I have been an owner of a #Prius #Plug-In for a year now and thought I might write a few words on my thoughts on it.
The car is a functional car, and it does what a car needs to do, it gats you from A to B with little fuss or panic.
The last journey we did in it was to the west coast, and we managed to get back on a tank of fuel with no fuss or drama. We have about a third of a tank left. Given the trip was well over 300 miles and a tank of fuel, in the UK, is about £52 I thought it pretty good.
Our previous car was a Modeo estate, which was costing about £90 on fuel and we were getting about 270 miles. The Prius is getting between 550 and 800 and costing only £52 to fill (on petrol) which is a huge saving in a tones books.
The cost of charging is still about 50p for about 9 miles, which is about 5p per mile on electric.
In the UK the weather is starting to get colder and already the electric range is starting to plummet. In the summer we got just under ten and a half miles out of a charge, its already down to just under 10.
Last year, in the cold winter it dropped below eight miles on a full charge at one point.
All in all I have been very pleased with the car and find it easily able to accommodate my family.
The boot could do with being bigger, the satnav system is ok at best, but in honesty really needs a revamp, and the electric range could do with being a real world range of nearer 20-25 miles.
The charge time is good at about an hour and a half (in the UK) and so no complaints with that.
Running costs seem to be daily low, a blown tire cost us a little over £50, again, much cheaper than the £180 for the Mondeo!
All in all, its not a “sexy” car but it gets the job done…
Would I recommend it? If you do short journeys, like we do, and need enough room to get a family around and about, yes, its pretty good – although you will have to be pretty diligent recharging if you want to get the most out of it.