Visual Tables of Gen4 Package Combinations

there is, but it's a fixed list, not by request.

 

Wanted to mention, since I've been discussing features and options with y'all, that after considering those options, we signed papers yesterday on a 2016 Prius Three in Hypersonic Red with a Harvest Beige interior and the Advanced Tech Package. I put extended notes in the "Let's hear from buyers" thread here:

2016 Prius - let's hear from buyers | Page 24 | PriusChat

 

NICE!

We went shopping on Saturday and I can tell you that shopping Toyota is a nightmare. Fortunately, I read this forum (and this thread) so I knew more than most of the salespeople I met. Seriously, those salespeople are dangerous. Particularly the ones who KNOW about the cars but are dead bang wrong!

I'll comment more later, but I wanted to mention one thing I wandered into. When going over the options for one car we drove we noted on the price list $899 for wheels. DUH!??? You have to pay almost a grand for wheels. Do they normally deliver it on cinder blocks? It turns out that the wheels it comes with have hub caps. The dealer explained that these thousand dollar wheels were to save us from the agony of hub caps, as they have none. That was the best explanation he could give. He said that if we hit a pot hole we would lose a hub cab and where would we be then? I said: "With about $1K-$25 in our pockets after we bought a new one to replace it." Seriously, how many hub caps can you buy for a grand? AND, in 10 years driving our 2006 Prius we still have the hub caps it came with ... all four of them.

So this is a cautionary tale ... be ware of completely stupid options that dealers are stuffing into the Prius package.

The other observation I made was that there are damn few 2016 Prius out there. Maybe 1 or 2 at any given dealer. If you want some configuration that the dealer does not want you to have, you are stuck waiting 12 weeks or so ... their estimate.

My take away is that the car is VERY nice. VERY quiet and smooth riding, compared to the 2006. The whiz bang techology is fun, but the learning curve is going to be steep. One example: there are basically THREE places you can see some displays: the large main nav display, the center display above that, and the Heads Up Display. That gives a lot of flexibility but I can see the need to think it through then set up one arrangement and stick with it ... or you'll run off the road trying to find out what is going on.

Another thing about the display ... it is so very clearn Then type face of the numbers are redone so they are clear and the colors are bright and easy to see. Even the HUD is suprisingly easy to see. And a really good feature of the HUD is that its focal point is way out in front. It feels strange at first but you don't have to bring the focus of your eyes IN to be able to read your speed. That is a good safety consideration as chaning eye focus does take some time. The speed is seen most clearly way out in front of the car where you are looking in order to drive. Nice.

Oh, and the second glove box is gone and the only remaining one is as small or smaller than the 2006. Stupid stuipd stupid!

Back leg room is way more comfortable than it looks. You have to get into the back seat to realze that it DOES work.

The hatch rises very easily and stays up, rather than falls on your head as you load the back. <BONK>

Oh, and the climate control buttons are perfect. I did not realize how much I hated the need to change screens to change the fan speed on the 2006. Having a hard button for it is perfect. Good call.

The lane alert is an iffy thing. It mostly works, but only after you are considerably over the line ... though that might be configurable. BUT, sometimes it does not work at all. I don't know why that is yet.

One salesperson, someone really knowledgeable, advised us against the auto park system. He said it took time to set up the cameras and was very slow. If you know how to drive you don't need it. If you don't know how to drive you probably won't know how to set it up anyway.

More later.

 

I will wait till end of year and wait till they post an online price special and then get a Prius 2 eco. They should be an out the door price for less than 21k by then, even is gas price increases. I'm staying with this forum, like to read about what you guys are buying and not buying. I don't want any options, not even mats. This is the way I bought my 2015, 2 Prius, Out the door price of 20K. The old 2011 Prius 2 still going strong with 157k miles.

 

I'm curious - why the Eco? That car strikes me as being more for Toyota's MPG bragging rights than any practical purpose, but I haven't read much from real users anxious to buy it. I have a few specific thoughts & questions about the Eco:

• Higher MPG - ...but not so much that you'd notice, and unlikely to hold up real world when you put anyone or anything in the car. Is that final couple of MPG critical for you?
• RED FLAG - NO SPARE TIRE - I keep reading how this is "normal" now, but a lot of us don't buy it. This is my top reason for dismissing the Eco out of hand (and why we ultimately rejected the Four, with mild regret).
• Larger trunk - is the increased luggage space worth accepting that tire repair kit? Was this important for you?
• No rear wiper - pure badness. No reason for this but faking up the MPG.
• Li-ion battery - mixed bag. While I realize the Two's NiMH battery is old hat, it's a well worn and proven old hat. Aside from hauling a bit of extra weight, I don't see any real disadvantage to it, and given the mysterious vagaries of battery chemistry, it may actually prove to be somewhat more durable.
• Higher price - You pay more for the Eco, and apart from the trade-offs above, as far as I can tell the only other things you get are a smarter smart key and automatic headlights.

