2012 Toyota Prius C: What's It Like to Live With?
Read the latest updates in our long-term road test of the 2012 Toyota Prius C as our editors live with this car for a year.
What do you want to know about?
- Introduction
- Normal Shifter
- The Payback
- Interior Tour
- Cargo Area
- Wanderer
- What Color Is This Car?
- Uphill Battle
- Will the Shower Fit?
- Rolling Shoe Tower
- You Have Chosen...Wisely
- Disjointed Dash Design
- Not Intended For Mountain Use
- Early Oil Change
- High Fuel Economy ... If You Have The Patience
- Wilshire Blvd = :(
- Natural Habitat
- Not Keyed In
- SparklerMobile
- Prius Hangout
- I Hope This Comes Out
- Cheap Is OK With Me
- The Hilux Factor
- Good A/C
- Fuel Economy Thoughts
- Counting My Time
- Unlikely Lust Object
- Demands Attention
- T.M.I.
- Newest Status Symbol?
- 5,000 Miles Done
- Great Bluetooth
- Environmentally Aware
- Vexing Voice Command
- Operation Dog Transport Revisited
- Yeah, What Do You Want?
- Which One is Right For You?
- I'm Entune Again
- Data Driven
- Feeling Free
- Heat Hunt
- Headed to Tokyo
- Pre-Slashed Dash?
- Braking Bad
- Nine Airbags
- Color Crazy
- Keyless Morning
- Just Another Hatch?
- Track Test
- You Can't Miss It
- The Cute One
- The People Have Spoken
- Ice Cold AC
- Give Me a High Hat
- High Marks From Consumers Reports
- The Sunroof Switches
- $25 to Vegas
- Jumpy iPod Playback
- Range!
- HTNA Tweaks the C for SEMA
- Rich Guy Car?
- California Loves Hybrids
- To Riverside and Back
- It's No Turkey
- 10,000 Miles
- The Bright Side of Frugality
- Used As Intended
- Some Days Bridgestone Turanzas Have Their Place
- Surprisingly Comfortable
- Despite Entune Hassles, This Nav System Works Well
- Count to 10
- The Kit Fits
- Not Future-Proof
- Cleanest Mass-Production Vehicle
- Fuel Economy Update for January
- Fuel Economy Meter Accuracy
- Easy Does It
- Reminds Me of Other Subcompacts
- Are The Gauges Annoying?
- Cheap to Keep
- Prius Brand Is Easy to Explain
- Surprisingly Good Seats
- How Much Should We Rely on Our Smartphones?
- Needs Bumper Protection
- Why Is It Not Beeping?
- Why Is the Wheel an Oval?
- Fuel Economy Update for February
- Second-Least Expensive Hybrid
- Road Trip to Arizona Spring Training
- Spring Training Road Trip Fuel Economy
- Prius Is Most Popular Model in California
- Entune Prefers Android
- And Then I Went to San Diego
- Fuel Economy Update for March
- Accommodates When It Can
- Camping in the Cargo Hold
- Hybrid Styling
- Instrument Panel Glare
- Feels Like the Original Honda Insight
- Can't Complain About the Simplicity
- Where's The Speedometer?
- It Really Does Do 50 MPG
- Will Gigantor Fit?
- Simple Ventilation Controls
- Are These Buttons Waterproof?
- I Can't Log In
- Fuel Economy Update for April
- Welcomes You Back
- Abysmal Low-Speed Braking
- 15,000-Mile Update
- Beyond Squishy
- 15,000-Mile Service
- The Least Manliest
- Everyone Likes Kittens
- Tight Turning Circle, or Maybe Not
- Fuel Economy Update for May
- Can You Tow It Behind a Motorhome?
- These Wheels Are Simple for a Reason
- Logging Some Last Miles
- Compressed Carmax Closeout
- Fuel Economy Update for June
- Wrap-Up
Introduction
There are lots of reasons people buy hybrids, but saving money has never been one of the better justifications. It doesn't matter how devoted you are to hypermiling; it would take years to make up the difference between the price of a hybrid and a less expensive conventional car.
The new 2012 Toyota Prius C tackles this problem head-on. The junior-size Prius lays down big EPA numbers (53 city/46 highway/50 combined mpg) but its price tag is comparatively small. The base MSRP is just $19,710, $5,000 less than the cheapest, standard-size 2012 Prius.
On paper, this five-door hatchback is a hybrid that might actually save you money. What better way to find out than buying one of our own and hitting the road with it for 20,000 miles?
What We Got
Toyota sells the 2012 Prius C in four trim levels designated One, Two, Three and Four. All of them have the same gas-electric hybrid drivetrain, comprised of a 73-horsepower, 1.5-liter Atkinson-cycle four-cylinder engine; a couple electric motors (one of which drives the front wheels); and a 144-volt nickel-metal hydride battery pack. A planetary gearset-regulated continuously variable transmission (CVT) blends the two power sources; total system power is 99 hp.
The One model comes with amenities like automatic climate control, a tilt-and-telescoping steering wheel, Bluetooth, USB and auxiliary inputs — and that's about where the list ends. Most buyers will end up with at least the Prius C Two, which adds height adjustment for the driver seat, a center console with an armrest, cruise control, variable intermittent wipers, an extra pair of speakers (for a total of six) and a 60/40 split for the folding rear seat.
