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 It was supposed to be a day trip to the
mountains, but I didn’t get up in time, so my girlfriend, Tracie, and I ended
up driving down the coast, spending just half an hour on the beach before
driving home. Still, it gave us a chance to test out the Toyota Prius I-Tech
(automatic version of course – I like to keep my left hand free for other uses).
I particularly wanted to review this car because it’s a hybrid – that is, it
uses both electricity and petrol – and is therefore more ecologically sound
than your average motor.
From the outside it looks much the same as
other cars, but once you get inside, there are substantial differences. First
up, the Prius uses a ‘smart’ keycard system to start up. You put the card in a
slot, place your foot on the brake, then press a button to your right. A small
indicator lights up on the dashboard telling you the car is ‘ready’, and you
then have to take off the handbrake – which is not as simple as it sounds. The
Prius doesn’t have a standard handbrake; instead, where the clutch would be on a
manual car is a pedal which you depress with your foot, a red light appears on
the dashboard indicating the handbrake has been engaged and then you press a
button marked ‘P’. If it sounds a little complicated, it’s absolutely fine once
you get used to it.
Another notable feature of the Prius is
what Tracie called the ‘cockpit experience’ – in other words, the dashboard,
complete with a mini-computerised screen, has been made to resemble the cockpit
in an aeroplane. The mini-screen controls and displays a vast array of information,
from the air-conditioning, heating and audio controls through to advanced features
such as indicating when the car is using petrol and when it’s using electricity
as well as how much petrol is being consumed, Bluetooth connections and the
GPRS system.
As someone who has no sense of direction
and gets lost easily, I’m all for GPRS systems, but Tracie and I both felt like
we needed a degree in engineering to use the one on the Prius. I can tell you
that if you press all the buttons, lots of knives and forks appear on the map –
I think this is telling you where restaurants are located. We didn’t manage to work
out how to program a journey, then get the car to ‘speak’ to us and tell us
exactly how to get there, but apparently you can do this, so it’s definitely a
high-tech vehicle.
The Prius is very smooth to drive and one
of its major strengths is its minimal consumption of petrol. It’s weird when
you’re at traffic lights because the car goes completely silent and you think
it’s stalled – it hasn’t, it’s just switched to being powered by electricity,
making it perfect for city journeys where you’re stopping and starting all the
time. In our 160km round trip, we used a very small amount of petrol, which was
most impressive (Toyota
estimates consumption as 4.4litres per 100km).
Downsides to the Prius? Leather seats.
While some may find them a ‘luxury’, I don’t and the use of leather is hardly
eco-friendly. Also, Tracie found the seats a bit uncomfortable as the head
rests don’t tilt forward.
But that said, Toyota is to be
congratulated for being one of the few manufacturers to jump on the hybrid
bandwagon, and I enjoyed driving the car – a particularly high point was
cruising down the freeway at 110kmh singing along at top volume to
‘Supercalifragilisticexpalidocious’ from Mary
Poppins. Well, we are gay.
Toyota Prius I-Tech starts at
$46,900.
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