Anyway, Gary, those were just my personal reactions, not real arguments. You sound like a value-sensitive shopper, so what's leaned you toward the Eco? I've assumed Toyota won't be selling that many, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

The Eco also has special LRR tires and higher air pressure spec. Their handling/feel may not be that good, and replacement (say of one, with an unrepairable flat) might be hard.

 

• Higher MPG - this will be my wifes car, may help her mpg traveling 90miles to work each day, little savings on gas maybe. The old Prius has 158k on it now so she wants a new one, she loves driving one. The best I've ever done on gen 3 is 55mpg calculated on a tank of gas. The 63.5 calculated mpg that fuely is getting is more than a couple
  
• RED FLAG - NO SPARE TIRE , my wife would just call me anyhow, she ant changing no spare. I've never had a flat on either Prius, why be too concerned about something that may never happen. I need a spare tire though.
  
• Larger trunk - a little tight when we go on vacations, could use the extra space, the kit is probably worthless. I need to find out if the 2015 wheels will fit 2016. Road side service, would have been a waist of money the last 5 years and around $400 the cost..could make it with same amount of trunk space.
  
• No rear wiper - never have used rear wiper but a few times. The limited space it cleans doesn't really help that much. I keep my cars clean, little water less wash does the trick on back winder.
  
• Li-ion battery - they under warranty so time will tell the story here also. Its going to be a year before I buy one anyhow.
  
• Higher price - 200-400 $ more. The verdict is still out on two or two eco, if it proves more mpg then its for sure an eco. If they don't sell good then they might knock off a few bucks.

Time will tell if its a good seller or not, you raise some good points to consider. I find all these bells and whistles doesn't appeal to me. People are paying about 4 k more now for the new 2016 then if they wait a year.

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. Sounds like the Eco's a good fit, but judging from your remarks you're flexible, so it may come down to what's on the lot.

While your wife might not change the tire herself, she might get on her way sooner if she has a replacement on hand. As long as you're the "service provider", you can bring your own tire, but that might not always be the case. I know it's low probability, but the fact is that tire issues, however rare, have been the only thing that's ever left me on the roadside, so I'm leery of not being able to handle it myself if I had to. Admittedly, this is a weighted risk kind of thing, so everyone needs to calculate the balance for themselves.

I don't want to overstate my love for NiMH batteries. I think the Li-ion will be fine (I bought one, after all), but I wanted to make the point that I didn't think it was a great advantage.

Saving $4k by waiting sounds high to me if one's just talking about negotiations, but there are obviously other factors. Short-sighted car buyers are likely to give hybrids a wide berth if gasoline remains in the sub-$2 range this summer, so it's possible there could be some attractive incentives. The Prius is more important to Toyota than the profits earned per car, since every Prius leaving the lot allows Toyota to sell multiple high-margin 4Runners - they really want/need to move those hybrids. Waiting is good advice.

For our part, we'd been putting off replacing our Gen2 for a couple of years in anticipation of the Gen4 (it was working fine, but we were hoping to pass it on to a family member who's had less reliable transportation), so we were actually ready to pull the trigger on something (a Gen1 Prius v lease was even in the mix) as soon as we could evaluate the Gen4 for ourselves. That insistence on buying early, our preference for buying locally despite having only two dealerships in the area, plus the fact that we were feeling picky about equipment and colors, made us realistic about pricing (i.e., we knew all that was going to cost us), though we did as well as we'd hoped (my wife managed to beat the KBB target price for our market by about $700, which I thought was pretty good for ordering instead of buying off the lot). Still, overall, not a choice that a value-oriented shopper would have made!

 

I'm surprised that you think shopping Toyota is a nightmare. We actually had a pleasant time. Although we definitely specifically chose a dealer that had 20+ Prius cars. It was our 3rd closest dealership. The salesman was very nice and took his time with us and was really in no hurry. Haggling was a bit difficult just because they didn't want to haggle much but I was able to haggle them down some.

I did wish I knew about Priuschat before I bought though but I wasn't really expecting to buy a car that day, as the car buying came up unexpectedly on me as I had only found out that morning that my car was going to cost more to fix than was worth it to me to get it fixed. I still would've gone with the car I got though, the four touring.

