Rental Car Review - A Toyota Prius

This is a rental car and I used it business purposes on Motorways and fast roads. Its form of motion is via a 1.8 litre petrol engine, an automatic gearbox, coupled with an electric motor and associated battery pack.


Initially the Prius is a strange car to enter and operate. Entry to the car can be made in two ways – pressing the unlock button on the remote fob, or touching the drivers door handle (as long as the fob is within reading distance). The fob is not required again, as the car detects the presence of the fob. There is no key.

Once seated, and the START button is pressed, the instrument panel comes to life, and a small ‘Ready’ indicator shows it’s OK to drive off after you push the stubby shift lever on the dashboard into Drive. If you like, one of the three modes can be selected EV, ECO, or PWR via the three dashboard engine management buttons.

It defaults to ECO (economy) with smooth acceleration (using the electric motor to move the car away from standstill until around 20mph, then the petrol engine kicks in), or you can press the PWR (power) for more aggressive performance. If you need full power, you get it in any mode by flooring the throttle pedal. The Prius will accelerate from 0-62mph in 10.4 seconds if required – so it’s no slouch if speed is required.

Selecting the EV button (electric vehicle mode) will enable you travel up to one mile at 25 mph before the petrol engine kicks in, which is a nice trick for creeping away early in the morning or making sleepy people in an early morning Tesco car park do a double-take. Car moving, no noise, Huh?

What the cars mode of propulsion is displayed on the dashboard. There are no conventional internal combustion engine gauges such as water temperature or rev counter – but of course this isn’t a conventional car.

It’s almost impossible to detect when the petrol engine is running. The only indication of what source the car is running on is on the dashboard display and when you slow down to a stop – the car is silent and vibration free.

During the return journey the car spent 2 miles in a slow moving traffic jam. During this time the car used no petrol – the car was entirely propelled by the electric motor. At this point of use the car created zero emissions – replicate this in a town centre with the majority of the vehicles being powered in this way is some way to improving pollution in built up areas.

The petrol engine will also shutdown during long decents. During this period, the electric motor is now a generator, this energy is used to recharge the battery.

The Prius encourages law abiding smooth driving. I’ve never driven a car that I wanted to be so careful in, economy wise.

Miles driven: 281 miles
Average MPG: 58.6 MPG
Type of driving: Motorways and A roads
Likes: Economy, technology, Heads up display (displays MPH on windscreen), silent operation at low speeds, keyless entry and starting, zero annual car tax, encourages law abiding smoother driving.
Dislikes: Rear ward vision poor due to large spoiler on tailgate, lack of cruise control seems odd.

The MPG figures from previous users were stored on the computer. MPG was never less than 55MPG for the whole life of the car (just over 20,000 miles). Impressive considering this is a rental car and rental cars are usually driven hard.

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Nice review Steven, thanks for posting

So here's the big question, if you need a 25k miles pa daily driver, would you buy one of these or the likes of a 320d?

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Originally Posted by Leins

Nice review Steven, thanks for posting

So here's the big question, if you need a 25k miles pa daily driver, would you buy one of these or the likes of a 320d?

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Thanks.

Given the choice, I'd take an auto 3 series but its just down to personal preference. It'd be a close competition, however.