Thread: Hybrid cars what to look for.

We have a Toyota prius alpha which is the station wagon prius. It actually has 7 seats although the third row has pretty pathetic leg room. You can fit 7 adults in at a push though. The seats fold down completely flat so is pretty much a normal station wagon boot when folded down. Very happy with it, very reliable. The fact that every uber driver and taxi driver pretty much has one attests to the fact that they are one of the most economical vehicles on the road (combination of reliable, cheap to maintain and low fuel costs) at least if you are doing high ks. Being the station wagon it uses a bit more than the standard prius but can usually get about 4.8l/100 around town and highway driving is much the same. The boot is considerably bigger than the standard prius and more head room for the rear passengers. I think that the year to avoid in terms of prius was 2011 for some reason those engines tend to have problems.

If you are a city dweller like myself the hybrids are good but if you live rural with mostly open road driving I think a hybrid is a waste of time as you aren't doing much stop-starts and the electric motor pretty much doesn't kick in ever over about 60km/hr or so. I think the battery in the prius is about 2-3k to replace, so not too bad and you get a lot of kms out of the battery. Plenty of priuses out there with 400k + on them and still going strong.

The aqua is a good option if you don't need the room except that the Jap import ones have no immobiliser so very easy for teenagers to film themselves stealing it on tik tok. The NZ new version (I believe they are badged Prius C rather than Aqua) have immobilisers I think (push button start) so much much harder to steal. If you get an aqua, always run a steering lock or get an after market immobiliser I would say.

The other vehicle is a diesel Prado 120 series, but with an economy of 13lt/100km + diesel ks it barely gets used unless we have to haul a lot of stuff or need to go offroad. It is really painful to run cost-wise compared to the prius.