It's a bonafide auto industry home run.
Yeah, one of the most (smeared at?) cars on the market.
An efficiency masterpiece yet kinda hard to justify in dollars and cents and it's a category of one.
Let's take a look at the Toyota Prius family and check the tech.
Okay look, we look at Pri I a 100 times.
I take you to the Prius C, the little tiny one, the Prius V, the bigger one and a couple times to the Prius Prius this one.
Let's not rehash what the car is and the details of the cabin tech.
Nothing dramatically different there.
Instead, let's talk about the reason you'll buy this car and there's really one.
Well, there's really about 50 and there they are.
This car gets a real world combine on the road 50 MPG or thereabouts all the time.
That number there and that's actually kinda low for my experience with this car.
Over 3 to 580 somewhat miles and that wasn't babying it.
Not when I was driving it and if you want further proof, check this out.
There's a 4 month rolling history of this particular Prius in the hands of automotive journalist and they don't baby anything.
Look at that guy.
It got down as low as what, 45 average one month?
This car is an MPG rock star and that's part of why it outsells all the other hybrids by like 2 to 1 but the elephant in the room or on the dash remains that hybrid penalty.
The constant that you pay more for a hybrid with the electric motor and all those batteries and have to earn that back with MPG savings.
Let's do the numbers.
Okay, the sales weighted average MPG of a new passenger car today, the government says there's 33 MPG.
That sounds a little lofty based on how they calculated it but let's give it to them.
The Prius of course does 50.
The average new car today costs about $28,400.
A Prius that is well equipped but not top of the line about 315, a difference of around $3100.
As of today gasoline is about 385 a gallon in the US, more like 5 bucks here in California and 15000 miles a year as the average driving.
So you'd be saving at least 600 bucks a year in fuel and would earn back the hybrid (??) on this car in about 5.2 years but if you're in California, much sooner.
If you drive a lot, sooner still.
If you hyper mile, even sooner.
The big variable of course is the cost of what other car you're considering and how many miles you really drive and what you pay for gas.
You can get a car that basically does what this does in terms of function for thousands less but you can't get anything that will touch it in terms of real world gas efficiency.
So whether or not it's right for you is not just a matter of numbers.
It's gotta be a matter of commitment and whether this car has (sense?) something that you like.
