Why do people hate the Prius?

I just turned 73.... I have owned 1940 ford, 47 mercury, 50 and 53 olds,
56 ford,60 and 62 pontiac....60 porsche, 55 austin healey, 65plymouth wagon, 64 lincoln cont... 68 ford, 77 ford galaxie, 78 honda accord,
83 camry, 93 maxima, 03 caravan, and now 2010 prius.....plus a few others thrown in.... The best car i ever owned was the 83 camry,
with the maxima a close second.... Now the prius will overtake them and be the best of all...i average 53+ mpg on trips, and 49 around town.... Toyota has made a 1.8 liter engine for years and
i'm sure the one in the prius is the best yet.... I have read several
articles about people making fun of prius... I would love to buy an american made car that could compete, but don't think it will happen in my lifetime... I was thrilled with the volt when it was going to sell for around $20,000....it went up to $30,000, and now looks like over $40,000.... I bought stock in gm when it got down low, and lost it all....so not thrilled with gm... Chrysler hasn't a clue about competing... I still have my 03 caravan and it is a good junk hauler.....i would welcome any bad mouthing about my prius,,,,it would show the ignorance of a jealous person, probably still driving a hemi or whatever, getting about 9-10 mpg.... In case they haven't looked, gas is heading back to the $4 per gallon price.....thank god a few of us were smart enough to plan ahead...

 

The post I quoted remarked about Prius drivers who block their grill and buy new tires to get better mpg was oneupmanship. I was saying it is their business.

There was research done on why traffic slows down on freeways for no apparent reason. They found tailgaters, by putting their brake lights on repeatedly, caused a slowing down effect for the whole freeway. So tailgating actually made the 'gater get there slower. I have ridden with one particular tailgating person, it was tailgate, pass, on to tailgate the next car, etc. Going nowhere fast. If that isn't stupid I don't know what is. It also is risking the lives of whoever is in that car in front, for nothing.

Maybe the answer to why people hate the Prius is because they are genuinely stupid.

 

As a new, first time Prius owner, I've recieved a lot of good natured flack from my buddies in the Offroad truck and auto enthusiast forums I take an active part in. It's clear that the traditional auto enthusiast dislikes this car, which I guess I can understand.

A lot of my "car guy" friends are "schocked" that this is what we bought. Heck, sometimes I am too. It's not what you'd expect from us but I'm glad my wife pushed for it because I am LOVING the car. It's a whole different kind of car guy enthusiasm that I am embracing. :rockon:

Two other guys in my Land Cruiser club have Prii. If you are going to spend your weekends getting 13mpg on 35" tires on the trails, it's nice to have a slick, efficient daily driver for the rest of the week.

Living in an Ivy League town there are a TON of these around here, so most in-person interactions are very positive, and genuinely curious folks wondering how we like it.

 

Haha yeah. I get that from a lot of "auto enthusiasts" too. But I don't understand why. I'm like, why do you care?!? Are they Toyota Motors shareholders, afraid that the Prius will tank their investment? Haha.

 

If I ever became President of the US, I would not survive the first term.

My energy policy would be simple and lead to my ouster: I'd round up all the old pickups and SUVs, then allow only pink, lacy, effeminate ones to be sold - i.e. mpre "ghey" than the Prius. Yes, like that episode of Top Gear driving thru Alabama.

Lots of gas would be saved.

 

Especially when the person tailgating you at a stop light in the right turn lane isn't paying attention. My brand new "October" 2010 Prius now has a bruised and split rear bumper. Thankfully that is all that was damaged, no one was hurt, and the other driver had insurance.

At least it still has that new car smell.

 

This is what I don't understand either--and it doesn't just apply to cars, in my experiencde. For some odd reason, a lot of folks seem to feel the need to convince everyone else that they should have bought the same car/computerwhatever. No doubt, some Prius drivers do this as well. My guess is that it stems from one's need to convince one's self that he/she made the right decision.

Live and let live, I say. Most people have a reason for doing what they do. We may not agree, but they have that right. Usually...

 

When I tell people I love my car they ask, "what do you drive?"
When I say a Prius most people say "what's that?"
I doubt most people give a toss what I drive.

 

I felt the hate this morning! I was being tailgated for several miles by some idiot. It snowed here in Atlanta yesterday, it's 21 degrees out, they don't treat the roads here, while I was being cautious, I was still doing the speed limit or a couple MPH over the whole way... As we approached an intersection with a gas station on the corner, the guy pulled into the turn lane, floored it just so he could get beside me and honk before turning into the gas station (I'm assuming there was a hand jesture as well, but I didn't see it). I found the irony of that manuver most amuzing...

