By Eric Peters
Electric vehicles are all the rage — but with an average price of almost $50,000, only a relative few can afford them.
The Toyota Prius hybrid, on the other hand, is an almost-electric car almost anyone can afford. It may not offer “ludicrous speed,” but it does get almost 60 mpg on average, and a range approaching 700 miles in between fill-ups.
And it does all that for about $20,000 less than the average price of a new EV.
What It is
The Prius is the eponymous hybrid — the first one, the one that started it all more than 25 years ago. There have been many emulators.
There is only one original.
In addition to being a hybrid, it’s also a hatchback sedan, which gives it the cargo-carrying capacity of a small crossover, without being yet another crossover. But like most crossovers, the Prius is available with all-wheel drive, which has long been a crossover “sell.”
Prices start at $27,450 for the base LE trim, which is front-wheel drive. Equipped with the optional AWD system, the MSRP is $28,850.
A top-of-the-line Limited with AWD lists for $35,865.
What’s New For 2023
The Prius has been given a major makeover. It is much sleeker-looking now, and it lives up to those looks. The new Prius is the most powerful and quickest Prius yet — and the most fuel-efficient.
What’s Good
A car with an electric motor and a battery, without any of the disadvantages.
The practicality of a small crossover — that isn’t another crossover.
A fuel-efficient hybrid car, without the usual disadvantages.
What’s Not So Good
Price uptick (about $2,000 from last year) means it’ll take a little longer to recoup what you spent on the car via what you don’t spend on gas.
If it weighed less, it’d go even farther.
Sleek, low roofline cuts down on cargo space versus the outgoing Prius.
Under The Hood
Here’s an irony: Practically every new car and truck on the market comes with a smaller engine than it used to come with.
But the new Prius comes standard with a larger (2.0-liter) engine than the smaller (1.8-liter) engine that powered the prior Prius.
Isn’t that contrary to efficiency, the thing a Prius is supposed to be all about?
Somehow, it isn’t.
The ’23’s 2.0-liter engine is not only larger; it is much stronger — offering up 194 horsepower (total, with the additional scoot produced by the hybrid-electric side of the drivetrain) versus the 1.8-liter’s 121. That’s a 73-horsepower uptick — the kind of uptick you’d expect to read about a new performance car offering. And the much-more-powerful Prius is a performer. It can get to 60 mph in about seven seconds versus more than 10 seconds, previously. That’s a better-than-three-second improvement.
But what does this cost in terms of the car’s efficiency? Surely, it uses more gas than it did?
Somehow, it doesn’t.
In fact, it uses less.
The ’23 Prius gets 57 mpg in city driving and 56 mpg on the highway versus 58 mpg in the city and 53 mpg on the highway for the old model. Overall, the new Prius delivers about 2 mpg better mileage than the older — and much slower — Prius.
On The Road
“Prius” has been the punchline of jokes about slow cars for the past 20 years. It was the price you paid to drive a car that could take you 20 miles farther down the road on a gallon of gas than almost any other car.
And now the Prius is nearly as quick as many of the V8 muscle cars of the ’60s and ’70s. Most of these took six to seven seconds to get to 60. The Prius does it in seven — while quadrupling how far you can go on a gallon of gas versus the muscle cars of the ’60s and ’70s.
It also runs with much less apparent effort. The old Prius had just enough power to get going. It didn’t have much left to get going quickly when you were in a hurry, as when trying to merge with fast-moving traffic or pass slow-moving traffic. It could be done, but the car would let you know, per Scotty from “Star Trek,” that she was “givin’ ‘er all she’s got, cap’n!”
This Prius is now a pleasant car, not just an extremely economical one.
At The Curb
This is the most radical Prius since the original, which looked radically unlike other cars because Toyota wanted it to look as radical (at the time) as it was.
This Prius sheds the Mrs. Doubtfire image. It looks like a new sport hatchback, something along the lines of a Civic, only sportier — the idea being to broaden this car’s appeal to encompass, well, everyone.
Because what’s not to like?
There is a small price to be paid for this goodness, though. The sleeker/lower silhouette has reduced the available cargo space to 23.8 cubic feet from 33.4 cubic feet, previously. Even so, the hatchback layout greatly increases the usability of the space available because you can make use of most of the car’s interior to cart around items much too long to fit in the trunk of a sedan.
The Rest
The Prius is a superb piece of engineering; any car that can almost hit 60 mpg on average and still do 0-60 in about seven seconds is brilliant. But it could be even more so, if it were lighter than it is.
Relative to other new cars, the Prius isn’t heavy. But relative to the small cars of the past, it’s a porker. Even the LE — the lightest Prius — weighs almost twice as much as a ’70s Volkswagen Beetle.
If it weighed as much as a ’70s Beetle, a Prius would probably be capable of 75 mpg.
The Bottom Line
You no longer have to accept going slow to get exceptional gas mileage.
Eric’s latest book, “Doomed: Good Cars Gone Wrong!” will be available soon. To find out more about Eric and read his past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
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