Living with a... Toyota Prius (Month 3)

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Month 1 | Wow, Toyota... where did this come from? Month 2 | Long distance battery anxiety Month 3 | I’m doing PHEV wrong… or am I?

I'm a 44-year old Geordie with a wife and teenage kids and a dog and a mortgage and other responsibilities. But I'm also a man desperately trying to maintain the facade of being young and interesting... yep, those are Crocs in the picture. Unnacceptable. At weekends I use my car to take the kids to their social engagements, or to take parts of my drumkit to band practice, or to take myself to places like the Metty in Gateshead (the Metro Centre - Europe's greatest shopping experience... back in the '90s, anyways.) Sometimes I drive to the AT offices too (Manchester/London), which means I can enjoy getting vexed about the truly atrocious standard of driving on the UK's motorways. Like any young and interesting person would.

Mark says: “This thing could properly alienate the vast majority of existing Prius clientele. That’s absolutely wild. I love Toyota for doing it.”

How much has it cost you?

Nothing yet. We’re still on our first tank of fuel – about 200 miles into it. But we’re already picking up a Jekyll and Hyde characteristic when it comes to fuel efficiency; we’ve done full round trips without touching the fuel tank (quoted efficiency:199.9mpg), and we’ve done ones without touching the electric motor, because the battery was flat (quote efficiency: 52mpg). That's #PHEVlife for you.

Where have you been?

Standard day-to-day driving for the Prius so far. Nothing too taxing. No family-of-four road trips. No long motorway journeys. Not even the petrol station. The two weeks we’ve had with the Prius so far have been more about acclimatising to a car that’s COMPLETELY DIFFERENT to anything that’s had this name on the tailgate before. It’s quite an acclimatisation.

What have you been carrying?

A sense that Toyota isn’t getting anywhere near enough credit for what it’s done with the Prius here. If Michael Owen was “brave” for thowing an apple into a bin from the setee at his mum’s house, then Toyota making the new Prius like this shows indescribable courage. They’ve taken a car synonymous with mundanity, the default Uber, a car whose name is a firmly established euphemism for “bland fuel efficiency”, and made it… a sports car. They've tried to, anyways. Touche, Toyota. Touche.

Delights

It’s genuinely really good to drive. Toyota’s racing department, GR - a group responsible for one of THE most exciting hatchbacks of the last few decades - definitely spent a lot of time with this thing before it hit the shops. It changes direction quickly, the steering has ‘feel’, the body stays flat and true through a corner, it’s quite quick, the brakes feel natural, the driving position is low-slung… all the qualities you’d associate with a fun driving experience, they’re all here to some extent. In this, a Prius. A PRIUS!

Frustrations

All the qualities you’d associate with a Toyota hybrid, they're all here to some extent. But mainly the noise. The dreadful noise when the engine is being worked. Our Nicola came home after driving it and called it “that noise machine”. Mind, our Sammy asked if we were taking “the Celica” into town the other day. Because it’s a Toyota that looks like a sportscar, innit. Our Mya, meanwhile, said “ugh brother, what the WHAT is this thing?!” I think she's upset because, having endured a car she described as "like being driven around in a tennis ball" for six months, she now has to fold herself into the back of this yellow door wedge thing. Kids, eh?

This month in a nutshell

I NEVER thought I’d be interested in a Prius. But here we are. Nice one, Toyota.

Mark says: “Typical. I finally get to do a motorway thing in a petrol car (it’s usually electric these days), and I still get battery anxiety…”

How much has it cost you?

£48.44. That paid for exactly 28.22 litres of fuel at Wetherby Services at an extortionate 158.9p per litre. It’s important because it can tell us how efficient this plug-in hybrid thing is on a motorway. Plug-in hybrid things usually have terrible fuel economy on a motorway. So let’s see…

Where have you been?

Coventry. I went there to drive the new MGS5. It’s very nice. Click here if you'd like to read about it. This would be the first long journey in the Prius, and the 28.22 litres is the amount of unleaded it took to do exactly 324.1 miles.

What have you been carrying?

