The word Prius is something said to be in Latin word meaning ‘to go before’ and according to Toyota they chose the name because the vehicle is the predecessor of cars to come. Toyota Prius is one of the first mass-produced and marketed hybrid electric vehicles, best known for its fuel economy. Contradictions emerged when eyes were raised, questioning its environmental credentials. The fact was hard to swallow, the betrayal is real.

Prius through an automotive expert’s eye

Around the world, Toyota has sold 758,000 units of this hybrid sedan and about 1,047,000 other hybrid models in 10 years, 345,000 of them in Japan and 702,000 abroad. Due to the hybrid boom, big names like Honda and more are adding fuel to the fire. Both Honda and Toyota have an uncertain benefit of having some very voiced hybrid owners. I came across this narrative from the famous Telegraph writer Andrew English which vehemently answered the enraged Prius owners when he previously chose to include the $32,770 Honda Civic Hybrid rather than the $35,746 Toyota Prius, in a personal selection of 12 economical cars. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, people didn’t like what he wrote.

In 1993 Prius was launched as a crude concept with a cone-clutch power splitter and as a much more sophisticated production car with an epicyclic power splitter in 1997. It was launched in Japan that year and was measured with a peculiarity. It had been clearly designed to plea to countries devoid of big diesel infrastructures that were looking for low exhaust pollution standards, like North America and Japan. At that point in time, Toyota was forcing huge sales of ordinary cars and 4×4 sport utility vehicles against this extremely expensive hybrid technology. The rival engineers from Honda estimated the true cost of the first-generation Prius at about $40,209 per car, but it sold in Japan for $21,110.

In 2000, a new-generation Prius went on sale in America with a larger petrol engine and a higher-voltage operating system. In 2004, Toyota launched a new-shape hatchback Prius that was better looking, more realistic and more commanding. Believe it or not, Mr. English himself judged it as the European car of the year 2005 winner. However, there were still concerns regarding the company’s media manipulation as the leading green car maker, though they showed no remorse. Numerous manufacturers started to counter-brief against hybrids, pointing out that they are fundamentally cars with two engines and therefore heavier, more expensive and less inherently economical than an optimized conservative car.

The worried writer advocating the hydrogen fuel cells accused Toyota for misleading people. The fuel-cell vehicles can be more resourceful with some sort of braking-energy recovery system, which implies a battery pack and a generator/motor. The effectively elegant fuel-cell system doesn’t need a massive epicyclic transmission sitting like a gruesomely heavy Sturmey Archer three-speed in the middle of the vehicle. Many engineers around the world believe the hybrids which are politically popular will pretty soon disappear from the environmental technology.

The new Prius has also had its tribulations, not least an inclination for the body to wrack and twist on flawlessly flat roads, which meant the driver was continually steering the car to maintain a straight line. A major rectification by some extra welding two years ago made it heavier.

Prius Vs the Hummer: Illogical yet a rational comparison

In the end all that matters is how much fuel these hybrids save especially when we talk about the Prius. Last year an American organization, CNW Marketing, produced a report on the total environmental impact of various vehicles, based on the energy consumed over their expected lifetime. It was found that Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile over an expected lifetime of 100,000 miles, a great deal more than even an All-American four-wheel-drive, Hummer H3, which cost $1.95 per mile over an expected 300,000 miles. The facts highlight the extra energy input and consequently more CO2 output.

Deserved Criticism

In US, under the old EPA testing system, the Prius recorded 72mpg in the city and 61mpg on the highway. When new tests concerning higher speeds and faster acceleration come into force this year, the Prius average is expected to drop by about 25 per cent to about 54mpg, not far off conformist rivals. On June 6, Auto Express exposed that its test team could only get an average of 41.5mpg, some 37 per cent less than the official EU combined figure of 65.7mpg.

Statistics like these make a scorn of Toyota’s snooty PR release of June 8, which claimed that in the last decade its hybrids had saved about 3.5million tons of CO2 over equivalent petrol engine models. Certainly, these claims were based on official check series in countries where the cars are sold, rather than real-world driving consumption.

The next thing was the environmental ‘harm’ done by the nickel hydride content of its battery. Just to rev you up, all cars use nickel in their high-strength steel body-frames which is highly valuable. Not criticizing people for wanting to do their bit for the environment, the actuality was titled a myth by the writer.

Whether it saves gas or the buzz is a blasphemy, Toyota Prius has become a personification for idiotic hypocrisy to environmentalism. Adding a crumb of wittiness English evoked why the pride owners disgust anyone criticizing their choice of car especially if it cost them $36,190.

[Image : aa1car]

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