Of course, that wasn't enough kit for us. We set our sights on a 2012 Toyota Prius C Three ($22,395), which comes with keyless ignition, satellite radio and a navigation system with the app-based Entune interface for smartphones. We also wanted it in orange, or Habanero on the options list. We wanted to avoid the top-of-the-line Four model (yes, even though it's available with 16-inch wheels and quicker-ratio steering) because it comes with Toyota's SofTex eco-friendly simulated leather upholstery. It might pass muster with antivivisectionists, but it has the consistency of a damp walrus.
Apparently, we're the only ones in California who want an orange hybrid, because none of our local Toyota dealers had a Prius C in Habanero. Our second choice was Summer Rain Metallic, and our friends at Carson Toyota had a Three model in exactly that color.
An optional moonroof ($850) and floor and cargo mats ($225) pushed the sticker price to $23,470. Our crack team of negotiators whittled that down to $22,701 — or $500 over invoice.
Why We Got It
Buying a Prius has never made financial sense to us, but this Prius Could change our minds. Sure, the 2012 Toyota Prius C is 18 inches shorter, 2 inches narrower and significantly less roomy than a regular Prius, but for solo commuting, it's no less practical and the mpg is just as good. Actually, we think the Prius C might be capable of even bigger mileage numbers given its much lower curb weight, and we're already planning more rigorous mpg testing.
"But the 2012 Toyota Prius C is more than just outstanding fuel economy in uncertain times," we wrote in our full road test. "It's a small Prius we actually like for being a good car, not just a great hybrid.
"It drives well — handles, even — does not look weird and is nicely equipped."
We have no illusions that we'll win many stoplight races in our Prius C over the next 12 months, but given how strong the rest of the package is, that might not matter much. Will this be the car that changes our mind about hybrids, a useful and enjoyable compact hatchback that just happens to get 50 mpg? Follow our reports on the Long-Term Road Test blog over the next 12 months.
Current Odometer: 618
Best Fuel Economy: 50.1 mpg
Worst Fuel Economy: 46.7 mpg
Average Fuel Economy (over the life of the vehicle): 48.0 mpg
Edmunds purchased this vehicle for the purposes of evaluation.
Look, the 2012 Prius C has a normal-looking shifter, unlike the dash-mounted thingamabob Prii used to have.
What I like best about the 2012 Toyota Prius C is that it pencils out.
Probably "pencils out" is not quite the right phrase for the careful calculation of the period of time that it takes to recover in fuel savings the premium cost of hybrid technology. But you get it. It's possible to think of the Prius C as a car that pays for its exotic technology in a time frame that's less than the half-life of a plutonium isotope.
Not only has Edmunds long believed in the evaluation of any fuel-efficient vehicle according to this metric with its Internet tool available here on the Edmunds.com Web site but also the federal government is now in the game with its own site found here.
The feds offer a pretty basic calculation, since only fuel costs and the vehicle's MSRP are factored into the result. There's nothing to factor buying incentives, insurance, maintenance and resale value. "Based on MSRP and fuel costs alone, hybrid vehicles can save you money versus a comparably equipped conventional vehicle," the site tells you.
All this is of real interest now that the price of gasoline seems to be declining while the availability of conventionally powered high-mpg vehicles is increasing. Here's the complete news item from Edmunds Inside Line.
I'm liking the Prius C because it brings hybrid technology to people who have been standing on the sidelines because the price of admission to the whole hybrid thing has been too much. Of course, for me, the payback that a hybrid gives you remains a statement of personal values rather than pure pocketbook economics, but I'm totally okay with that. At the same time, I figure it's smart to know the whole deal no matter what kind of Prius C shopper you might be.
I went to pick up a few things at the market this weekend but as usual came out with many more bags than I intended. I was pleasantly surprised to see the Prius C could handle my cargo without having to lower the rear seats.
With all seats in place the Prius C offers 17.1 cubic feet of cargo space. When you pop the hatch, the protective cover pulls up to allow easy access. With the hatch closed, it lowers to shield packages from the sun and prying eyes.
By comparison the regular Prius and the Plug-In Prius offer 21.6 cu.ft. while the Prius V offers 34.3 cu.ft. The Camry Hybrid only offers 15.4 cu.ft. with the rear seats up.
Does the Prius C number surprise you?
Behold this rare sight: Open freeway. Interstate 10, Westside Los Angeles, no less. But this unencumbered expanse also highlights one of the Prius C's less desirable traits. It's a wanderer. The Bridgestone 175 all-seasons skate distractedly on our grooved highways, and the numb electric steering isn't a particularly helpful partner. The only feedback you get is from keeping your eyes glued to the road ahead.
But the Prius C is still likeable. Not sure why. Maybe it's just a cute Prius. Or rather, a Prius with agreeable lines and dimensions. I don't have a problem with our sea foam color. Then again, I also like dolphins and blue frozen cocktails.
Maybe it's a little wayward, but the Prius C doesn't feel like Toyota completely phoned it in. It also told me I'd averaged 47.5 mpg over the course of a couple hundred miles.
I find that men and women see blues and greens differently. When a color falls between blue and green on the color wheel, most men will call it green, while most women will call it blue. This is my personal observation.
The original Crayola 64-box had a blue-green and a green-blue. They were two very different colors.
I've heard some of the guys describe our Prius C as sea green. On the Toyota website this color looks very green. But in person I think it is blue. In close-up, you can see the blue paint has a green shimmer to it. It's more like a nail polish than a car color.
