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Changing to a Hybrid

As a work colleague indicated, I've gone "from the ridiculous to the sublime". But in my mind, for good reason. I couldn't continue to burn large quantities of natural resources just for the joy of dragging my arse around town. Though that's not to say the Prius isn't fun to drive; it is, but just in a different way. I travel ~32,000km per year, and with the V8 SS Commodore I'd been driving, I was contributing ~9,000kg of CO2 to global warning. I've now cut that to ~3,500kg of CO2, or a reduction of approximately 5 1/2 tonnes per year.

I'm not a hybrid zealot. Some of the new diesel engines now available from the likes of VW, BMW and Peugeot have incredibly good fuel efficiency, as well as very low CO2 emissions. For a lot of reasons these cars will be the most appropriate choice for a lot of people, and I applaud them for making those choices.

With the Prius, there's a lot of focus on it's great fuel economy, and a lot of the debates that rage on the 'Net are around whether it's 'better' to go with a diesel or a hybrid powered car. For me, these arguments are largely irrelevant. The lease was running out on my previous car, and I needed something to replace it. Diesels are good, no doubt, but at the moment they still lag behind from an emissions perspective, particularly with the vehicles currently available in Australia. I have no doubt diesels, or other petrol hybrids, or diesel hybrids, or plug-in electric vehicles (PLEVs), or hydrogen fuel-cell cars will reach and may surpass (particularly with the last two) the super-low emissions (SULEV, or also partial zero emissions vehicle - PZEV) rating of the Prius. But for now, it's the most environmentally friendly car on the Australian roads, so that's what I went with.

The Prius is supposed to be able to get (in a laboratory) 4.4 litres per 100km. But since I don't live in a lab, I'm keeping a log of fuel consumption, just to see what it can do in the real world. This may be a slow moving graph. It also supposedly puts out just 104 g/km of CO2, 0.010 g/km of NOx, and 0.020 g/km of hydrocarbons.

There's now a good Australian website dedicated to keeping track of Low Emission Vehicles (LEVs): www.greenwheels.com.au

After 5 years of leasing, I’ve now purchased the car and am a happy camper. After 5 years of trouble-free motoring, here are some ‘fun’ facts:

Total Litres:                                         7,439  (1,488 p/a)
Total fuel cost (@$1.55 p/l):   $11,530.45 (2,306 p/a)
Total Kms:                                      156,461  (31,292 p/a)
Total CO2 (tonnes):                           16.58  (3.32 p/a)

If I’d continued driving the SS Commodore over that period (with a fuel consumption of 12 l/100km) I’d have done the following:

Used 11,336 more litres of fuel
Spent $17,571 more on fuel (based on $1.55 p/l)
Generated 34.73 more tonnes of CO2

In order to have used the same amount of fuel as the Prius I’d have only been able to do 62,000km over the 5 year period (12,400 per year), but would’ve still generated 3.75 more tonnes of CO2!
I'm sure the following list of likes and dislikes will get added to, but after 2 years and about 75,000 km, here they are so far. It's possibly a bit harsh to call these likes and dislikes since they're more just observations at this stage. For fence-sitting comments, I've added an 'observations' category.

Likes

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Greenhouse gas and pollution emissions - or the lack thereof

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Fuel efficiency

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Satellite navigation - although in it's first major test it tried to take me down a no-through road, but this was in the middle of nowhere, ant it was an easy matter to get myself onto an alternate route; also using the satellite navigation

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Bluetooth - It now just automatically connects to my HTC Wildfire whenever I get into the car. Nice. The ability to use voice recognition with that is a real bonus as well.

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Smart key. It just makes sense. Why should you stick a piece of metal into a slot to start a modern car?

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The JBL stereo. It's significantly better than the standard Commodore unit.

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The engine stops when you stop in traffic or at a set of lights! It seems to make so much damn sense now that I've got a car that does it, whereas I don't think I'd even thought about it before. Why use fuel to power a vehicle that's not moving??

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A hatchback with split-folding rear seats. But then, people who drive hatches already know this...

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Digital speedo readout. Now that we can get fined for doing 3km over the limit, near enough just isn't good enough. This isn't to say that a digital speedo is more accurate, but rather that it's easier to keep your speed within a defined range.

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Front, side, and curtain airbags

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ABS, Traction Control, EBD, Swerve Control, etc, etc

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The fact that it encourages discussions about the environment and methods of reducing greenhouse gas and pollution. If you don't like this aspect, by a Honda Civic hybrid. Or don't go anywhere where you'll meet people.

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The controls on the steering wheel. There's something like 16 buttons on it, but once you get used to their layout, it's a breeze to use and you barely have to take your hands off the wheel.

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More than 180,000km later, and not a thing going wrong with it.

Dislikes

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Electric steering is a bit light, particularly compared to the firm steering on the SS Commodore. I'm used to it now, but it does require a bit more attention when you're in strong crosswinds. And in context, where I live we regularly get wind gusts of between 70 - 90km/h.

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The look of the car. It's not that it's ugly, but just that it's not on my top 10 list of attractive-looking cars. It is endearing though.

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No reach adjustment on the steering. I really liked that on the Commodore, and it's probably the Number 1 thing I miss. Besides being able to go from 0-100 in 5.8 seconds of course.....

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The reversing camera. Now this has to be taken in context. The Commodore had reverse parking sensors which I really liked. My driving style was to always physically look backwards whenever I was reversing the car, and just used the sensors as a fail-safe. The reversing camera (to be useful) requires you to look forwards, which is just a bit unnatural for me at the moment. It does give a good view out the back of the car, and to within a few inches of the rear bumper. The addition of reversing sensors would make it ideal.

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No electric seat adjustment. Hey, isn't this an electric car? I can understand it would have added weight, but it's a shame it's not included.

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No 'fuel to go' trip computer.

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The horn. Just because it's a small car, doesn't mean it needs to have a small horn. It's not that I use it a lot, but when I do, I want people to actually know it's been used.

Observations

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What's with the climate control? It seems to be linked to the outside temperature, such that the temperature you set it at will vary depending on how hot it is outside. As an example, the past few days have been in the mid 30's, which means I need to have the climate control set to about 26 C to be comfortable.

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There don't appear to be any air vents for rear seat passengers. This doesn't particularly bother me since I don't sit in the back whilst driving, but I guess it could be an issue for some people.

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Most of the reports I'd read say that the Prius gets better fuel economy around town than on the highway, mainly because the petrol engine is running for most of the time on the highway. So far though, I'd say I'm getting better figures on the highway. Maybe because it contains a a number of peak-hour stop/start driving when the traffic banks up?

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I had a guy pull up next to me at a set of lights the other day and motioned for me to wind down my window. When I did, he yelled "186,000km and not a thing gone wrong! Best damn car I've ever owned!" It took a moment for me to realise he was driving a first-generation Prius, since I'd never actually seen one on the road. Such open loyalty and pride in a car is certainly the exception rather than the norm.

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When the parkers or headlights are on, the dash instrumentation and MFD automatically dim. Unfortunately though there's no way of over-riding this. This isn't to say you can't read them, just that it's not as bright as I'd prefer it to be. UPDATE: OK, it'd really help if I read the manual (which I still haven't done). I found by complete accident that if you hold down the dash dimmer button when the parkers or headlights are on (if you press it briefly you can select between three stages of illumination) it'll return the dash to full brightness! Now, where the heck's that manual....