here ever since, through the ordering process, the 5.5 month wait, and everything....
I found out about the Yahoo Prius groups quite by chance in October '03 (reading customer comments about an online article about the Prius). When Danny first started PriucChat, he put notices on the Yahoo groups, and I waited maybe a few weeks before joining. I like PriusChat much better than Yahoo, since the layout is so much better, and Danny deserves MEGA plaudits for starting and maintaining this site.
My salesperson actually turned me on to Priuschat. She owns a Prius also and told me about all the info you could find here on the site. When she made her follow up call a few days after I brought Trixie home, she even asked if I'd been on here yet. And yep... I had and have been almost everyday since!
before my Prius, i was not a car buff in any way whatsoever. was only transportation. other than a possible car stereo or speakers, had never spent a dime on a car accessory. in fact about half of the many many cars i had owned i probably never washed even one time other than to sell it. my Prius, god rest her soul, was washed weekly for the first 18 months, bi-monthly until she was injured beyond repair.
Turned onto it by my salesperson as well. Gilles Labelle at Westboro Toyota. Excellent experience all around.
I think Danny e-mailed me when he was starting things up to get some input on structure, format and content. So I was the first to register (it says #3, but some admin thing is the #1 spot, Danny's #2) and see the site as an infant. Danny had really done an amazing job and he was so motivated to make it a great home for Prius folk. At the time I'd been participating at PriusOnline and some of the Yahoo! groups as well, but POL had little participation, it was disorganized and the owner was pretty much AWOL. Yahoo! is a free-for-all, every thread thrown together, just a disorganized mess and hard to follow...though I learned a LOT there. PC was clean, neat, organized, the owner was motivated and involved and really set out to form a community...it's been a love affair (with PC, not Danny!) ever since.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(PriusRos @ Sep 4 2006, 11:41 AM) [snapback]313994[/snapback]</div> I was searching for information on high mpg vehicles as I was in the market for a new car...I remembered something about a Toyota model that got high mileage. My first attempts at googling the Prius were not very revealing bec i was spelling Prius incorrectly. When google finally helped me find the correct spelling one of the first hits was PriusChat..So I clicked on it and started reading. The forum helped me make my buying decision bec of the vast amount of information and opinions.. Even though I have just about all the mods I care for at this point, I still go on daily just to see if there are interesting topics to read about...OR..if I am in need of an answer to a technical question..Heck I would go here before I go to the Toyota website!!!
DH told me all about the prius while we were looking for a new car. i took a look at a couple on the lot in the short time between the delivery/prep and owner coming to pick the car up, but never drove one. since i couldn't experience it before actually settling in to the waitlist to buy one, i thought i'd do a couple of yahoo searches for more info. at the time i had some spare time because of the nature of my experiments during a research rotation, and got into reading the forums. now, a long time later and still here. we've always liked to tinker with cars, i suppose that comes with the territory though so we weren't too shocked to see people tinkering here, we just thought what fun it would be. and it was!
DH and I were searching for the best, low mph, car on the market. Lots of Google searches and I started reading about the Prius. Somewhere along the line, I came across Priuschat. You folks helped convince me that a Prius was what we wanted and needed. Test drove one... signed the paperwork....there was one coming in, in just 2 weeks. The rest is history. Now I've come to you folks with my doubts, fears, question, and get so much good advice. Couldn't get along without all of you!
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Sep 4 2006, 03:55 PM) [snapback]314118[/snapback]</div> Wow -- since I'm member number 15-thousand and something, I'm impressed that you are one of the founding members and still contributing on such a regular basis. I agree -- this is a really neat, organized site. It's easy to use and participants are generally helpful, articulate, and responsive. What I was wondering is, is this unique to Prius owners or do other cars attract such a loyal following?
There are a few other cars which have very loyal followings and active chats/forums. The TDI forum is quite active, I know those 'vette folks are pretty active as well...and I'm sure there are others.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Sep 4 2006, 12:55 PM) [snapback]314118[/snapback]</div> I signed up the first day PriusChat went live. Danny had been posting on the Yahoo group that he was creating this site. PriusChat soon became my favorite Prius site. The amazing part is Danny had to wait until recently to get his own Prius!
I don't remember precisely what I googled that brought me here... I think it might have been the backup beep, like Rufaro. The first thing that caught my eye though was a "I beat the EPA" thread, and on reading it I realized y'all were a bunch of nutcases. So I joined right up.