2010 Toyota Prius Review

Would it not be ironic, as Alanis Morrisette may once have said, to be waiting in line to be served at one of those great foundations of western consumerism, KFC, while behind the wheel of a petrol sipping Toyota Prius hybrid?

Well, at least I could feel a little better about going through the drive trough without using any fossil fuel. The Prius, like it has always done through its various generations, glides forwards at a walking pace with barely a hum from the electric motor and an engine that kicks in when you need to go faster or charge the battery.

This latest Prius has a larger petrol engine than before, 1.8 litres as opposed to 1.5 litres, because the first two generations were designed for inner city running, and so when out on the open road the petrol engine was working too hard.

At anything approaching an upper urban speed limit the engine was always on, unlike in say, Tokyo, where you would have been sitting in a traffic jam for several decades.

This new Prius will happily glide along on battery power alone at speeds of up to 65km/h, as long as you're gentle on the throttle. Any request for too much power and the engine instantly kicks in, to remind you that even in a Prius you're not so much saving the planet as minimizing the damage you are inflicting on it.

That's not to say the Prius isn't a good vehicle, as in urban running it returned a pretty respectable 5.0 litres per 100km or thereabouts.

The latest generation also has more room inside it, although the boot floor is high because it hides a couple of extra storage boxes beneath the carpet.

The Prius is still pretty much the same to drive as before. Skinny, low rolling resistance tyres mean that it's about as far away from the concept of a 'driver's car' as you can get - the stability control kicks in with relentless monotony.

You don't get a fancy multi-colour display screen in this NZ$47,490 base model Prius, but you do get a monotone coloured display that tells you how much fuel you have used over the last half an hour, the average fuel usage, where the electric/petrol power is coming from/going to, and how much throttle travel you have left before the petrol engine will kick in.

Only this last one is of any real use, and even that will have you crashing into a tree if you pay too much attention to it. You do get a little Heads Up Display for speed, which glows in front of you on the windscreen. This is good, mostly because you can't see the main speedo through the rim of the steering wheel.

So the latest gen Prius is a good update, but one of a continuously evolving concept rater than the ground breaking tour de force it was when the Prius was launched to an unsuspecting world.

Oh well, at least with the engine off the KFC drive-through operator could actually understand my order for once.