2015 Toyota Prius

You may accept heard about the claiming I laid down to Jalopnik’s Travis Okulski. You’re apparently apprehend about brother Bark’s acquaintance at NJMP this accomplished weekend. But if you haven’t, the adventure goes like Japanese Car Dealer in Dubai: A aggregation of belligerent Midwesterners fought a agglomeration of Euro-weenies and high-net-worth individuals on the beggarly streets straights and curves of New Jersey. They endured fatigue, crippling expense, and amazing 100-mph absent excursions to claiming their close demons and ascertain themselves.

This is not their story.
This is the adventure of the Prius they drove. Over 1,600 miles. From Ohio to New York to New Jersey to Philly and aback to Ohio.

Plus fifteen laps on a racetrack.

2015 Toyota Prius Clue Test 

Stress and afraid astriction are now austere amusing problems in all locations of the galaxy and it is in adjustment that this bearings should not be in any way affronted that the afterward facts will now be appear in advance:

I anticipation the Prius was in actuality brilliant, and I’m traveling to accord you ten affidavit why.
I aswell anticipation the Prius was depressingly bargain and annoyingly outmoded, and I’m traveling to accord you 5 affidavit why.

My assessment about the Prius has been afflicted forever.

My assessment about the aggregate of Prius owners charcoal unchanged.
Alright, let’s get to it. This is the TTAC of 2015, so instead of cogent you a abject account about a bottle-blonde alive babe called Natalya who stood next to me and told her date, “I’m account the money” as I watched Mike Stern, Anthony Jackson, and Lionel Cordrew just annihilate it at 55 Bar in the Village endure Wednesday night, we’re traveling to accept a listicle.

Ten Affidavit The 2015 Prius Is In actuality Brilliant. Number Six Will Blow Your Mind.

1. No tumblehome. The abandon of the third-generation Prius are in actuality concave. The ancillary windows adeptness beeline up from a decidedly low doorsill to a squared-off affair with the roof. This car feels badly ample and adequate to me, added so than any added car with its brand on auction today, and that’s why.

2. Reasonable disciplinarian position. There’s affluence of allowance to be had amid the aperture agenda and the amphibian console. The bare amplitude advanced of you, area the apparatus console would be in, say, a Ferrari F12berlinetta, is blah artificial adorned with a “Synergy” waveform arrangement that aswell appears in every bottle affiliate in the antechamber of every mid-price auberge in America. And maybe it’s because I’d apprenticed a ’99 Camaro SS appropriate afore accepting into the Prius, but the ambit to the windshield abject was absolutely reasonable.

3. The eyes thing. There’s no “DLO Fail”, as our own Sajeev Mehta would say. The foreground division windows are advantageous for parking Nissan used cars dealer. The rear division windows accept heating elements on them. Disciplinarian eyes is bright and about unobstructed. And the rear bifold window in the bear – angelic fuck, man, if was the endure time you collection a car that let you see the authorization bowl of the car afterward you? This is the adverse of the face-down-ass-up affair that a lot of avant-garde sedans have. Love it.

4. Uninvaded space. The Prius had allowance for three people, their luggage, their chase equipment, and a carbon-fiber Rainsong colossal on which I played “Ramble On” afterwards convenance on Friday. “Jesus,” my brother said, “make that stop.” The packaging just apparent works for both humans and luggage.
5. You can about-face the DRLs off. Every car in the apple should action this feature. Combined with the “EV mode”, to be discussed shortly, this would accomplish the world’s greatest night-time drive-by car ever. Allowance for a Bulgarian AK-47 carbon in the back? Check! The adeptness to cycle silent? Check! No DRLs to active your rivals? Check!

6. The amalgam powertrain, as implemented in this car, is aloft reproach. From Columbus to Manhattan, the Prius alternate about 51 mpg admitting accepting asked to cruise at 80-90 mph. But it was on the alley to Chinatown that I had my own road-to-Damascus moment. Exiting the Holland tunnel, I apprenticed the “EV mode” button. The engine didn’t about-face on until we accustomed at the auberge and had to delay for the valet. No fuss. No drama. Bisected an hour on the battery, stopping, starting, alert to Father John Misty on the crank-up. It would accept been two gallons’ account of gas in annihilation else.

What Toyota has done with this Prius is artlessly brilliant. You can watch the activity displays if you like, but you don’t charge to. Alone already was I bent out by the Synergy Drive; authoritative a larboard about-face assimilate a awash four-lane, I pumped the burke to bastard into a aperture amid two cars and was accidentally braked by the Toyota’s accommodation to cut the engine. That’s it. That was the alone time I didn’t like the arrangement in the amplitude of 1,600 miles. I’m a believer.

7. The quiet aero. True, my accepted agile of vehicles, absolute two Porsches, two Honda motorcycles, and a car (the Honda Accord) which has been abominable for alley babble aback 1976, tends to accident my abstraction of what a quiet car is. Still. This Prius has beneath wind babble than annihilation abroad I’ve anytime driven. You can accept a reasonable chat at 90 mph.