Toyota calls this Summer Rain Metallic. How would you describe it?
I'm sure it will be no surprise to you that the Toyota Prius C has a difficult time climbing steep hills. All cars have to put in extra effort for this task but the Prius C sounded like it was going to die. In fact, it sounded like it wanted to die. My eco score on the information display dropped to 4 out of 100. It usually hovers in the 30s and 40s in normal driving, even on the freeway.
There is a particular hill near my home that I take almost every weekend to get to my favorite market. Because I drive it so often, I use it as a gauge to compare cars. I found it amusing this past weekend when I saw two horses crossing the street while I sat at the traffic light. Horse crossings are common on this road. I think with their one-horsepower each, they could have beat the Prius C up the hill in a race.
We had a car-themed bridal shower for IL Senior Editor Erin Riches today, and in the spirit of using every object in the office as the subject of a fitment test, Edmunds Senior Editor Bryn MacKinnon and I crammed the leftover party balloons into the hatch of our Prius C to see how many would fit.
After one popped, scaring the bejesus out us, it turned out to be an even dozen.
I didn't even know what a rolling shoe tower was until this weekend. But the question is, will one fit within the compact rear confines of our Prius C?
Hmm, let's see...
Yes — with enough room left over for a pack of Target bed sheets.
You Have Chosen...Wisely
A few months ago, I wrote-up a full road test on the Prius C. You read the epic tome here (seriously, where's my Pulitzer?). Of the things that bugged me, two of them were options. That test vehicle was a Prius C Four (huh huh...C4...boom) and had the 16-inch alloy wheels. Normally, I'm all for fully-loaded cars, but not in this case.
The Prius C Four trim adds something called SofTex-trimmed seats. The material was just plain odd. It felt like plastic. No wait, that's not fair to plastic. It felt like the coverings they have on a doctor's examining table, or maybe the upholstery in a dentist's chair – neither of which I'm particularly fond of.
Then there were those 16-inch alloys. I like bigger wheels, as long as they don't affect the ride quality or handling. The Prius' big wheels did neither, but they did impact the turning radius. Dan Edmunds explained to me the reasons why and how the optional wheels impacted the suspension geometry and thus, the turning circle, but my mind wandered off to motorcycles and bacon. Reasonings aside, the bigger wheels increase the turnabout width by six feet.
SIX FEET! (huh huh...six feet over)
That's insane for any car, let alone a little city hybrid. City cars should be able to perform a U-turn in my shower. But no, the test car required a three-point turn in front of CasaHashi. Un-Ack-Sep-Taw-Bull.
So that leads us back to our long-termer. Like the Grail Knight so eloquently put it in the Last Crusade, "You have chosen…wisely." So if you're looking at a Prius C, do what we did. That is all.
As anyone who knows my interest in cars will attest, I like clean, cohesive design. The jarring Bangle approach gave me nightmares. And this also applies to the interior. Clean is good, discordant is bad. Don't get me wrong, the Prius C's exterior design is fine and it works well as a space and fuel efficient runabout, albeit one with an unexpectedly stiff ride.
But that dash! Yuck. It almost seems like the Toyota guys "benchmarked" the Honda Insight's dash panel, what with all the dissimilar shapes and textures jumbled together.
I did a five-hour freeway drive in our Prius C last week, which included going over the Tejon Pass (the "Grapevine") on I5 and its 4,160-foot elevation. As you can probably guess, the C was not exactly an ideal companion. With 99 combined peak horsepower (73 hp with just the 1.5-liter engine), there's just not a whole lot of oomph to keep the Prius C comfortably moving strong up long grades.
But that's not to say the Prius Can't handle it. Pin the throttle, keep up the momentum and you'll be OK. It's just not a very relaxing experience. The C lets in a fair amount of wind and road noise, too. On the upside, the driver seat felt pretty comfortable during the drive.
Given that the C has been idealized for city use, I'll cut it a lot of slack here. I've found the best way to approach drives like this is just accept you're underpowered (relative to the motoring norm) and just enjoy the scenery.
Yesterday I took our 2012 Prius C to Michael Automotive Toyota (in Fresno, Calif.) for an early oil change/tire rotation (1,800 miles) before the first scheduled maintenance. This is something we're going to be trying out with more of our new long-term cars. The idea is that we'll be getting the oil as fresh as possible, as the first oil fill from the factory could collect metal shavings left over from either manufacturing or the break-in process.
We'll still be following the normal service schedule for the Prius, which incidentally doesn't have its first oil change until 10,000 miles. That change is also covered on the free Toyota Care maintenance program. However, we paid for this one. (It wasn't all that easy, either; the service department's computer wouldn't initially accept us paying for the first oil change.) Total for the oil change and tire rotation was $91.20.
So what do you think? Are we spending money on something that doesn't need to be done with this new procedure?
While my initial response would be "yes" to that second question, I also have to admit that I did an early oil change on my personal car at 1,000 miles, seeing it as a small price for extra piece-of-mind. Plus, we do a day of intrumented testing on all of our long-term vehicles early on in their service, and Mike Schmidt reminded me that all of our Blackstone first oil change samples came back saying we should have changed the oil sooner.
So from an actual ownership expense standpoint, it might not be all that far off the mark.