 

I haven't really felt any hate... the worst I've experienced was prior to owning one, and it was merely a discussion that this person thought it very likely that hybrid technology was more a transition than a solution. It was extremely reasonable.

I've learned one thing though - if I ever have to buy, drive or rent another gas-only vehicle and there's a line at the gas station, I'm getting behind the person with a Prius!

 

Two words explains it all: Confirmation bias

Executive Summary:
Most people are lazy thinkers. Faced with having to consider/incorporate
new information, the default is to go with what they think they "know."

Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside
bias) is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their
preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is
true. As a result, people gather evidence and recall information from
memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. The biases appear
in particular for emotionally significant issues and for established
beliefs. For example, in reading about gun control, people usually
prefer sources that affirm their existing attitudes. They also tend to
interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position.
Biased search, interpretation and/or recall have been invoked to
explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more
extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same
evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence
for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a stronger
weighting for data encountered early in an arbitrary series) and illusory
correlation (in which people falsely perceive an association between
two events or situations)...

Confirmation bias is often described as a result of automatic processing.
Individuals do not use deceptive strategies to fake data, but forms of
information processing that take place more or less unintentionally.
According to Robert Maccoun, most biased evidence processing occurs
unintentionally through a combination of both “hot” (i.e., motivated) and
“cold” (i.e., cognitive) mechanisms.

Cognitive explanations for confirmation bias are based on limitations in
people's ability to handle complex tasks, and the shortcuts, called "heuristics",
that they use. For example, people may judge the reliability of evidence
by using the availability heuristic, i.e. how readily a particular idea comes to
mind. It is also possible that people can only focus on one thought at a time,
so find it difficult to test alternative hypotheses in parallel. Another heuristic
is the positive test strategy identified by Klayman and Ha, in which people
test a hypothesis by examining cases where they expect a property or event
to occur. This heuristic avoids the difficult or impossible task of working out
how diagnostic each possible question will be. However, it is not universally
reliable, so people can overlook challenges to their existing beliefs.

More at [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias]Confirmation bias - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]


I guess the old guy was/is right:
"An unexamined life is not worth living." -- Socrates

Read more.

 

Saved for what?

OK...evocative statement, but it does speak somewhat to the OP's question. My opinion (current value= less than $0.02) is that most people do not hate Priuses---they dislike Prius owners.
Yeah, a gallon of gas saved is a gallon earned but they're still going to pull every single barrel of oil out of the ground that they can get their drill bits into. That oil is going to be refined into gasoline, or made into cosmetics, rubber dog turds, or any of 10,000 other things that people do or make with petrochemicals.

I often hear environmentalists lament SUV's for ruining the planet, and I personally have nooooo heartburn with individuals driving LEVs or ULEVs, or whatever the current chick appellation is for econo-boxes. I like clean air too.
I don't choose however to support legislation for forcing people to live within 10 miles of where they work---despite the fact that I do so myself. Neither do I support laws regulating the size of single family detached dwellings, despite the fact that my house is less than 1600 square feet.
Another way we could "save the planet" would be to mandate that people keep their home electrical use to less than 1,000kwh, or the equivalent amount of combined home natural gas and electrical use. I do---and I don't live alone....so I guess you'd have to come up with a rationing system based on the number of people that live in your too large house that's too far from where you work.
How about a law forcing people be limited by law to a diet of less than 2,000 calories---wouldn't that help save the environment? We'd sure save money in our health care system, so there would be a double benefit there!

I applaud people who recycle, keep their personal energy use within bounds, and do all of the other things that help foster awareness and conservationism, since I'm something of a closet environmentalist myself---but my concerns stops WELL short of badgering other people about what they drive, where they live, or how much they eat.

 

Right On Chief!!! This old Snipe agrees all the way.

 

Mine generates looks, and some good-natured ribbing. There are not a lot of hybrid owners in New Ulm (Cornville) MN, as we are outnumbered by rusty 4WD pick-ups or ladies in SUVs. I think many take pity on me. Sort of like when I ride my bike to work after the ice melts and it’s above freezing: They aren’t used to bikes either. They tend to move way over into oncoming traffic when passing me on the street. I think they assume I am “Special,†or maybe recently convicted of DUI. Either way, I am someone to steer clear of. It probably doesn’t help my reputation any that my bike-commute gear includes a reflective highway-worker vest, funny shoes and a big helmet. Because helmets, of course, are for sissies. I am also 6’3†& weigh 230, so I may appear a little wobbly or top-heavy while speeding 18mph down the street on my Trek. I’m not sure. I never look.

