Recently I bought a 2005 Toyota Prius, because I wanted a high-mileage car, with a possible world oil shortage coming up. So far it has been a good car. It is quiet, and sometimes you don't even notice it is around. It gets about 44 miles per gallon, the most of any car that I have owned. And I don't have to get keys out to unlock the car.
But the car is not quite as good as what it was hyped up to be. At the first refill, my Prius registered 44.1 miles per gallon. Fairly good, and what I expected. One cold frosty morning, I ran the car to defrost the windshield. Later that day I found a crack in the windshield. I had it replaced at some inconvenience. Apparently this car's windshield, like all car windshields as of late, can't take heating like that, especially if there are stars in the windshield from stone strikes on the highway, which I believe is a growing menace that the hypermedia never even mentions. After refilling the second time, I got only 38 miles a gallon, even though the display said 42.4 miles per gallon.
Now I find that using the defroster or the air conditioner will significantly decrease fuel economy, because for some reason it prevents the gasoline engine from cycling off. So I won't use them much. Further, there are a lot of gizmos in this car, and it takes some time to learn them all. It's like computers, but not quite as bad. But why do we need all these gizmos when the object was simply to get good fuel economy?
I still like my Prius, and I hope to get some years of good service out of it.
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