Recalibrating the Toyota Prius

I’ve recently driven the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf. Indeed, I’ve written items here and also did our print R&T’s Leaf First Drive and coming Road Test. These are important new cars, each likely to modify people’s views on personal mobility. A decade ago, another car did a similar thing, and now the Toyota Prius is in its third generation.
How does the Prius compare with these two new contenders in our Brave New Technology?
To recalibrate the car—and, in a sense, to recalibrate myself—I borrowed a Prius for the 10-day period including the Thanksgiving holiday as well as a trip to San Francisco. Here’s what I’ve found so far.
An assessment of interior roominess concurs with my memory. In terms of ingress/egress, driver comfort and even the ability “to sit behind one’s self,” my particular ordering is Prius, Leaf and Volt. A Full Disclosure here: As many readers know, I’m bigger than the average bear, have a disproportionately long torso and a less than agile back as well. Also, curiously, the driver seat has a height adjustment missing in the passenger seat of a Prius. As a front seat passenger, I have equal head room in Prius and Leaf. No contest, though, in the rear seat. I find the Volt’s head room interference back there to be well nigh claustrophobic.
All three are 5-door hatchbacks, a layout that I find very useful. Indeed, if I owned any of them, I’d likely fold the rear seats except when needed.
The contrast of performance among the three is strong. In its initial “charge depletion” mode, the Volt behaves like a pure electric. As such, it’s the quickest of the trio. Once in “charge sustaining” mode, its engine is relatively unobtrusive. This plug-in series hybrid is good, sound, innovative technology.
The Leaf’s performance isn’t far behind, and indeed I find it the sportiest of the trio. Alas, its inherent pure EV range makes it unsuitable for some missions, namely the San Francisco portion of my adventure.
At around 9.7 seconds 0 to 60, the Prius is the slowest of the three in acceleration. It’s also the least sporty to drive. In fact, though, its enthusiast involvement is of a different nature.
Around town, I encourage the Prius into electric propulsion whenever possible—subject to a simple rule: Never drive like a dork. I use the car’s gasoline engine, often almost at full throttle, to accelerate to ambient traffic pace, then lift off momentarily to finesse it into electric mode. This works fine in typical 45- to 50-mph suburban traffic, and it’s good fun to see the resulting high mpg.
The Prius’s EV mode is button-activated and keeps the car utterly electric. However, it limits speed to around 25 mph and acceleration as well. I found this mode useful only in parking lots, school zones and my immediate neighborhood. Indeed, I’d play a little game coming home from work: Entering the neighborhood (zoned at 25 mph anyway), I’d use EV mode to coax a couple extra tenths out of the mpg monitor before reaching my driveway.
There’s also a PWR mode button that evokes somewhat sharper throttle response. I tended not to use it. Indeed, I did most of my driving in ECO mode and found its somewhat heavier throttle more to my liking.
In town the Prius got low 50s mpg, depending on how the traffic around me was behaving. Remember my “no dork driving” rule; and, curiously, I was aware of other drivers expecting me to drive like one and maybe being surprised otherwise.
On my trip to San Francisco, I averaged 41.0 mpg through the Los Angeles freeway sprawl. Once into mixed motoring up Rte. 101, for a while there I set the radar-sensed smart cruise to just a tick less than the fastest cars (let them get the ticket). From Paso Robles to San Francisco, including the city stint to my downtown hotel, the Prius averaged 69 mph and returned 49.1 mpg.
Had I driven a Chevy Volt, it would have depleted its charge, likely within 25 miles at that highway speed. For the remaining 175 miles to San Francisco, its gasoline mpg would have been in the mid-30s at best. And, of course, the Nissan Leaf wouldn’t have worked at all for this particular mission.
Also, because I know some will ask, what about a diesel for this same adventure? It’s not in this trio’s clean-air league: A typical “clean diesel” is a Tier 2 Bin 5 vehicle by Environment Protection Agency rating, equal to only an average gasoline car. By contrast, the Prius is an AT-PZEV (Advanced Technology Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle). But for certification of its evaporative emissions, so likely is the Volt. And a Leaf is a ZEV (with its electric utility generating the only emissions).

Thus far, my recalibration of the Toyota Prius speaks favorably for this car and its technology.