My Prius and I

The fact that the Prius is a hybrid car does not mean that it's owners can say "our cars aren't polluting the air..."
On the contrary, it still uses gasolene (albeit a lot less) and the electricity it uses is produced by fossil-fuel burning power plants.

The gasoline engine of the Prius is a marvel of engineering and efficiency. My family owns 3 Priuses(?) and we definitely can say that driving these vehicles, which are rated PZEV (Partial Zero Emission Vehicle), makes a significant difference in OUR personal contribution to pollution due to vehicle emissions. We feel GREAT about that. If every multi-car family had just one car like the Prius for running errands and commuting to work or school, our dependence on foreign oil could potentially be eliminated.
This is merely one aspect of how we choose to live our lives. We aggresively recycle, buy organic whenever possible, and try NOT to live "disposable". I realize that simply being on this Earth means I contribute to polluting it, but I can say I am doing it far less than most people.

Hybrid car owners can say alot more about the benefits of their cars than not.

If the gas motor is running, yes there are emmissions like any other car. During city driving where the electric motor powers the car exclusively no emissions are being - emitted.

I believe the batteries can be charged by the application of the brakes alone, which is done a lot during city driving. They call it regenerative braking. The gas motor is engaged, started - whatever - when the regenerative braking is not keeping the batteries charged sufficiently.

The motor is used for sure during highway driving. So, you could drive around in the city for a long time and not use the gas motor.

Over any given period of time, it is better to say the hybrid pollutes the air less - alot less.

If the price of a hybrid car drops down to around $15k, then many more people will buy it. So those who are lucky enough to own hybrid cars should aim their speech to the ones driving SUVs
instead of those who can just afford simple cheap cars.

"Three, four, sometimes five weeks" vs. "once a week" for fill ups. . . are you sure something else didn't change (or are you exaggerating just a bit)? I know every car and driver is different, but this seems a little far fetched. The fuel economy for your 1995 GTI was probably around 20/25 and the Prius 60/51. So all city driving (no HOV lane advantage), a below average older GTI, and an above average Prius might get you a 4x difference. Double to triple the time between fill ups makes sense. And is worth writing about!

I BOUGHT MY WIFE A PRIUS WHILE I DRIVE A (PRESTIGIOUS) lEXUS 330 SUV.....DUE TO THE GAS SITUATION, WE TAKE HER CAR ON VACATION TRIPS NOW AND I FOUND THAT HER PRIUS HOLDS AS MUCH LUGGAGE AND GOLF CLUBS, ETC AS MY LEXUS DOES. OF ALL THE CARS WE HAVE OWNED, THE PRIUS IS OUR FAVORITE AND I AM IN THE PROCESS OF LETTING GO OF MY BELOVED LEXUS FOR ANOTHER PRIUS IN THE FAMILY.

The Toyota Prius is the ONLY car still on my "If I buy a car" list. Why? Because it's a Toyota. Because it has a trunk and back seats. Because it's a hybrid that gets great gas mileage. If I can't have a Prius, I'll keep walking and riding the bus.

I have had a Prius for 4 years, gas milage is super (high as 60 mpg) I am 6'2" 220lbs, have no trouble fitting in the car, or driving it on long trips. On more than one occasion I have gotten over 500 miles between fill ups on an 11 gallon gas tank. Can this be beaten by anything else in production ....NO WAY! And I am not even a 'tree hugger'!

@Paul:

"the electricity it uses is produced by fossil-fuel burning power plants"

Err, not quite correct. If you make aftermarket modifications to your Prius you can plug it into your electric company's fossil-fuel burning power plants. However, there's still a good chance a portion of your electicity originates, hydro, nuclear, or other non-fossil fuel sources.

Either way Prius owners can claim a well-to-wheel efficiency that's more than double that of a typical gasoline engine.

Interesting article

If car owners in China and India only drove a Prius we might save a small amount of oil

Of course I love my Prius. But the strange thing is that although I have a luxury car, my grandkids, ages 5 and 7, who know nothing about saving gas or tree hugging, etc., prefer to ride in the Prius, even though their own parents also have a luxury car. There's got to be something else that has that kind of pull, don't you think?

And it's a negative thing to act to conserve energy and live more lightly off the environment? Why is this such a bad thing? That kind of attitude is long overdue in a "me-first, who cares about anyone or anything else?" world. Who needs gas-guzzling SUVs? Just rent a truck or van for the day if you need to move something big.

