Toyota has just put the third generation of its Prius hybrid on sale in the UK.
Sales started on 1st August and within days the company announced it already had 2,000 orders for the car. People, it seems, are suddenly taken with the need to be green.
I can see other less expensive, and possibly equally as clean, ways of getting about without going down the hybrid route. The Toyota, for instance, is not the only car to emit less than 100 g / km of CO2, for a start.
Volvo is now going after hybrids. It says it is iniquitous that high polluting Lexus hybrids can avoid the London congestion charge yet its 104 g / km diesel models are driven by people who have to pay up. It has a very valid point.
In the meantime, that charge inequality makes hybrids extra valuable as they allow Londoners who must drive into the capital to save £8 a day. It skews the market. But there are other reason for liking the hybrid Prius – Toyota points out that less than 10 per cent of all the Prius models sold have needed major attention to their brakes because the regenerative system that captures energy as the car decelerates does much of the work pads and discs did, providing another cost saving.
Good news for you if you fancy a Prius but can’t afford a new one is that the difference in appearance between the second and third generations is far less marked than that between first and second – the first Prius was a quirky looking saloon but the second more acceptable. So you won’t look like are driving something from yesterday if your Prius dates from the end of 2003. But it will still cost you more than £7,000.
If it’s not so cheap when it comes to buying it, nor is it when it comes to running it. Toyota makes some pretty big claims for the economy figures for this car but I could get nowhere near them in everyday use. Realistic fuel consumption is around 47 – 50 mpg and you will do better with many turbodiesels.
Even so, I can see good reasons for buying this car or its only other competitors, from Honda. The big advantage of the Toyota is that the Prius became a hatchback, which many UK drivers prefer, long before the new Honda Insight arrived. It’s not the most practical hatch owing to its slippery shape and need to accommodate the battery pack but it is still a useful size.
The Toyota makes an amazing driving experience. It had a 1.5 litre petrol engine (now increased to 1.8) allied to an electric motor that produces as much power as some 1.2 litre petrol cars. So you effectively have a car with two engines.
When you step off the line smartly, both motors power the car so you get a very respectable 0-62 mph time of 10.9 seconds. When you are just trickling along in traffic on the level, it’s the electric motor that does the work, running off a secondary battery pack.
This recharges whenever you brake - the motor turns into a generator - and also on downhill runs if you select the B for brake position on the selector for the automatic gearbox. In this respect the Toyota is more complicated to drive than the Honda, on which you can feel engine braking every time you lift off. In the Toyota you have to think to select it.
Service intervals are 20,000 miles, like other Toyotas, with an interim check every 10,000 miles. If you are worried about the hybrid technology, the components are warranted for eight years or 100,000 miles and the car has a good warranty history.
An early Prius saloon on an 00X is now cheap but you may prefer to take a 2004 hatch with the rest of its warranty for about £8,000 upwards for the T3. A top grade T Spirit would be about £9,000 at the same age but 58 plate cars are around £16,400 – back from around £21,000 new. Not so long ago it would have been worth almost list price at that age so things are easing for used car buyers as availability of new cars improves.
Maurice Hardy
