The Winter of My Discontent

Well I think you had a nice writeup for sure and can understand your points, and well taken.

I live in Buffalo, aka SNOW during our winters as well. I guess it's all upon how you look at things in life. I used to own a GEN 1 Prius and had a Honda Civic Hybrid but was so uncomfortable (physically) from riding in that car, other than that Loved it. The seats were cloth, it didn't have heated mirrors and mileage really suffered in the winter months. I went from 43 to 32 in a heartbeat. I don't expect the Prius to do that since my Gen 1 did not and with the enhanced heating system to warm the car up quicker with the modifications on the 2010, I expect it will also warm up faster in winter, thus saving fuel and getting better gas mileage.

This car has the heated mirrors and heated leather seats and much more safety equipment than my Honda. I value Life as I get older now, and wish to enjoy some fine attributes in life in middle age (50 ish).

My logic was to take delivery of my 2010, and keep it for 4 years, then by then I think we will have a world of different new choices out there, and if not, so be it. But in the meantime, I am loving this car, if you can truly "Love a Car". I agree, anticipation is something that's an important part. But I read and find new things each day with my car. I actually "enjoy" driving it every day. That's important to be Happy every day. Now for the idiots that are driving like fools and you want to avoid them at all costs, as a ding, dent or smash is not a good thing, but it doesn't matter what car you have, it could happen. People certainly are so preoccupied today when driving. It's not like it used to be for sure. But I can tell you when you DO GET YOUR PRIUS (should you move forward) you will love it and wonder why you waited.

 

Does it even snow or get below 30deg in Portland?

 

I completely understand Electric Me's point. I love my brand new shiny Prius. But I'm quite nervous about it. I've owned 2 cars in past 10 years, and each time, it would get a minor scratch within 2 weeks of me getting the car. I would feel sad about it for many months, but it would not be bad enough for me to go out and fix it.

I told myself I should wait until the end of the winter, but I just couldn't help myself. I'm pretty happy so far. I really love this car. Ask me in the spring whether I regret getting the car early. I got a III. I'm already thinking form time to time maybe I should have gotten a V. But in general I'm very happy. I'm doing 53.9 MPG on my first tank so far.

 

Meh. G2 Prius in nearly the worst winter conditions in NA - Montreal, Quebec.

Third year without a block heater - and no grill blocking.

However, this year, I'm getting the BH installed, and winter tires with spikes. Regular high-end winter tires and the car's oversensitive traction control don't mix.

So, "Electric Me", no excuse, you could get a used G2 Prius NOW and keep it three years, then get the Plug-In Prius (G4) and go nah-nah-nah to the G3 owners.
That's my plan...

 

Electric Me,

I'm almost at that point as well. IF I understand the cargo ship tracking thread: unless my Prius lands in Newark within the next week, I'm out of luck until at least Thanksgiving. By that time I probably won't be able to even get proper snow tires. So it's starting to look like another winter for the convertible.

Of course, I just placed my "order" in May, so it might not come in until March. And yes maybe some stuff will be fixed, or the coupe version will be announced. At least I can experience the Prius iPhone App and have happy dreams untl then....

 

We get some snow pretty much every year. Last year we had an historical snow event. I live in the hills and we got over three feet in a few days. There were closer to two feet in town. The city has very little snow clearing equipment and the metro area ended up shutting down for almost a week. We also own a Subaru with snow tires to get up to the mountains on weekends. The roads were so rutted and icy I had to go buy chains so we could get to the airport to catch our flight back to Denver for Christmas.

Here at 800 feet we had 19 days below freezing with some sort of precipitation. It was an unusual winter.