Hello everyone! I haven't been on this site for some time. Well, I have been, but haven't signed in, in a long time. The main reason I left was that my 2000 Toyota echo died a horrible electronic death and I was able to pick up my parents 2008 Ford Edge for next to nothing. I have been driving it for the past 3 years and not getting anything but bad mileage. Well, I'm "happy" to say the Edge is on its last legs, and I have narrowed the the new vehicle chose to two vehicles. The 2016 Ford C-max and the 2016 Toyota Prius V. Since I do work for Toyota, at the assembly plant in Cambridge, making the corolla. I am heavily leaning towards the Prius V. I am wondering if anyone has experience or knowledge about the V? How is it to hypermile? Is it simular to the regular Prius? What kinda numbers have people managed to get? Basically any info is good at this point. Thank you for any info and I look forward to rejoining this group regularly in a few months when I finally have my Prius V!!
Hi Echoman: Welcome back and what a fantastic ride to come back with!!! Numbers? Oh boy. Think Prius and you have all you need. Wayne
Wow. As a fellow Echo owner I am shocked and dismayed that happened to you. The V is very, very good. It will be more akin to the Echo than the Edge in terms of its driver inputs, etc. should be light steering, fairly soft ride with no pretense of being a sporting machine, which of course makes a lot of sense for what it is. It seems to have good but not great space efficiency, ditto for the interior feel. Still, for the economy returned on its versatility, I will bet you would be very happy with the V.
My v gets EPA MPG driven normally in a mix of city and highway, 20F to 100F over 30k miles with the only expense in 4 years being for wiper blades that were just replaced because I felt like it. I use no tricks. It is bigger and heavier than the classic hatchback Prius and I don't expect it to get as good MPG. More utility though. It does exactly what I expected it to do when I bought it, no surprises. 41.9 MPG average. BTW, the car is a v, not a V.
I have some experience to share, with a 2014 Prius v Three. It's my wife's primary for the past two years. Fuel economy is superb. I believe the EPA numbers for the Prius v are understated relative to its competitors. (I recommend checking out the thread on "steady state" fuel economy testing; it will give you a true picture of Prius vs C-Max; I would caution against using only EPA data.) We've gotten 42 mpg, despite living in Minnesota where its below freezing for half the year, and that my wife prefers not to use even basic hypermiler techniques. When I've driven it (without a Scanguage), I've found 50+ mpg to be easily achievable under normal urban freeway/side streets driving. The Prius v is slightly heavier than the base Prius, so you've got slightly slower acceleration. This can be compensated by thinking farther ahead, but is worth noting. You can fit tall adult males in the back seat comfortably. I suspect that won't work in the C-Max. If you want to haul stuff, the rear storage space folds down and makes it easy to get a lot of whatever back there (lumber, IKEA boxes, etc etc). Bulletproof sleep-at-night reliability.