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8. The handling. Yeah, it’s on those low-roll Avids, which aren’t great. But if I took the Prius about New Jersey Motorsports Park’s Lightning course, the Prius was a able and affable partner. It can hit 96 mph on the foreground beeline afore convalescent sixty watt-hours braking at the “4” mark. You can circle it – wait, I’m bedlam as I blazon – you can circle it at about-face access on the Synergy Drive accretion approach of the anchor pedal. No, it’s not fast, but it’s not undriveable. Added importantly, the Prius concluded its bout of the clue with a close anchor pedal, no annoying calefaction smells, and two confined of array larboard in reserve. Hey, it’s got two arguable F1 technologies: a CVT (hey, Williams!) and array activity accretion (hey, every F1 aggregation during KERS development except Williams!) The alone caveat: The adherence ascendancy doesn’t like high-G assignment at freeway speeds.

9. The air conditioning. Oh what a feeling, to sit in the Prius on a hot Jersey day and just let the array run the A/C for you while the engine sleeps. Guilt-free motoring at its finest.

10. The stereo. Best cheap-car stereo I’ve heard in a while. The dynamics of it won’t could cause my accompany at Stereophile to pen any admiring tributes but at atomic it’s loud abundant for a 43-year-old man who has been deafened by years of unmuffled club racers and Benelli shotguns operated indoors.
After six canicule with the Prius, I was accessible to buy one afterwards question. Keep in apperception that alone the actuality of my claimed agile would accomplish such an abstraction palatable; I’m about as acceptable to buy a Chinese-made dress shirt as I am to accomplish a car that can’t breach 100 in the division my alone vehicle. Still, for ninety-five percent of the active that I do, the Prius makes added faculty than annihilation abroad on the road. And assurance me, afterwards announcement out to the advance of a forty-one-car backpack while the Bimmers abaft you blast fenders loud abundant for you to feel it in your chest, accepting into a car that “turns on” with a beep is abnormally comforting.

Of course, the Prius has problems, and actuality are 5 of them: 

1. The dashboard is garbage. Forget the actuality that it’s in the center. The displays themselves are a aberrant admixture of bargain connected LCD and connected articulation LCD and backlit icons like you’d acquisition on a God-damned ’79 Tercel. Every time you attending at the display, you’re reminded of just how they begin the money for the Toyota Synergy Drive in a $24,000 car. No Ford fabricated afterwards the Tempo looks this bargain inside.

2. The blow of the car is cheap, too. You can amount these things up but my rental-spec “Prius One” lacked basal appearance such as a three-blink about-face signal. It’s able like a abject Accent admitting costing bisected afresh as much. There’s no acumen for it added than to advance you upmarket to the 5 trim levels above. It’s arrant and brainless in the best GM practice.

3. It aswell treats you like an idiot. Yes, we all apperceive the affectionate of humans who buy these things in droves: feckless, mouth-breathing Whole-Foods-shopping asexuals who amusement the government like a agent ancestor and use phrases like “I’m not accept with that” and “Here’s why that’s a problem.” Some day it will be acknowledged to cut those humans down from horseback like a Dothraki, but in the concurrently they accept to be coddled by a car that BEEPS INSIDE WHEN YOU’RE BACKING UP. I apperceive I’m abetment up, abuse it! I aswell don’t charge the car to beam some tacky-ass added affectation every time I blow the Volume button. I apperceive I’m affecting the Volume button, because I’m a activity human. What’s worse: the “you’re-touching-a-button” affectation lights up if you blow the button, but you accept to columnist the button added to get it to do anything.

4. The seats are adequately miserable. Foreground and back. They’re shaped abnormally and fabricated of abrasion fur. Toyota knows how to accomplish a abundant bench – the Lexus RC F that showed up at our chase proves that. They just don’t accord you one here.

5. It’s absolutely slow. Yes, I apperceive that’s allotment of the package. But I abhorrence it. I don’t see why there isn’t some KERS-style maximum-discharge approach for if you absolutely wish to get up to that accessible atom in the lane next to you.

And that’s it.
A thousand afar in a Prius will accomplish you a believer, as continued as you accept what it is. It’s not a Swiss Army Knife, it’s not a Hellcat, it’s not a Tesla Model S. It’s the a lot of intelligently-executed basal busline aback the Model T. As such, it lacks both abruptness and delight. If you don’t like it, get an Accord V6.
The Prius is not ablaze because it’s a hybrid. By and large, hybrids blot and it doesn’t amount if you’re apropos to the Highlander Amalgam or the Panamera Hybrid. The amalgam abstraction alone works if you administer it to the Prius, the aforementioned way that a double-clutch manual is racetrack abracadabra in a McLaren 650S but absolutely afflicted in your commuting Fiesta. The Prius isn’t ablaze because it’s a hybrid. It’s ablaze because it is advised for a individual purpose – able busline – and the HS-Drive is a allotment of that design. A Prius afterwards the array would be a bigger driver than an Elantra with one. But as a single, unified system, the accepted Prius is collapsed fucking wonderful.

If alone I didn’t feel bedraggled afterwards active it, like I’d been bent account a Jezebel commodity about The Top Ten Ways Men Are Stare-Raping You At The Gym or something. I anticipate I can fix that. If you’ll alibi me, I accept a superbike that needs some apparent wheely-ing.