It took me a couple days of driving to figure it out, but our Prius C responds really well to mild hypermiling techniques for city driving. Of course, you're saying "Well, duh Brent, it's a hybrid," but it's been a while since we've had a full hybrid (not our Honda Insight) in the fleet that's readily available.
There are three main things you can do. The first is coasting as soon as you know you're coming up to a red light. The Prius C's gas engine shuts off almost immediately for low or moderate-speed coasting, so less gas use there. You also start to get electric regeneration this way.
Then you can follow that with the second technique, which is light braking to further electric brake regeneration and not get into using the energy wasting friction brakes. The third opportunity is light throttle acceleration, which keeps the Prius C in all-electric drive mode. That's probably good for up to 25 mph or so, though I rarely had the patience to go past 10 mph. The configurable display pictured above shows you how much throttle you can apply before you activate the gas-engine activation boundary.
As a bonus technique, you can select the special EV mode and lock in the Prius C for all-electric low-speed mode. That's good for eking out a little more gas savings in places like neighborhoods or parking structures.
Ah, but there's a key word here: patience. The problem with these techniques is that that you end up being a rolling chicane for other drivers behind you. They like to charge up to stoplights (even if they're red ones) and snap away from stoplights. Can't blame them; that's just how we're used to driving. But I don't mind too much. For city driving, we're all getting to wherever we're going the same time anyway.
The alternative is just to not care and drive the Prius C like a regular car. You'll still get good fuel economy, probably in the 40s. But I doubt you'll get 50 combined like the EPA says. And you won't get 60-70 mpg like I was able to do on a few city errand trips.
I frequently see disguised Ford and BMW test mules driving down Wilshire Boulevard in my neighborhood. Why? Because it features a special sort of horrific pavement. It's really hard to describe just how bad it is, with nearby Highland Avenue a close second in terms of the amount of ruts, potholes, sinkholes and crappy repatch jobs. As such, LA's Miracle Mile is an interesting test for a car — albeit one that's hardly indicative of what most Americans experience on a daily basis. Afghans, maybe.
Sadly, the poor little Prius C felt like it was being utterly obliterated as I drove first down Highland and then Wilshire. As I pulled over to take the above picture, I half expected it to pull out a white flag and asked to be carried home. It has the same sort of surprisingly harsh ride as the regular Prius over this stuff, and the lightweight, toy feel of the car exasperates the general sense of calamity even further. The Prius C feels brittle in a way that other small cars like the Fiesta, Sonic and the Beetle I drove yesterday do not.
Are they comfortable on Wilshire? Absolutely not, but then again, only a Rolls-Royce Phantom or maybe a hovercraft wouldn't have a crap ride in the Miracle Mile.
My Mac abruptly decided to stop opening PDFs, so I made a Genius Bar appointment at the Santa Monica Apple Store, grabbed the keys to the Prius C and glided over there. I'm usually racing to beat traffic on the 405 to get home, so I don't hang out much in Santa Monica. But yesterday was different. Once Hoyt (who IS a genius) cured my computer, I went shopping, cruised trendy Montana Avenue and stopped for ice cream.
James has written that the Prius C did not fare well on pockmarked Wilshire Boulevard. Conversely, it is perfectly adapted to the traffic, parking and overall ambience of green-chic Santa Monica.
Like Brent and Donna, I didn't find the Prius C to be quite as good an experience under greater demands. Trying to pass a Guinness truck this morning on a freeway transition ramp nearly gave it an infarction. But for suburban/city driving, it was maneuverable in traffic and easy to park, both on the street and in busy lots teeming with hulking vehicles. If I was a Santa Monican mainly in need of a car for around-town trips, the Prius C would be worth a look.
As my colleague Jessica Caldwell points out, Southern Californians love their Prii. Prius is the fourth most registered vehicle for retail buyers in Los Angeles in 2012. I don't have registration data for Santa Monica, but I'd be willing to guess it's even higher here.
You know how it goes. You get where you're going, you park, you're in a hurry, you're distracted.
That's how it went for me one morning last week, and the price of my distraction was that I left the Prius C running in our office garage. Got out of the car, locked it, walked away, turned in the key. Takahashi, the next driver, found the Prius humming away. The car was uninjured.
I'm chagrined, as you can imagine. But at least it didn't happen in the attached garage of a home. More about that in a minute.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has identified a problem with keyless ignition systems. Actually, there are three problems:
- The driver doesn't know how to stop the car in a panic situation. Not all keyless ignitions turn off in the same way. The inability to stop a car with a push-button ignition in a panic situation is the most serious problem, and was a factor in the unintended acceleration accidents of a couple years ago.
- The driver pushes the switch to shut down the engine without first putting the car in park. Cars that are on any kind of incline can roll away, possibly hurting or killing the driver or passersby.
- The driver exits the car "with the vehicle propulsion system unintentionally left active," as NHTSA puts it. I'm that guy.
NHTSA has received four reports of near carbon-monoxide poisoning as a result of car owners leaving keyless-ignition vehicles running in garages that are attached to homes. The agency also recounts one carbon-monoxide death in Florida that is being investigated for a link to a keyless ignition issue. Other deaths also have been reported.
Here's a description of an incident sent to NHTSA by a hybrid-car owner (a plug-in vehicle, from the sound of it):
"Our garage is attached to our house with our bedroom above the garage. With three kids, my wife and I have been distracted, leaving the car in the garage to unload groceries or help with the children.
