Fremont!

I had to drive to the Fremont area (close enough to Toledo to warrant a shout out to loyal reader, Chris' Mom!) today to conduct a vendor audit for a used oil transporter and transfer facility. This time I snagged a Toyota Prius from the rental company. I know that this is not exciting to some of you, especially those who own one (Katy), but considering I've spent 5 minutes in any kind of hybrid vehicle and have never driven one, it was pretty exciting for me!

It was exciting for about 10 minutes.....

First, this car is just one great big blind spot. Thankfully the mirrors are located in a way that you can see behind you because looking over your shoulder will get you nothing. The rear window has a solid piece of car going right across the middle which annoyed me to no end. The windshield is unobstructed, but it's weird how they've set up the control panel and it made me have a bit of a weird optical illusion thing going on, which I eventually adjusted to.

Second, they've tried to gizmo the vehicle to no end. There's a little computer thing that displays your gas usage, mileage and how much electricity you've generated. Kinda neat but distracting for awhile. It was also the thing that controlled the radio and temperature. When I wanted to change radio stations the blasted thing was not withing comfortable reaching length. Could be a short person problem, not necessarily the car's fault.

Third, it drives weird. Fortunately, the car tells you when it is on because you wouldn't know it otherwise. It's all silent and absent of vibrations. This also happens at stop lights which I found to be really distressing. I found that if you turned the radio up loud enough, the car would vibrate and I wouldn't notice the lack of engine vibration :) The car feels really heavy. It actually handled pretty well, but I was always surprised when it did just because it felt like a tank.

The breaks are also strange. They feel all grindy and if that was going on in my car, I would think I needed new breaks. I'm assuming it has to do with the electricity generating mechanisms.

But by far the most annoying thing was the shifting between electric and gas. There was a noticeable hesitation at times when trying to accelerate and the car was trying to shift over to gas. This panicked me once when trying to punch it to beat a car at an intersection. It was also a bit distressing to take your foot off to coast a little when driving and then re-applying the gas. If it was a long enough time period it would switch over to electric and then back to gas and it would feel like the car was shifting. It gave me the impression that the transmission was going bad every time it happened, then I would remember what the deal was.

I also didn't enjoy the idea of driving around with NiMH batteries in the rear end. While Toyota says it's just about impossible to release the battery electrolites, I know that is inacurrate. While working for the EPA our emergency response guys where involved in two accidents where the batteries did leak everywhere and created quite a problem for the firemen, medics and the environmental folks. Toyota even has an Emergency Response guide discussing how to handle the situation.

I didn't really like this car, but apparently I averaged 51.9 mpg and went almost 400 miles on 6 gallons of gas. After I realized that, I liked it a bit better.