It's time people stopped being so selfish. I'm proud of being an environmentalist and environmental scientist (I've held the degree for seven years now) and proud of the fact that I don't live so extravagantly. So I drive a little car; what's the problem with that? I can truthfully say that I have the welfare of others in mind, unlike the cellphone-yammering soccer mom in the next lane in her unnecessary H2 that will never go off road.

In our town – the Tri-Cites in Washington state (Pasco, Kennewick and Richland) a taxi company (Tri-City Cab) has been buying them. I work at a two-way radio shop, and we’ve installed the radios and meters into all of them. They are saving thousands of fuel dollars a year, and naturally, (as most taxis do) they drive in city traffic 98% of the time. The people who ride in them also like them, and the dispatchers constantly get requests for a Prius taxi to come and pick them up.

I’ve driven a few to calibrate the meters, and I LOVE it. They are silent like a golf cart, and certainly not gutless! The engine is ‘’disconnected’’ as it runs. It other words, if you jam the pedal down hard and it starts up, the RPM’s have nothing to do with the feel of the car’s acceleration as in a normal car. There’s no shifting because there’s no multi-speed transmission since the motive power is electric motors. Smooth operation is an understatement. Driving normally in city traffic is as silent as it gets.

I’m 6’ 6’’ and weigh 300 lbs. and I can drive them with comfort. I can even sit in the back seat – something I can do in very FEW (if any) smaller cars.

Interesting that the author is claiming to be getting fuel mileage that is way above the actual test results for the Prius published in the April edition of Autoweek magazine. The best that they could get was 42 mpg, about 20 mpg LESS than the window sticker says. Perhaps a bit of wishfull thinking in the owner's part?

I sat in a Prius at a dealership and immediately said "I want one!" At 5' tall there are not many cars that I am comfortable in and the Prius felt like it was made for me. Funny that it fits me and someone 6' tall (previous posts).

I don't know what kind of drivers they have at Autoweek, but I have had my Prius for about 6 months and I average 48.2 mpg. That is about half freeway and half city driving. If I drive really conservatively, I can get better than 50 mpg. I put about 6 gallons in it every 10 week instead of the 30 gallons I was putting into my Montero. However, I was bummed on a recent trip from SF to LA because I only got 43.2 mpg .... driving down I-5 at 75 mph.

It is a lot more fun to drive than the Montero. I can make really tight turns, I can park in compact spaces, the stereo is awesome, the navigation system is wonderful, the amount of people and "stuff" I can put in the car is much greater than it looks from the outside, and it really can get up and go when I step on it!

BTW - the Prius does not get plugged in to charge the batteries therefore the electricity it uses is NOT provided by fossil fuel burning power plants! The electricity is produced whenever the car is slowing down or when the gasoline engine is producing more energy than is needed to move the car.

I LOVE MY PRIUS! I LOVE IT, I LOVE IT, I LOVE IT!

It strikes me as quite odd that the hyperlink that comes to this article is "Prius Owners: 'Pampered, Whiny Tree Huggers'?"

That phrase was a minor reference and really had nothing to do with the article, actually titled "My Prius and I".

What's up with that?

This car appears to be a GREAT car from what I can read. It deserves an article on its own rights and doesn't deserve some sort of implied condescending hyperlink.

If it were just for the hyperlink, I would not have read the article. I only read it because I find the Prius an interesting car and wanted to see what was being said about it.

I guess I find the hyperlink insulting to my intelligence and rather offensive.

While you were all patting yourselves on the back, did you any of you consider the environmental damage caused in the manufacture of this car, or in the disposal after word. You might save a little energy now, but all that will be lost if the car is to be properly disposed and disassembled at the end of its life. Think of huge amounts of acids, plastizers, and heavy metals. Two choices are evident. At the end of the cars life, dump it and watch all that leach into the water supply, or spend a large amount of energy to properly dispose of the problem materials.

The ones deserving a pat, are those that commute by public transportation, walking and biking. Lifestyle and cultural changes are required, not some ego pumping car that lets us drive everywhere with less guilt, so we can continue increasing our 60% overweight/30% obese demographic in the United States.

This is so hallarious and silly at the same time, I do not know what to do, laugh or laugh! Are you serious?

The world can be grateful that it's the Japanese that are building the first hybrids. If it were anybody but Toyota and Honda, the image of hybrids would be tarnished due to the inevitable quality problems that would result. The Euro cars are the worst. Thank goodness VW/Audi/Mercedes are not making hybrids.