Originally Posted by leahbeatle

I've been following this thread for a while now and had always been a bit skeptical about the assertion by some that there was something severely wrong with the acceleration of an HCH. This weekend, though, I had a conversation with a friend from out of town. She reported that a while back, she had taken an HCH for a test drive with a friend. She described to me how, on a downhill freeway entrance ramp, with, apparently, the pedal to the floor, the car had only gotten up to 40 miles per hour by the time they entered the highway, freaking out her friend and causing the friend to go with a Prius instead.

Now, my first reaction was that her friend may be a lousy driver, or not have known how hard to accelerate, being unfamiliar with the car. My second thought, though, was that the test drive was in a dealers' model, when hybrids were still in fairly short supply. Surely that particular car had been treated terribly by every lead-footed would-be purchaser and probably all the staff, not to mention the fact that the assist won't come on if the battery is depleted, and it probably was. It could even have been in forced charge mode. I don't know, it's mostly all been said, but hearing her story makes me think again of how easy it is for an entire type of car (hybrids) to get a bad rap because of one lemon or one bad experience for which a given salesman probably has no explanation, even if there isn't anything really wrong with the car. If these cars are the test drive models, they're even more likely to have problems AND to be the cause of spreading around mistaken reputations. Just my thoughts.