Some of my co-workers have taken to stopping by my desk so they can stare at me in wonder. After a protracted silence, they may offer to donate an extension cord in case I should ever need to take a trip all the way up to Wal-Mart (implying that my existing tether only reaches the 3 miles from home to work?); or, they might suggest a spare set of pedals from their kid’s bike in the basement. My friend Pat, a recent survivor of stomach-stapling surgery, said “if I stood in front of your new car and you ran into me, which would get hurt worse? Me, or your Prius?†So I wore my best steely-eyed, missile-man expression, and replied “let’s try it and see!†Sadly, this seemed to encourage him.

Those who have actually taken the time to sit in it and drive it around seem quite surprised at the roominess and the power it has… although, to be honest, I also push the secret Power Mode button whenever anyone else takes the wheel, so they aren’t left with the impression I drive an anemic 4-banger in Eco.

Call me Rodney.

 

I think you are missing my point on "If I were President, I'd make guzzlers gayer-looking than the Prius and save gas". My point is the American population is over obsessed with, macho, powerful vehicles that "kick a$$"....for related reading, try Keith Bradsher's The High and the Mighty on the marketing of SUV's. At least Google it. Actually Google Clotaire Rapaille who marketed SUVs and obsessed on appeals to manhood and thought the H2 was a great idea.

In regards to hating Prius drivers, anyone at PriusChat knows about half the membership clearly does not fall into the stereotype they so passionately hate.

As far as my driving goes, the freeway is three lanes, posted at 60 and I may be going 50 on the rightmost lane, yet some are infuriated, most typically because they started late, can't pick the right exit....even race around me then they are on said exit 75 yards ahead. So I'm imposing my will on the highway?

 

Excellent point that I was just about to make. Easier quoting you. I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that there are plenty of Prius drivers who have shown "hate" toward EVs for example. And my guess is that this is just an extension of the "hate" from regular-car drivers toward the Prius... taken one more step down the "My car is better for the planet than yours" line.

I do find it really odd to hear Prius drivers disparaging EVs as "not efficient enough" or "not green enough" or "won't catch on" or "not ready for prime time" or "too expensive for what you get" etc. You know... all the same things that Joe Six says about the Prius.

 

Hey Darell,

You make a good point, but I think Prius owners scrutinize EVs on a different level and with a different understanding than today's Joe Six Packs' scrutinize Priuses. Joe Six immediately mocks the Prius out of ignorance and jealousy. Prius drivers are past this, so we ask more thoughtful questions when evaluating EVs, especially when car companies knock on the Prius and implore us to trade up to their EVs.

While we say "not green enough" Joe Six Pack is saying "green is dumb". While were saying "not efficient enough" Six is saying "I'd rather have horsepower." I don't think any Prius owner hates EVs the same way Joe Six hates the Prius. It's the lens we see through that makes all the difference, if ya know what ah mean.

 

"Wir sind gewohnt dass die Leute verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen."

"We are used that people mock what they do not understand."

Johann Wolfgang Goethe

 

I hear you. And certainly in some situations I easily agree. I've had direct experience with Prius owners that would make you cringe though... in some rare instances the Prius owner comments are no more evolved than those of Mr. Six. Certainly not all Prius drivers are past the ignorance and jealousy stage. You know that there are some Prius drivers who take great offence at anybody thinking that they're at all green or trying to save resources?! Serously... they buy the car for the only socially acceptable purpose: to save money on gasoline. And they detest the idea that somebody might think them to be some sort of bleeding heart "environmentalist."

Well said. And with the above caveats, I agree!

 

It's a natural attempt to justify one's conclusions by filtering the facts; kind of the opposite of buyer's remorse. Once a person makes a decision, he is attuned to all of the factors that led to making that decision. Anything to the contrary seems less valid.

If we didn't naturally drift toward this sort of thinking, we would go through life in a state of perpetual second-guessing. Some people do. That said, it doesn't justify the hate. An enlightened person learns to override his basic instincts when confronted with evidence to the contrary.

Tom