Just me and a little overnight bag. So, maths: 28.22 litres is 6.2 gallons. 324.1 miles using 6.3 gallons is 52.3mpg. That’s not bad for any petrol car, but it’s pathetic compared to the ridiculous 565mpg that Toyota is allowed to claim for the car, thanks to the WLTP efficiency test. It shouldn’t be allowed, really. The test obviously isn’t fit for purpose for plug-in hybrids, which effectively have a cheat device because of their batteries and electric motors; saying a hybrid can do hundreds of miles per gallon is like a person saying they’re the fastest runner on the planet because they won a 100m sprint wearing bionic legs. (PS. I did this without fully charging the battery, It was about 1/3 full and stayed that way throughout.)

Delights

Toyota has tried to make the Prius ‘sporty’ by giving it a massive power hike (over the last Prius), a low-slung driving position and firm suspension. It’s worked. The Prius really is fun to drive. But thanks to these qualities it could potentially also suck on the motorway, jiggling its occupants about like the sentient jellies they are. But… it doesn’t. Well, it does a bit, but not that much. It’s comfy, stable, quite quiet... just nice.

Frustrations

It doesn’t have a wireless phone charging pad. I thought it did because there’s a phone-sized tray in the centre console, and underneath that tray it says “#hiddencompartment” with the hashtag and everything. For some reason. Thing is, I didn’t bother checking this before I set off for Coventry, and I didn’t take a charging cable with me, so by the time I was on my way home my phone is nearly dead, and I’m running out of fuel, and I need Apple Pay. (No cards with me either.) So now I’m all anxious about battery range in a car on a motorway. Typical. I finally get to do a motorway thing in a petrol car (it’s usually electric these days), and I still get battery anxiety. I ended up paying for fuel with my phone at 1%, 90 miles from home, on the precipice of disaster. I’m confused though, because according to some YouTube videos, US-spec Priuses have a phone charger integrated into the little slot next to the gear selector. And according to AI, wireless phone charging is standard on UK cars. I’ve asked Toyota the question. I’ll let you know next time.

This month in a nutshell

I’m underwhelmed, anxious and befuddled… but I’m still a big fan of the Prius. Back to top

Month 3 | I’m doing PHEV wrong… or am I?

Mark says: “Turns out that what I’ve always suspected is almost certainly true… people aren’t plugging their PHEVs in.”

How much has it cost you?

A tank of fuel or so this month. The Prius has a (canny small) 40-litre fuel tank that costs about fifty quid to fill up. The MPGs are improving too, I’ve noticed. It’s showing 64mpg now, in contrast to the 50mpg it gave us on a big fat motorway trip last month.

Where have you been?

Just doing the rounds as a to-work-and-back runabout thing. Rote journeys, if you will. But we also have an electric car on the go at the moment, hogging the Pod Point, so we’re not really using the Prius properly… or are we?

What have you been carrying?

A flat battery. I know I’m supposed to keep it topped up – me more so than most, what with my responsibility as a top tier professional consumer journalist. But actually, I’ve always suspected that most PHEVs are used just like this by most owners for the majority of the time. Like they’re a standard petrol car, that is. Like, who’s spending £1,000+ to have a home wall box fitted so that they can get a few miles more from a tank of fuel in their fancy hybrid, especially when they’ve bought said hybrid as a company car tax workaround. And who’s stopping at a service station to plug their PHEV in for 80p per kWh, when they could just stick a bit of petrol in the thing and be away? This is getting long, let’s shoehorn the rest into the next section…

Delights

It transpires that, statistically, I’m correct. Delightful. In 2020, the International Council on Clean Transportation studied the use of 100,000 PHEVs worldwide. They looked specifically at how many miles PHEVs are doing using the battery alone. On average it’s 37%, or 20% if you break it down to company car drivers, compared to 69% in fuel efficiency lab tests. A 2021 Europe-specific study found that PHEVs emit 350% greater CO2 emissions than they advertise, on average. Some of this will be down to the way PHEVs work. They use their batteries less in real-world driving than they do in the carefully constructed lab tests. But much of it is because they’re not being plugged in regularly. Ergo, I feel better about not plugging my PHEV in that much.

Frustrations

If you read last month’s update you’ll know that I was vexed about the lack of a wireless phone charger in UK Priuses, so I asked Toyota. Seems Toyota doesn’t really know why it’s not an option in the UK either, and I’m not bothered enough to go down that rabbit hole. I have cables. Still vexing though, not least because it’s a cool wireless phone charger, as wireless phone chargers go.

This month in a nutshell

I don’t plug in my plug-in Prius enough, but it turns out I’m just like everyone else.