Acceleration and maintenance

Consider that real world traffic situations rarely allow for all of the acceleration potential that a car has. In other words, your Solara may be capable of a 7.0 sec 0-60 run...but there are very few situations where you would need to leave the line that hard. Most of the time, the light turns green, the traffic moves out, and the pack accelerates at a rate that's even slower than the Prius' 10.0 sec 0-60. I have never felt '"left behind" in the flow of traffic -- and that's been with acceleration far short of full throttle.

The place where you're going to feel the difference is in a mid-range acceleration, like a 40-70 or 30-60 scoot....but, still, it's not too bad.

 

I'd like to make a correction here. Some hybrid components are indeed warrantied for 8/100, but not those components you would consider as powertrain. In other words, the transaxle (including PSD) and motors are warrantied the same as ICE.

 

Well, if you wanted to know you have a fast car, here's some of my stories. I raced a SUV (Highlander?) from the green before and stayed even or was about accelerating past it; you can already beat the H2, a very visible symbol of "I'm better than you" in the usa.

You can't beat a sports car, but you couldn't in a Solara anyways. 0-60 times assume that the other driver is a really good at clutching and shifting with a manual of which most drivers aren't. The Prius gives you the performance advantage of a smooth and flat-curve accelerating HSD over manual and auto, so this covers most other vehicles out there on the street. In all fairness, it's the traction control that holds the Prius back more than the lack of power.

If just going faster is still all that important then the Prius isn't for you. You could probably look at individual power-to-weight ratios of cars and pick something with a lot more HP per cc such as the Accord Hybrid, or the Civic SI.

I miss being able to accelerate my 117HP CivicHX cvt from 30-90mph with my rpm continuously pegged at redline 6.8K, but the Prius performs about the same on the freeway with a lot less noise, and in a nicer package.

It's too bad there isn't a car that has the Honda iVTEC engine mated with the Toyota HSD system. Now that's something with the top power-efficiency per cc of Honda (next to Ferrari) so it could be a powerful small ICE, and the maturity of Toyota's hybrid system.

 

Maybe it's me - but I think that trying to convince this guy that the Prius moves just fine is a waste of time.

His posts seem to indicate that he is where I used to be when I was a teen-ager. "Acceleration makes the car cool".

Frankly - and yes, I'll say it again, I'm 2 months into Prius ownership and I STILL don't miss the power of my old Trans-Am.

I also don't miss stopping at the gas pump every 130 miles.

Bottom line - if you're looking for "my car is faster then yours off the line" - then please don't buy a Prius. It's NOT the car for you and you simply won't appreciate what a fantastic machine it is.

Yoda

 

"This car, you not want!" - Yoda :roll:

That said, I was in San Diego today and saw two of those Dodge Ram 1500 SLT Hemis...

One was next to me at a light and it made a terrible racket. It sounded like it had a hole in the muffler.

And then I realized that the hole-in-the-muffler sound was part of the truck's schtick. It's gimmick.

To me, it's like putting a baseball card in the spokes of your bike's tire when you were a kid.

How stupid.

The truck even has a rear spoiler. It's an open-bed truck for goodness sakes! What's the point!?

It reminded me of the Al Bundy episode where he tried to buy a new car but Peg had spent all his money. He was oh, so close to owning a Testiculator.