I just drove a Prius (II) for the first time yesterday, thought you might like to hear my impressions. My mom works for the county and is going to be traveling for work on Monday so she brought home a county car: a Prius II. Although I'm not technically supposed to, she let me drive it. I'm not sure what I was expecting exactly, but I was pleasantly surprised, I'm a bit smitten. My boyfriend has a Corolla (he wants a Prius), and his seats don't really fit me, so I sort of assumed me and Toyota seats don't mix, but the seats in the Prius weren't bad. I guess I have never really looked inside one before, the large center console kinda reminded me of a Hummer a bit. The dash ans such felt very futurey. I find the energy consumption display a little confusing, not too easy to immediately know where your getting power, and I didn't like you had to look over so far to get that information. I like the Honda gauges better. I didn't mess around with the radio or AC, but that seems like it would be annoying too. I also wish the start up and power down was a little more intuitive. My mother called me from work and asked me how to turn it on... I wasn't much help. Se figured it out on her own before I came across the valet cards online (she had the park button on). Driving in EV mode was awesome, reminded me of driving in a Rav 4 EV. It made me feel like my Insight is old fashioned with the engine running almost all the time (it's also a little rough). The transition between gas and electric was very subtle, but I could feel it (not a bad thing). The Prius also felt very big inside. Despite some of the negative sounding things I said, I certainly I wouldn't mind having one at some point in the future, but would probably prefer something smaller personally. Of course I'd like a pure EV even more. (Toyota, Honda, Tesla, anybody: hint, hint!)

Hi Katie,

I enjoyed your report but one comment reminded me of what my wife and I found when we first tested a Prius:

In Toyota's book describing the Prius development, the first design decision was the seat height:

"THE PRIUS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD
HOW TOYOTA DEVELOPED THE WORLD'S FIRST MASS-PRODUCTION HYBRID VEHICLE
ORIGINAL BY HIDESHI ITAZAKI
TRANSLATED BY ALBERT YAMADA & MASAKO ISHIKAWA
. . .
The project team considered the first assignment . . . to work on minimizing the size of the car while maximizing the cabin space. . . . the basic rule was to consider how a person actually fits inside a car.
. . .
When designing from scratch, . . . first determine the driver's position based on ergonomics. The team, therefore, began their discussion . . . "Let's first set the position of the driver's buttocks."

Discussions began under the leadership of . . . engineers who specialized in ergonomics. What seat height would facilitate getting in and out of the car?
. . ."

In 2001, my wife and I both noticed how easy it was to get in and out of the Prius. Only the Echo came close.

Bob Wilson

Operation Iraqi Oil Freedom:

Automatic, stock, project car.

My other 1500 cc car:

Automatic, stock, backup car.
Free speech, dialog and knowledge thrives without the poison of SPAM.

Though I do really like the Prius (I do own one), this is actually the part of the car I like LEAST. The car has more rear seat legroom that I would have expected... unfortunately it has far LESS front seat legroom. The car really needs to have those front seats slide back farther to expand front seat legroom.

The decision-makers at Toyota are quite obivously all short people.

I have a Honda and a Toyota.
I will not deny both are good car makers, Ginny is a great car ( Accord ) and Woody is nice, too.
I like Honda's seat design much better because Honda respects my needs and provides an option to adjust the "seat height" while Toyota just assumes all drivers have the same leg length and height.

I agree about the seats tcamb01

I wholeheartedly agree about the PHEV IMAHybrid

Alden Bowles
2005 Toyota Prius II HSD

My comfort reason I didn't buy the Prius was mainly because of the lack of telescopic steering. The legroom was ok, but I couldn't comfortably reach the steering with the seat all the way back.