My hire car experince

[perthcamry]

My Hire Car experience in a Prius.

Well I got upgraded to a Prius through Thrifty when I went to Brisbane to help out work there recently.

I was well happy with this upgrade as it would give me a chance to check the beast out. At first it was a little unusual to get my head around it. With low speed around the airport it’s a little unusual creeping though on electric once the motor is warm. On the open road it was bloody hard not to speed. Without a conventional automatic and fairly quite mechanical system you loose track of speed. The car is going much faster than you would guess.

After a few days I got used to its abilities. I could push the EV button and creep up the road to my mother’s home silently on the electric motor. It was also great at the end of the clogged freeway to drive in stop start driving and see 0.0 liters being used.

How is the rest of the car, well it’s not a gimmick car, airbags, ABS and seemed to have stability control (which I found out on a roundabout) . Handling and ride were quite good, a lot better than I would have thought. Brakes were great.

I took it up Mt Tambourine and although the fuel on the way up looked startling at over 10 L /100k but you have to remember coming down the mountain it was on 0.0 L and recharging the batteries very nicely.

Up the mountain there was a fair amount of go and great handling I found. With the limitations of having my mother in the car so I was not pushing it too far but she admitted her corolla would not go around the coroners as well.

Fuel consumption you ask…… just s smidge under 5L per 100k. A few others had a drive and loved it. If I had no car at the moment I would very possibly go for one. The packaging was great loads of room in the back. It’s a real car with great packaging and 5 star crash safety rating. The only downside is the cost and the image. Once people had been in it they loved it too.

[t0y0ta]

no pictures??? <_<

lucky you! I might use my flybuys points and hire a prius!

[mulla]

Totally agree on the price front, unless you're an environmentalist it takes years to recoup that price difference through fuel savings alone.

But nicely done on the review, never thought the Prius would be that good of a drive.

[akuma]

how fast is fast? 0-100 in 10secs?

[qkslvr]

how fast is fast? 0-100 in 10secs?

If you need to ask that, the Prius is definitely not the car for you. LOL

[Zeus]

Truth be told that if I had the money, I'd buy one. But they're not THAT expensive are they? I've seen brand new Prius' selling on carsales.com.au for about $39,990. Okay so about 40k, but that's only a bit more than a Camry and less than an Aurion.

And yes, a Prius is not a hoon's car.

[qkslvr]

Truth be told that if I had the money, I'd buy one. But they're not THAT expensive are they? I've seen brand new Prius' selling on carsales.com.au for about $39,990. Okay so about 40k, but that's only a bit more than a Camry and less than an Aurion.

And yes, a Prius is not a hoon's car.

that's expensive when considering a used 350Z in reasonable condition would cost you $45K - on road. besides the fancy LCD screen and the novelty of having an eletric motor, you're really paying for the "green image". The fuel saving is not that far from a deisel engine car.

[Zeus]

Yeah I love the 350Z's, but I'd probably still have the Prius, and let's face it, the Prius would probably outlive the Nissan. With the Prius you're also paying for the whole "car of the future" image too. With a dash that looks like a TARDIS control panel.