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http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/../photos/data/2/AmericanFlag.jpg How can a car that sells so well, hold up so well, be so hated?
(http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26218)
http://www.youtube.com/v/gsJjZIuF1lg&hl=en&fs=1&Chuck Thomas - CleanMPG (http://cleanmpg.com/) - Oct. 27, 2009

Top Gear's episode that literally shot up the Prius.

In 1996, Toyota and Honda were terrified they had no answer for the EV1. They thought it would be marketed as seriously as the Chevy Volt a full fifteen years later. Not wanting to let California's Zero Emissions law remove them from their market and maybe the entire US, Toyota developed the Prius - Honda the Insight. Neither were EVs - they wanted to have an offering to satisfy CARB. Toyota is infamous for reliable, yet bland vehicles. The shape of the Prius was largely dictated by wind tunnel results. Interestingly, the Prius would eventually look a lot like the Honda CRX (http://www.richardwigstone.com/blog/uploaded_images/prius-and-crx-721131.jpg) after originally resembling the Echo. Toyota so far has not acknowledged accusations of Steven Spielberg or Leonardo DiCaprio as consultants for the Prius design.

This week, Consumer Reports declared the Prius the most dependable family car sold in America (http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/autos/0910/gallery.consumer_reports_most_reliable_cars/3.html), followed by the Ford Fusion which has a hybrid version. So far, no response from Art Spinella, who's executive summary is the Dust to Dust study claiming among other things (http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4235) the Prius durable for only 100,000 miles while the soon to be discontinued H2 Hummer rolls for a stratospheric 300,000 miles. Well before the CR report, a taxi driver in Vancouver (http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/in-the-news/t-cab-drivers-prius-cost-recovered-in-24-months-5426.html) drives two Prius well over 200,000 miles apiece.

Automotive history is replete with lemons such as the Chevy Vega and Ford Pinto, so how can the Prius be included in that list when it's most of the two million hybrids Toyota has sold (http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24725)? People are gullible, but two million? Fooling customers is one thing but why is Nissan licensing Toyota's HSD technology while Ford and Volvo use nearly identical hybrid technology? At most, a few hundred hybrid battery packs have gone bad.

General Motors' US market share from the EV1 intro in 1996 to 2009 has dipped from 31% to 15% while dismissing the hybrid as Toyota's Billion-dollar PR campaign....GM's post-bankruptcy survival is far from assured. While not to be completely discounted, isn't it interesting that people concerned with EMF radiation from hybrids (http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10557) are blogging about it from a monitor? ;) Far less honest than electromagnetic radiation concerns is the falsehood Sudbury has become a toxic dump (http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25139) as bad as Love Canal or Cherynobyl because their nickel mine focused on hybrid batteries when Toyota is 0.4% of their business. And now hybrids are a menace to the blind (http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24866), yet many conventional gasoline cars are nearly as silent.

Do you get the impression some just have a loathing for hybrids, esp. the Prius? For all the diatribe on forums and talk radio only leftists drive the Prius, it's hard to pass off R. James Woolsey, Jr. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._James_Woolsey,_Jr.), Senators Lamar Alexander, Bill Frist, Richard Lugar as socialists. Over a year ago, someone tried to start a forum that would be the FUH2 for the Prius (http://ihatetheprius.com/). After only 100 posts, it was converted to a blog, but no updates since last April and worse website mileage than a Hummer in quicksand.

Does it seem like many of the hybrid objections are reminiscent of grade school boys hating for no particular reason with a low emotional quotient?

Ironically, these haters might stop driving and go zero impact if the only wheels on the road were the Prius.

Hi Chuck:

___I twittered this one as it is positively one of the best News articles you have ever composed. Once it scrolls of the home page, let's move this one to the article section as it is that good imho :)

___Way to go!!!

___Good Luck

___Wayne

Imagine if GM had mass marketed the EV1 from the beginning. Our whole automotive society would have changed. People would be proud of GM. Instead we applaud the Prius for their foresight in taking over our country with dependable and effective transportation.

Don't blame Toyota for winning the game, blame GM for throwing it away. :D - Dale

Imagine if GM had mass marketed the EV1 from the beginning. Our whole automotive society would have changed. People would be proud of GM. Instead we applaud the Prius for their foresight in taking over our country with dependable and effective transportation.

Don't blame Toyota for winning the game, blame GM for throwing it away. :D - Dale

Shoot, imagine if they would have at least just stuck with it instead of selling the patent to those magical nimh batteries that work off to chevron. It looks like the ev1 with the NiMh batteries came out in 1999. That was 10 years ago.

How far have we come in 10 years with automotive technology? Just think, if they didn't cancel the ev1 and sell those patents, there would probably be some sort of EV option at most dealers.

HOWEVER!!!, I wonder if hybrid tech would have died, or not be as far as it is today if the EV thing would have not died in 2003. OR, maybe all the hybrids would be plug-in hybrids instead.

Blame it on low US gas prices which was subsidized to the tilt. Still are I think. Compare to Euro Gas Prices.
History repeats itself. Access to cheap gasoline, brought the demise to the first battery-power cars at the turn of the 20th century.

Nice article Chuck.

This was easy to write after hearing all that's been said about the Prius for years.

Said it before, but this time a bit differently, I wish Toyota did a series of commercials with most of the content I wrote - of course less edgy.

I distinctly remember paying 89 cents/gal in 1999. I was driving a 1994 Toyota pickup-4 cyl mt- which got 24 mpg in the city with no effort and I thought to myself, "why am I driving this" which is why I remember it so well.