"When on electric power we have neglected to turn off the ignition since the car is silent. Only when the carbon monoxide detector sounded in our garage did we realize the engine had started while we were in the house. We think this could be deadly to other families without carbon monoxide alarms who may also forget to turn off the engine when parked in an attached garage while on electric power."
The problems with keyless ignitions are troubling enough that NHTSA is requiring carmakers to standardize their operations and warnings in several ways. To help prevent drivers from leaving a car that's still running, regulations would require an alert of no less than 85 decibels in a particular frequency range for no less than a second outside the car. (Currently, the Prius C displays the warning message you see in the photo. The interior buzzer sounds once. The exterior buzzer chirps three times.) The agency expects that these measures will be in place by the fall of 2015.
I don't blame the car for what happened to me. I acted like a new hybrid-car owner, unfamiliar with how incredibly quiet it is. I missed the warnings the Prius C offered. No question.
Cars are getting more complex all the time, and not all the features behave in the same way from car to car. Sometimes owners — and short-term drivers — need help to keep up.
NHTSA put it this way in its proposed rule: "The common automotive practice of the rotating ignition switch, combined with a physical key, has standardized engine shut down procedure before the advent of new electronic convenience controls. We believe standardizing the operation of these new controls, combined with the new alerts, will have the same effect."
You couldn't with a straight face call the Prius C a firecracker, bottle rocket or any other allusion to explosive power. But it's perfectly capable of hauling safe and sane Independence Day party favors.
I had to snap this picture over the weekend. And no, it wasn't staged. I parked when the furthest left of the gray Prii was there, and by the time I came back from shopping the other two cars had joined in.
Having seen a few other Prius Cs around town now, I was curious to know the Prius C's sales. Alas, Toyota isn't breaking the new C and V out separately. But overall Prius sales were up by 324.9 percent for June 2012 compared to June of last year (4,340 units jumping to 19,150), so something's definitely working for Toyota.
OK, who's the joker that put his office bag on the front passenger seat, only to find that said bag had a leaky bottle of tea in it? Well, that would be me, the same guy who spilled fizzy tea all over our Genesis' multimedia controller back in 2009. Clearly, drinks, cars, light upholstery and me don't mix.
As leaving pee-like stains on seats is against the rules for our long-term fleet, I broke out a bottle of stain remover. The hairy arm in the photo was used to demonstrate how manly of a task this was.
Ta-da! After a bit of sponge action, the stain was gone. It came out a lot easier than I would have thought, actually. The Prius is back in action.
A couple weeks ago I read another publication's review of the Toyota Prius C. It was not a favorable review, The crux of the article was that Toyota's single-minded attempt at cost reduction for the C results in an absolutely dreary car to drive.
I understand the author's point, particularly in regards to the C’s cheapo interior and brittle ride quality. But I like the Prius C anyway, and maybe even because of its faults.
I respect that frugal A-to-B focus. The C reminds me of the old Civic HFs and Geo Metros, commuter cars that could be enjoyable in an odd sort of way if you geeked out over the fuel economy you were getting. It’s the same thing with the C. I like watching the display readouts and trying to maximize fuel economy for a car that’s already the top-rated non-electric car in America for city fuel economy.
I suppose that arguement could also be applied to other cars. Like our Mitsubishi i, for instance. But the Prius C seems different. More approachable. Better resolved. It's basic transportation with great fuel economy. I like that.
The Toyota Prius C is the hybrid I like best, I think. It has a dimension of practical efficiency that's appropriate to its mission, yet it also expresses a certain adventurousness in the way it looks, outside and in (especially inside), that is refreshing.
It's the best thing Toyota makes, I think. They should park one on the lawn down there at U.S. corporate headquarters just to remind themselves of what the company is all about. The Prius C would look great parked in a little display next to the 1968 Toyota Hilux pickup truck, which is for me the other vehicle that is the essence of the Toyota Way.
A Toyota is meant to be a smart solution, I think. It's practical and affordable, and also appropriate in that modest Japanese way. But as we're also beginning to appreciate in this time when we're more aware of limited resources (financial as well as natural), there should be a certain amount of surprise and delight in the way the solution is presented and enjoyed.
For me, the Toyota Prius C is kind of like an ah-ha moment. It's about being cheap, but in a smart way.
I'll be looking for the display on the lawn down there in Torrance. Probably they've got a Hilux (the successor to the original Stout pickup), down the street at the Toyota museum.
In this weather, I am happy to say our Toyota Prius C has a pleasantly effective air conditioner. It cools the cabin quickly and has well-positioned air vents. I like when cars have the round vents straddling each side of the dash. They are so easy to use and look attractive.
The long, narrow vents above the entertainment screen work very well without taking up much space. I don't like when cars have the vents on the sides of the nav screen. They usually end up blowing cold air on my hand. We've had several long-term Hyundais and Kias that had this awkward design.
So, I give high marks to the design of the climate system in the Prius C.
On the last Big List of Fuel Economy, our Prius C checked in with a 43.5 mpg average, the best in the fleet. But that's also a ways off from EPA combined, which is 50 mpg. Statistically, the C seems to be mid-pack for our fleet in terms of meeting EPA combined. Some cars are worse (Impreza and Beetle, for instance) while others are better (Quest and Camry). Yet the Prius is optimized for city use, which might lead one to think that it would have an advantage for doing better than average.
So what's the explanation?
