Like it says. Discuss.

http://www.toyota.com/about/tomorrow/ads/hsd.html

isnt "rich hippies" oxymoronic? i thought hippies were to practice material asceticism in hopes of making the environment a better place..........

Ironic that this discussion comes up; I was going to go test drive one earlier this afternoon, but no Toyota dealerships were open that had one available.

According to the sticker it gets 55 mpg city and 51 mpg highway. Based on gas prices going up to 2.35 a gallon by the end of the month, that could save me $650/year based on my driving habits over my current car that gets ~30mpg highway.

gas is going up to WHAT?

Well, it's up to $2.10 here in KC, and there was a CNN article a few days ago that said gas would go up 25c/gal by the end of March.

Huttah:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/04/news/ec ... /index.htm

My car cost me $2500 (used of course) and gets 30mpg city / 40mpg highway. Not to mention upkeep costs are very low along with insurance, it has far, far less to go wrong becasue it is much simpler and it dosen't have a few hundred pounds of toxic batteries onboard.

I think hybrids are a good idea, but IMO i'd just buy a very small non hybrid car which is cheaper and gets only a few MPG less.
I did drive a Pirus and it was cool....but i just backed it up a few feet.

How much "oomph" did it have?

I'm not one of those people that likes to go from 0-60 in 3 seconds or whatever, but if I tell my car to move ASAP I don't want to be sitting there with my thumb up my ass.

my first car was about that milage, but cost 1600 and got totaled in less than a year (other dudes fault, really), but was great. id have to have a prius for like 20 years for it to pay itself off with gas, but i think the maitinence (sp) would be pricier

It seemed OK, but i only moved it a few feet as i said....the insturment cluser was really weird, along with the gearshfit lever. In theory with 2 powerplants it should have good power, but i didn't take it out on the highway.

If you want a powerful hybrid, get the new Honda V6 Accord hybrid....a V6 Accord is a pretty powerful car (for a midsize sedan/coupe anyway) anyway, with the electric motor to help out with acceleration they have even more oomph.

My family test drove a Prius when my Dad was looking for a new car. It didn't have very good acceleration at the time, but that was about 2 years ago. But it made getting on highways where there were the real short merging lanes of death near impossible. But other than that it was a great car. Once they've gotten those hybrid engines performing a little better, those will be very good cars.

Hmm...the spec sheet says the Prius has a net power output of 110 hp. Seems...not so good. And I do deal with a short merge lane of death both on my way to work and on my way home.

my first car (^^^^^^^^) had 88 hp....... thats a slight improvement

What did you drive, a geo or something?

Mine has all of 100hp....but it is low geared and has a 5-speed so it can at least get out of its own way but nothing else ('97 Saturn btw). I bought it for the gas mileage and realiabity, not speed, and it does good at both of those.
I have a truck with 300hp at home if i want to go fast.

I think the Accord hybrids are pricey, up towards the 30k range and the gas mileage is only 37/29 highway/city, which is still high, but not high enough for a hybrid IMO.