The answer of course was I was cheap. Money, and fear of being under the thumb of foreign oil producers is what will get us off oil,not greenness.$$ and national interest are much stronger motivators than"love of planet."
Charlie

As of today, there are 98 anti-Prius groups (http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#!/search/?flt=1&q=prius%20hate&o=69) on Facebook....does this scream lot's of people have issues or what? :(

Any anti-hummer groups Chuck?

This was a very interesting read, but boy GM is probably kicking themselves in the nuts on a daily basis for having sold the EV1. I honestly think GM doesn't look past their wallets, so I'm really not sure how far they will go.

Any anti-hummer groups Chuck? Search in Facebook for anti Hummer, H2, SUV.

Oh crap. I was hoping it'd start failing in a few years so I'd have to get a PHEV instead. ;)

In nine days my Prius turns one year old. Only problem was a loose plug in the drivers window control panel. Other than that zero problems or defects in the first 8300 miles. :)

I was one of those on the fence watching what was going to happen to all those Hybrid battery packs after a few years. Funny thing happened there were no problems popping up with all those Prius battery packs five, six, seven, years out. When I started seeing hundreds of Prius running around with over 100K miles and no problems, the uncertainty vanished and I was on the Hybrid bandwagon. I remember telling people in late 2008 the next car I bought was going to be a hybrid.

I saw the war between Beta and VHS, Laser Disks and a few other flops. I didn't want to be one of those guinea pigs that got burned buying the newest fad out there, then have it discontinued and be the owner of an orphan car.

Vandalism befalls Hummers (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/17/AR2007071701808.html) and hybrids (http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/09/prius_vandalism.html) alike.

http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2007/07/17/PH2007071701882.jpghttp://blog.niot.net/blog-images/22_Sep/first-hummer-now-prius-hybrids-targeted-by-vandals.jpg

In 1996, Toyota and Honda were terrified they had no answer for the EV1. They thought it would be marketed as seriously as the Chevy Volt a full fifteen years later. Not wanting to let California's Zero Emissions law remove them from their market and maybe the entire US, Toyota developed the Prius - Honda the Insight.

Wrong. They weren't terrified of the EV-1. They were terrified of the PNGV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNGV). The Big 3 got free cash from the government to make 80mpg family cars, who in turn built some flashy concept vehicles, and then...nothing. Before they got to the build nothing part, Toyota & Honda asked to be part of the program but were turned down because they were foreign companies. Seeing the concepts, they went to their own government who gave them money which then turned into the Prius and Insight.

Blame it on low US gas prices which was subsidized to the tilt. Still are I think. Compare to Euro Gas Prices.
History repeats itself. Access to cheap gasoline, brought the demise to the first battery-power cars at the turn of the 20th century.

I've never heard of US gas prices being subidized. I know we are taxed. We buy crued the same as Europe and gasoline prices from the refineries are on par. However, Europe has a massive gas tax to discourage large use of gas.

Hi Sledge:

Indeed. And what Toyota and Honda did with those Japanese Inc. subsidies was prepare for the future with the most fuel efficient automobiles we can buy here in North America. The US’ F, GM and C sold off the deal in exchange for the ZEV removal and FFV credits :rolleyes:

Wayne

Well, the Prius' exceedingly high reliability is one of the reasons I think I'll be buying one. As conventional cars go I'd probably pick the Matrix, but the combination of fuel savings and (marginally) better reliability (mostly due to the raft of problems with Matrix 5MTs) the ongoing cost of ownership is going to be more or less the same. Might as well get the Prius!

Well honestly, I have to say that most people have a hate case for the prius not because of the car itself but because of it's owners. A lot of prius owners seem to have something of a superiority complex (much the way BMW, Camaro, and Shelby Mustang drivers tend to act). Secondarily...a lot of folks just plain think it's ugly.

As for me, I have never cared for the prius. Too many computers and too much plastic for a guy who likes steel and carburetors...and yet despite myself, I have become obsessed with the thing lately...after all, it has proven itself more than amply reliable, and I'm nothing if not appreciative of a well-built and engineered piece of kit.

I think the so-called "smug problem" or "superiority complex" is at least as much perception by others (in other words, repressed guilt on the part of the "perceiver") as it is reality.

Is there on-the-road behavior by Prius owners that leads you to observe that they think they're better (and what behavior could that be?), or is this based on actual face-to-face conversations?

Back in Jan 2008, I reported to the CleanMPG staff a site named www.ihatetheprius.com

Pictures of a monster truck running over a Prius and hippie, etc.

After it peaked at 35 members, it was converted to a blog - not exactly the antithesis of www.fuh2.com

Now the site is extinct.

:biglol: :biglol: :biglol:

I think the so-called "smug problem" or "superiority complex" is at least as much perception by others (in other words, repressed guilt on the part of the "perceiver") as it is reality.

Is there on-the-road behavior by Prius owners that leads you to observe that they think they're better (and what behavior could that be?), or is this based on actual face-to-face conversations?

Neither, really. But there's a smugness about celebrities, for instance, who drive the Prius and who go on and on about how great they are for saving the environment.

On second thought, there was a face-to-face that really set me on that opinion: one of my friends in high school. His mother bought a Prius I the first year they came out, and she would sneak in snide little remarks about how superior the car was vs. the '68 Mustang I drove at the time.

Hi All:

The smugness discussion aside, the Prius is one extremely reliable vehicle plus has the added benefit that it allows many 50 + mpg combined. What other midsize offers half of that other than another hybrid. Namely the FFH.

If everyone owned one, we would not be importing any oil for our transportation needs. For diesel trucks and chemicals etc., sure but not for yours or my basic transportation.

I wish most owned them instead of the small percentage that do today :(

Good Luck

Wayne