Alas, I don't have a firm answer for you, only my guess. In my time with the car, I found that it is indeed possible to get quite impressive mileage from the car (noted in this post) but it also takes an active driver to do so. If you just drive the Prius like a regular car (i.e., no real effort to take advantage of the car's hybrid powertrain), well, you're not going to get the results.
I think that is what's going on here. While a few intrepid editors might get some really good fuel economy in the coming months (perhaps trying for records, like we did with the Jetta TDI), I suspect the C will hover right around that 43.5 mpg average for the remainder of its stay with us.
Getting 43 mpg is pretty cool. But I'd be happier if we were getting 50 mpg.
We spend a lot of time in traffic in Los Angeles. I live 19-20 miles from the office, depending on which route I take.
My fellow employees and I get creative with the times we choose to drive to and from work. In the morning it usually takes me 45-60 minutes if I wait for the morning rush to end. If I have to be in for an early meeting, it's at least 90 minutes. I don't even think about using the freeway in the morning. It's the scenic route all the way.
Really late at night, I can hop on the freeway and be home in 20 minutes, which makes me realize how dysfunctional this city is. The past two nights, it took me 90 minutes to get home. Normally, the summer traffic lightens up, but I haven't noticed a difference this year.
The Prius C counts my trip time. It's very disheartening to see a record of how long it takes to get around town. But it is nice to see how little the fuel gauge moves. This morning, as seen in the picture above, was not so bad, but take note of the time.
Sometimes, I question why I live here. Then something like this happens:
The streets of Los Angeles are home to some of the finest examples of high-end automotive machinery in all the nation. For this reason, it always makes me smile when a humble model like our Prius C (shown here getting its weekly bath at the official Edmunds car wash) manages to attract attention.
At a weekend showing of Savages (liked it quite a bit, by the way), I returned to the Prius C after the movie to find it being fawned over by a very suburban, very Prius-y couple. The wife, especially, seemed quite taken with the car, gazing at it as if it were a puppy in a pet shop.
I don't know whether it was our little Toyota's fetching Summer Rain Metallic paint job or seductive promise of Prius fuel efficiency in a smaller, more affordable package that had her so hot and bothered, but whatever it was, her excitement was palpable.
Enthusiasts will tell you that cars like the Prius C aren't emotional purchases, but this couple reminded me that a purchase like the C can be very emotional — it all depends on what your priorities are.
I finally got some freeway time in our Prius C and I'll I can say is that I agree with Dan Frio. He noted that this little hybrid is quite the wanderer on the highway. I figured it would demand a little more attention than usual, but it's really a handful, at least on our poorly surfaced local freeways.
Don't get me wrong, though, it's not some darty little death trap. It's just a small, lightweight car with hard tires, so it tends to follow grooves when it finds them. The fact that the steering isn't particularly responsive doesn't help matter much. I guess that's the price you pay for big mileage numbers.
Apart from the vague highway handling, it's surprisingly comfortable for such a small car. Decent seat, simple controls and good visibility. It's about what you would think a stripped down Prius would be.
Is it just me or does this information screen look like it's trying to do too much? It's like they took two screens worth of icons and crammed them onto one.
I know the Prius folks love stuff like "ECO Scores" and all that, but really, this seems like overkill. Just push the gas pedal less and you'll get good mileage. I don't need a fancy computer display to tell me that.
The L.A. Times ran a story recently that reports how the Prius has become a status symbol in rich neighborhoods in which the residents place a priority on environmental responsibility.
According to the article, Century City here in Los Angeles, for example, has an average annual income of $751,000, making it fifth on the wealthiest ZIP codes list. (Had no idea Century City was full of so many high rollers — L.A. residents, does that ranking seem right to you?) Anyway, in that big-money enclave, the homely, frugal Prius is the most popular vehicle, believe it or not.
This makes me wonder if the Prius C is destined to fill a similar niche. At the moment, it seems to be a much less common sight on the streets than its big brother, which could only serve to enhance its appeal with the wealthy, environmentally conscious set.
What do you think?
This morning I looked down just in time to catch the odometer in our Prius C clicking its 5,000th mile. We bought the little hatchback back on May 3rd of this year and have had no repairs or problems since. Great little car.
I wish the Bluetooth in all cars worked as well as it does in our long-term Toyota Prius C. Pairing my phone to the Toyota is quick and simple and the sound quality is wonderful, maybe even better than the sound quality in Bentley Mulsanne I also drove last week.
A green car like our Prius C just feels a whole lot greener with a sunroof.
It's an $850 option, but it's worth it if you enjoy looking at tall trees and clear skies on pleasant summer days.
Toyota's Nav systems are usually user friendly — large graphics, logical controls, reliable voice recognition. But I discovered the Prius C's "One Shot" voice command feature can be an exercise in frustration. It took no less than four attempts to give it my destination.
The reason? No, not because of my Boston accent (other Toyota/Lexus/Ford/Acura/etc systems don't seem to mind it). My guess is that it asks for and has to process too much speech input at once — you say "Destination" and then the whole address (including state) rather than having separate prompts/inputs for street number/street/city/state. "One Shot" would seem convenient and maybe it works great for some folks. But despite my subsequent robotic enunciation (which included pronouncing my "R'"s clearly), it still took four attempts before it got it.
Another pet peeve is the screen catches a lot of glare, as you can see here. It needs to either have a hood or an adjustable tilt function.
