bish blog

So the Prius has got 58,905 miles on the clock and has to go back at 60,000. What to do, what to do…?

I was recently asked by someone on Facebook if I could recommend the Prius as a company car. So many Facebook folk had simply laughed and poured scorn on the idea, but then they had never owned on. Most had never sat in one. At least I could offer some real-world insight (oops, nod to the cmpetition from Honda). So, brief summation, good and bad.

Firstly, I didn’t get the super high mileage that was advertised – 65mpg – but then I never have got the rated economy on any car I’ve run. I fear I’m an anorak and spreadsheet my fuel use, so I can tell you with utter conviction that rather than 65mpg I’ve got over fifty miles per gallon on average since day one, and my last ten fills average 54mpg. I do a lot of motoway miles, by the way. Mostly with cruise control at 77mph. Now, folk will crow and tell you that they get fifty from their [insert your preferred wagon here], but when asked no-one can prove it beyond the awful inaccuracy of the trip computer. They are all diesels too, and this is petrol, and have you noticed the pump prices are drifting apart again right now? The new third-gen Prius is advertised as capable of 72mpg and a work colleague is getting mid-sixties.

This Prius is not gutless, but if you are any sort of a petrol-head you’d disagree. Pushed, 0-60 is the same as my old 2.0 diesel 307SW at about ten seconds. Running, even on motorways, is reasonably quiet but if you accelerate hard the engine goes straight to sewing machine mode as it chooses the most effective rpm. On the other hand, at slow speeds it is curiously silent and of course is likewise silent at the traffic lights – to the point you can listen to other cars stereos and even passenger conversations as they speak over their own engine noise! The third-gen Prius up’s the engine from 1500cc to 1.8 litre, which apparently makes motorway work more economical.

Folk whitter on about the small boot size, assuming for some reason that the boot is where the batteries are – they’re under the rear seats. The boot in fact comes in several layers – under the tonneau cover is a large enough boot for three good sized suitcases. Beneath that is a plastic boot big enough to take my three laptops with ease, as well as the toolkit, red triangle and fire extinguisher etc. And finally, under all that is the space-saver wheel. Now admittedly, this does make it hard if you get a puncture when fully loaded, but that has seldom happened to me.

Others have commented on the recent Toyota recalls, but if you look to the actual government recall lists you’ll find every manufacturer on there. Toyota was noticeable only by having so few recalls to date.

The killer is of course the company car tavable benfit, which is miserly. While the government maintains the tax advantage on low emission vehicles (89g/km… and this is a five seater able to fit adults into every seat remember) then the car is about a third cheaper to me than any other comparable vehicle (I’m not at liberty to run my own vehicle for work and have to lease a car on the three-year-or-60,000-miles system).

Finally, over the thirty months and 60,000 miles I’ve not had one failure of the car aside from punctures. It’s been wonderfully relaxing driving an automatic – if a tad boring. When it snowed earlier this year and all the BMW drivers phoned in car-sick the Prius sailed through. In fact I tried on a private road to make it go daft in the snow and it simply wouldn’t. I even did an emergency brake manouver in the snow while cornering at speed, and it just slowed to a stop in very good order. Only once did I make it beep at me!

So yes, I’m getting rid of the Prius… I’ve ordered another Prius.

I’ve had the Toyota Prius for a whole year now (as of 12th December) and I thought I’d make a note of how it’s been. Many folk have asked what it’s like driving a hybrid and what the economy is, and now it’s time to ‘fess up.
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Got my tax code through for the next financial year the other day. The taxable benefit for my company car seemed a little high at £2355 and I phoned the Tax Office to query it. I was told in no uncertain terms that my company had updated the files to show that I now ran a hybrid car and that the taxable benefit was correct, so I left it at that. Today I got a new notice, with a taxable benefit of £1209! Glee. The fuel economy may not be much better than my old diesel estate, but there are certainly savings to be made running a hybrid.

Ok, so I’ve just ordered the Prius, a T4; I didn’t want to pay the not inconsiderable extra for the T-Spirit options. The extras were Sat-Nav (I have a perfectly fine and transportable Tom-Tom), the Parking Fairy (which after a couple of dozen attempts on private land has failed utterly to park, more often driving into the kerb or the cones I put out to simulate other vehicles – like I’m going to try that in the real world!) and Bluetooth connectivity for the mobile phone.

Now the Bluetooth would have been a real benefit as I take a lot of calls when driving. My area manager agreed that I could have the Bluetooth option fitted at his cost because those calls are all work related and necessary. But Toyota, they say no… Apparently (and we only got to the bottom of this after going through the Toyota Knowledge Base with helpful young lady at HQ) the T4 has an up-spec’d stereo which is incompatible with the Bluetooth interface! It’s an option on the T3 and standard on the T-Spirit, but not available at all on the T4 which, cleverer readers will recall, I’ve just ordered.

So. Nice shiny new car… bloody great lump of car-kit screwed to the dash. 100 ppoints (prat points – a valuable indicator of usefulness, or not) to Toyota designers.

So today a predication appears to have come closer to truth. The planet’s ability to soak up CO2 is being compromised. As we pump ever more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere the carbon sinks we rely on to at least slow the onslaught of climate change are acting chaotically. Less CO2 is being absorbed by the sea, even as we fell the remaining carbon sinks on land and strip mine and burn ever more fossil fuel… Sometimes it’s like watching a friend being sandpapered to death.

And for all my intention, I admit my own hopeless hypocracy. My car is due for replacement in the next thousand or so miles, and I’m way behind selecting a new one. ‘A-ha,’ I hear you cry, ‘why not just keep the old one?!’ Well I would if I could, but it’s a company car and company policy requires the change. And I can’t do my work without a car.

My current bus is a Peugeot 307SE SW, a diesel estate that returns a fair 46mpg (that’s measured; imperial gallons filled and miles driven) but I want to do something better with the new one. I’ve been looking at two vehicles mainly – a Mini Cooper Diesel and a Toyota Prius.

The Mini (ok, a lot bigger than the Mini I owned many years ago, you could almost call it a Maxi if there hadn’t been one of those already too!) is a fun car, and also advertises itself as doing 72mpg with 104g/km emissions. It is however overpriced and small and I may suffer with the bucket seating (being an olde farte).

The Toyota is, I think, a love it or loathe it car. There are websites filled with happy geeky Prius owners regaling each other with their tremendous fuel economies, and others reviling the car for the environmental desert that is the source of it’s batteries. As a car it has all the bells and whistles but perhaps the drive is less exciting than the Mini…

I’ve got both booked for test drives, but a large part of me wishes I could cycle to work, or keep my old Pug. At the end of the day I guess I hate making decisions!