So, Are we Still in Love?

Not THAT far south.

 

Yes, and Tesla temporarily uncapped their battery capacity too so they could flee, IIRC.

With Florence bearing down, Tesla remotely extends some cars’ batteries | Ars Technica

 

Depending on the storm... if it is a "bad one" cat 3 or higher, yeah we would take both vehicles and we would leave as early as possible.

 

This is one main reason I took my Prime to the eclipse. I filled up in the morning, giving me a range of well over 800 miles (I got 75mpg actual on the way home), and plenty of staying power *it took 10 hours to get home, and I only used about 1/3 of a tank).

In a crisis, the energy you have with you is by far the most reliable energy.

 

Thus my concern over the Leaf here.

 

Well of course I knew it when I bought the car. Doesn't mean it was a good engineering/design choice nor that I like the choice. Any car has a number of trade-offs that you have to figure into your buying decision. Many other things outweigh this particular negative. That doesn't mean I have to like it. I also hate the shifter and the centered dash. More stupid design decisions. My Leaf also had the stupid pointless "gear shift" knob that manages to be both worthless and a pain in the rear at the same time. At least the Prime has the thing on the dash instead of the center console.

Sedans have a much more steeply raked rear window so rain naturally falls off the window whereas a hatchback the drops stay on the mostly flat surface and the prius is one of the most horizontal of hatches. Every morning now my rear window is covered with dew and you can't see anything out of it. Its annoying to have to manually clear the thing in the morning and it will be worse once frost comes because when I leave home the window will be ice until the defroster thaws it. I personally think it is a major SAFETY concern.

 

Some actually liked the shifter in the Prius Gen3 "bridge." I did. Others didn't. My wife didn't. Then she goes out and buys a used 2013 Lexus 200h. Bridge again and shifter smack dab in the middle of it. My Prime, of course, moved it back up there to the dash. I tolerate it.

 

While I agree with you that "the prius is one of the most horizontal of hatches", I think in general hatchback cars have more vertical rear windows than sedan counterpart, at least for the cars I have seen. See picture of Corolla sedan (top) without rear wiper and newly released Corolla Hatchback (bottom) with rear wiper. Most of hatchback I have seen are more like wagon than regular sedan.


My first car with rear window wiper was SUV and then minivan. Both of them had fairly vertical rear window, yet came with wiper, while more horizontal rear windows on sedans and coupe did not. At the time, I thought sedans and coupe are the ones that would benefit from having rear wiper not hatchback on cars, SUV, and minivans. As I pointed out to you, sedan corolla, and AFAIK all other Toyota sedans do not come with rear window wipers, and Prius (and Prime) in it's profile style, is the only hatchback that really looks like sedan to me. I think omission of rear wiper from most sedan and coupe are for styling (and probably also for aerodynamics and cost reduction for some models). Not having rear wipe was never an issue for me, but again if you really thought having rear wiper is so important for your driving condition, why did you buy PRIME in the first place?

 

Clearly, you haven't noticed what's happened with sedans. Some literally have slopes just like hatchbacks now.

As for safety, if you only ever clear off the part with the wiper, you're compromising your own visibility. You should always wipe off the entire rear window before driving.

 

I've always had the sense the typical hatchback had a more steeply sloped back window, and accordingly gets dirtier faster, and that was why they usually had a wiper. I'll notice the lower (vertical) glass on our Prius rear hatch gets dirty very fast, faster than the upper (more sloped) glass, due I think to air currents swirling behind a vertical surface, leaving more deposits.

Still, the Prius rear wiper sweeps such a small area, it's not much better than nothing.

 

Which brings me to this question... how does the "touchless carwash" do with the sloped glass and back of the prime?

 

I used it so much in my 2004 that I replaced it 6 times. It's massively better than nothing. In fact, it worked extremely well.

 

It seems to be all about personal preference. Having driven rear wiper-less sedan for a long time, not having rear wiper is non-issue for me. With Gen3 Prius, I have used rear wiper only a few times just because it was equipped with it, but not having that option on Prime does not bother me at all, even though we get fair amount of snow, freezing rain and frost issues in our climate.

 

Because I liked so much of the other features. It's an amazing car but that doesn't mean I'm going to give Toyota a pass on a dumb design decision. I don't buy the cost angle on a 25-35k car with a carbon fiber rear hatch. I mean that rear window surely cost way more than a normal window with a wiper.

My point on the shifter is that it is basically a useless knob. You could have had a row of buttons instead or a rotary switch or almost anything. It's not like you have any mechanical connection to a transmission. Also the "return to center" behavior means that you can't just look at it and know what gear you are in and why the heck is "Park" a separate button? If Toyota really wanted a knob they could have used any number of stock parts from other cars.

 

Though true for the most part, there’s a few cars that are very similar between sedan and hatchback versions.

Like Our old Mazda 6 for example. At a quick glance looked identical other than hatch having a rear wiper.




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Is Mazda 6 sedan without rear wiper? If so, again, it seems standard not to have rear wiper on sedan regardless of slope of the rear window. Now, I have no idea, why hatchback comes standard with rear wiper. Mendel's reasoning would not apply on this one.

 

Agree, we miss ours a lot. Had the 4-cyl. We got sideswiped and spun, then pushed by a pump truck for about 150 ft sideways. Was $1k shy of being totaled but repairs were done on the cheap and felt it never drove the same. Traded it in on our first Prius. (2011 two in gold)

Fun fact on the hatch back (lift back), you can actually fit a full-size 150cc scooter in the back and close the trunk with seats folded down.


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