In a previous post, I explained how much wrangling it took to get a 14 cubic foot dog crate into our 2012 Volvo S60 T5...so when planning a similar trip, we wanted to get something a little bit cargo friendly. The 2012 Prius C has a hatch and fold flat rear seats, so no problem, right?
No fault of the Prius, but on my initial look-see I failed to account for the 27 inch height of the crate. When it came to the morning of our departure it was just barely too tall to fit into the rear hatch. Not wanting to force or break anything trying, I reverted to the old system of taking the crate apart and reassembling across the two back seats.
Problem solved - and the cargo area was free to hold a couple bags and the rest of our stuff.
The complete milage for our trip was 805.9 miles. We filled the tank twice for a total of 17.24 gal, which brought our average MPG to 46.7. Most of the time I kept it at around 70, with the ECO mode engaged. Not bad for two adults , a dog, and luggage.
Upon start-up, the Prius C recently started showing this "Maintenance Required Soon" reminder message. Checking the maintenance guide book that came with the car, I see that it's essentially calling for the first (5,000 miles) service.
Because we opted to do the first oil change/tire rotation early (at 1,800 miles) and the Prius C's maintenance intervals occur every 5,000 miles, its "first" 5,000 mile service is therefore due at 6,800 miles. The latter consists of just a tire rotation and the visual inspections of fluid levels and brake pads/shoes.
Given how alarmingly few people actually look at their vehicle's owner's manuals, I'm all for these reminders.
Back in May I produced the little infographic you see above for a quick little piece that went up on Edmunds here. For some reason, it never got posted here. So, you're welcome.
It doesn't point out which one is "best," rather it spells out the differences between the Prius liftback, C, Plug-in and V. Depending on your priorities, be it mpg, cost or cargo.
If were considering a carbon offset for my wasteful lifestyle, I'd probably get a Prius C. I don't need a lot of cargo space and I like the way the C drives more than the others.
So if you had to pick between the Prii, which one would you choose?
If you read our long-term intro for the 2012 Toyota Prius C, you know that just like our long-term Camry SE, it has Toyota's Entune interface for smartphones. Over the months we've owned our Camry, several editors have commented that the setup process requires too many steps and that the apps themselves add minimal functionality.
I can't say I disagree strongly with either sentiment, but the reality is if you want traffic data to show up on our Three model's standard navigation system's maps, you have to set up Entune. I wouldn't suggest that this traffic data is as accurate as that provided by the Inrix app on my phone, but there's still something to be said for having it on a larger screen embedded in the dash.
So last night I went through the steps, which on the plus side, are exactly the same as in the Camry: Step 1, plug in previously Bluetooth-paired iPhone via USB port (step 1 not required if you have an Android phone). Step 2, open previously downloaded Entune app on phone; enter previously registered Entune login credentials when prompted by app. Step 3, hit "yes" when car asks if you want to set up an Internet connection. Step 4, hit the Traffic app button in the car's Apps menu. Step 5, go to Maps in the car's Apps menu; shortly, the desired green-yellow-red traffic density highlighting will appear on the map.
Mind you, a normal person would/should bristle at going through all these steps, but the inconvenience is easier to justify in a $23K Prius C than a $28K Camry. Plus, overall, I still prefer this nav system to the cheapy, slow-witted one in our Subaru BRZ.
A business maxim says that what gets measured gets done. At Edmunds, we're in Week Five of a fitness challenge and, armed (or legged) with pedometers, many of us are walking and exercising like never before. Hitting 10,000 steps a day has become a bit of an obsession for me.
Data is obviously a focus in the Prius C. After a couple times in the car, I find that I've altered my driving style so I can achieve good eco scores and excellent mpg. It's the perfect antidote to feeling (without reference to any data) how underpowered and sluggish the car is. I tell myself that I can get a better eco score if I don't demand too much of it. I'm guessing Toyota thought all that through when it deciced to show us nuggets of data crack as we drive.
Back to the human data for a minute: I got more than 10,000 steps in yesterday. But my desktop pedometer program shows me that my daily average is only 5,668. Time for a walk.
Our Prius C was due for an oil change and tire rotation. We dropped it off at a local dealership without an appointment. It was ready about two hours later.
My favorite part was watching that rubber stamp come down on the invoice. Free is good.
Total Cost: Zero
Days Out of Service: Zero
The Prius C has lots of information for you to consider. Seven different readout choices orbit the multi-information display, from Eco Savings to Past Record to Drive Information. There's also a master "Settings and Display Off" screen. Each drive-performance screen offers various slices and dices of how you're expending energy and saving money (or not) during your drives.
But with all those data sets, what you want to see might not be front and center at every moment. For example: This weekend was another hot one in Southern California. The Prius C does an admirable job of cooling itself off quickly, as we've said before. But cooling itself off from what outside temperature?
I've made the Eco Score screen my default setting because it's the one that helps me eke out the best fuel economy. But that's not where Toyota put the outside temperature display.
I went on a hunt and pretty quickly found the outside temperature display in the "Drive Information" screen. It's summary page that totes up data for the end of a trip, and to me, it's not the most natural place for a quick glance at the outside temperature. With that many data sets to display, however, it's inevitable that my ideal screen won't be somebody else's.
I'm looking forward to the day when users can choose from a wide variety of data sets to display on a screen. That's a feature that's probably in development at Toyota, which already offers some mix and match options in the Prius C.