 

I'm surprised that you had such an easy time decoding the options and models. I STILL don't know everything I need to know. I do wish that a dealer here had 20+ cars on the lot ... the most I found was 3. Most had only 2.

I've not tried negotiating yet. I belong to CostCo and have an AMEX card. Both of those have a "buyer's plan" which is supposed to get you a good price ... but I'm not there yet. The closest dealer had a "no haggle policy", which, in English, means you get to pay the top price. Right ... as if. But funny enough as we were leaving they said that they would match any other dealer's price. HUH? How is that a fixed no haggle price? It's all nonsense anyway. He said we had to have the offer in writing and then went on to say that no one would probably give us one. No wonder that car sales people are rated as the lowest of the low.

 

That will fall apart too, if he's hungry enough and you're really prepared to walk away.

 

Hell no, the options were confusing but I was also on a short timeline and wanted some very specific things including color (red, maybe blue), power seat and a lot of things that I would've wanted that happen to come in the 4 touring. And then they just happened to have that in their showroom. I'm also a Costco member and Amex but again short timeline. I also read, maybe on here? That at least some Toyota dealerships have rejected Costco pricing for the Prius.

 

Interesting. I'm not sure how they could reject the pricing for the Prius. You fill out a forum and they refer you to dealers who have agreed to their pricing. If they did not give the price, CostCo would pull them from the list. On the AMEX deal, those dealers will ALSO accept AMEX for at least part (if not all) of the cost of the car.

We are on a short time line as well, but I'm going to just go without a car in order to get what we want. This will be my wife's car and she drives an hour each way to work so small items will make her life happier ... and that is what my life is all about

Indeed. There is no such thing as "no negotiation". I was watching an episode of Shark Tank on TV. (A panel of very rich guys offer to buy in to start up companies and bid against each other. One of the Sharks is Mark Cuban. He is worth about $4B or so and is really full of himself. He is fond of telling people they have to take his deal in the next 10 seconds or he's out. He did that to one guy who was having none of it. The guy said he needed to hear all offers before deciding. Mark said he was out, and looked pissed. While considering an offer from another guy Mark came back in and said "I'll do that deal for the same amount." The other Shark said: "I thought you were out!" Mark said: "I changed my mind." LOL That's what it comes down to ... they can say you have to pay this price but they are free to change their mind and give you a better one as you are walking out the door.

Our only problem is that they don't seem to have the options we want so we will have to order it and that makes bargining a bit tougher. It is always easer when you plop your checkbook down and tell them you're ready to drive it off the lot.

 

Are you saying...

Playing MP3/WMA files burned on a CD requires a Model Four?! (My Gen2 Model II can do that)
We get a hard plastic Tonneau Cover for Model Two and Three (My Gen2 Model II has a rolling type)

Technology-wise, Gen4 is an upgrade, but in terms of accessories, it's going backwards.

 

Interesting point - no, that's an error in the documents. The first car we took out was a Two and I tested the audio system with a CD w/MP3 files. All models also provide USB ports for storage access or iPod control. I think it's just assumed that any modern CD player will play MP3/WMA [let me amend that - I didn't test WMA, as I don't know if I've ever ripped one except to test it out years ago]. I've no idea why Toyota only specifically listed that capability on the Premium JBL sound system, but that was just an oversight. It's on all Prius sound systems.

The tonneau cover is not hard plastic. It's a lightweight fabric panel that twists up like those plastic-framed windshield sun shades that twist/fold into a little round bundle. I've no idea how durable that is, but at least it's easy enough to stow when unwanted. I've seen for myself that it's possible to deploy it in such a way that it partly blocks the lower rear window, but according to the manual this indicates that it was put in place incorrectly. I'll play around with that more when we get ours later this month.

 

Very helpful thank you.

 

Do all 2016 Prius have the same floor mats? Are 2016 Prius floor mats unique to the 4th gen or do 4th and older gens use the same floor mats? Can anyone post pics of their floor mats?

 

Does anyone know why you can't get an HUD with the four touring? I bought a 2016 four with all the option packages because there were more features on it than the four touring, not to mention you can't even get a sunroof on the four touring (but thats a weight problem).

 

The ALL WEATHER cargo mat is really helpful and i highly recommend them. I had a 2005 Prius and the carpet cargo mat was worn out and almost ripped through the carpet. These pics are of my 2016 Prius Four with moonstone interior. The floor mats are different from the 3rd gen and older. They're kinda weird because they have these swirly "leaves" that to me look like seaweed. I didn't like it at first and almost got all weather floor mats everywhere, but I kinda like them now and you don't really notice the seaweed on it.