I'm off to Japan to drive something new that I can't yet talk about. As for our 2012 Toyota Prius C, well, it's only going as far as the WallyPark at LAX.
I'm a serial over-packer in the best of times, and I've heard tell that a suit will be called for during this trip. So of course I'm using one of those large international suitcases. It just fits behind the rear seats and beneath the cargo cover, with just enough space for my laptop case to slide alongside.
I don't get it. No, it's more than that: I hate it. What's with the weird random grooves that are carved into the dash panel of the 2012 Toyota Prius C?
Maybe it's because I grew up in an era when dashboard plastic was evolving, a period when baking heat through the windshield caused dashboard tops to erupt and curl like a cracked mud in a dry creek bed. The situation was so common that it gave birth to company called Dashcover that made custom-fit carpets that hid the ugly mess.
This is an ugly mess. Next idea, please.
I got in the Prius C last night for the first time in a long time, and thought, “Where are the brakes?!”
Hybrid regenerative brakes never used to bother me much, but lately I’ve been immediately annoyed by nearly all of them.
Either I’m getting awfully sensitive in my old age, or I’ve just been driving some really great non-hybrid cars lately. Sure, the Prius C's binders work eventually and all, but the way they feel does not give me any confidence in them.
One - steering wheel.
Our 2012 Prius C has eight more airbags.
Two - knee airbag, driver's side only.
Three - passenger airbag. Deploys from the dark panel behind the slashed dash.
Four and Five - side curtain airbags, one per side. Each one stretches from the A-pillar...
Four and Five (continued) ...to the C-pillar.
Six, Seven, Eight and Nine - seat airbags. Each front seat has two: one on the door side of the seat and another that springs from the lower seat cushion under the thighs. This is the first thigh airbag I've run across, and I can only presume its function is to prevent the occupant from submarining under the belts. If I've got this visualized right only low-slung cars would need such a thing.
In total, the driver is cocooned by five airbags, the front passenger gets four and the outside rear seat occupants get one each. If that doesn't add up to nine for you, remember that while there are no rear seat side airbags, the rear occupants will benefit from the side curtain bags that cover the glass from the the a-pillar to the c-pillar.
This morning in the middle school drop-off loop, a couple of 7th grade girls yelled, "We love your car color!"
Didn't surprise me. Our Prius C is just their shade of shocking tween turquoise.
Kelly Toepke, News Editor
The brief color conversation reminded me of when my Grandma bought her first new car, must have been at least 30 years ago now. She didn't get her driver's license until she was in her early 60s, after my Grandpa passed away. Until then, he did all the driving, and she never felt the need.
The first car she purchased on her own was a gold Ford Tempo. After she brought it home, I remember her fretting about her color choice.
"I should have bought the silver," she said. "The gold clashes with my white hair."
Why did you choose the color of your car?
With gas prices soaring, I decided to do my part today and work from home, thus saving the fuel from my 74-mile round-trip commute to Santa Monica.
Sounds plausible, right?
Actually, I couldn't find my keys this morning, which includes the key to the Toyota Prius C I drove this weekend.
After searching, and calling a few people I saw over the weekend, I found the keys. Unfortunately, they're not in my house, and the Prius C and I are trapped here until late this afternoon.
Tell me your worst lost-key story.
One of the biggest selling points of the original Toyota Prius was its unique look. It wasn't necessarily a good look, just a different look, one that screamed "I'm a hybrid!" which is exactly what certain people wanted.
Now that the Prius "family" has expanded, some of that uniqueness has faded, at least that's what I think whenever I look at our Prius C. It's still a little on the funky side, but I think most people would take one look at it and assume it's just another compact hatchback.
In many ways it is, and that makes it functional, easy to drive and efficient.
But you might not get as many thumbs-ups from The Fraternal Order of Other Hybrid Drivers.
As with all of our Long Term cars, we took our 2012 Toyota Prius C to the track. How'd it do?
That's gotta be the biggest temperature knob ever. Wonder why Toyota decided to dedicate that much real estate to the 2012 Toyota Prius C's temp knob. Is that something consumers usually have a hard time spotting? Otherwise, I like how everything is laid out plain as day. No guesswork involved.
You've heard it before here. Seems the official car of Santa Monica, where Edmunds HQ is located, is the Toyota Prius. And frankly I'm so over that car. I see it EVERYwhere. So I have to admit that it felt a little nice to drive our 2012 Toyota Prius C around town. In most cases it was the only C on the road. I imagined the Prius drivers looking at it with envy. Sort of like how iPhone 3GS owners envy those with the 5. OK, not really.
In any case, superficially speaking, I appreciate its compact size and that crazy, eye-catching color in this sea of Prii. Out of the Prius family, it's definitely the cutest....
Every now and then I like to check out our consumer reviews to see what the folks who actually own a given car have to say about it. Cruising through the reviews for the Prius C I saw the expected praise for the impressively high fuel economy and park-ability as well as kudos for features (on the upper trims) such as the keyless ignition/entry and easy-to-use Bluetooth. Amazingly, a commentator with the username "Ispeed" hated the car (his fiancee has one) because it was too slow for him.
Of course these consumer reviews are subjective, and some may argue that folks feel obligated to only say good things to justify their purchase. But most folks seem to be fairly even-handed and I feel these are a valuable research tool. Regardless of whatever car you may be considering, it's always a good idea to hear what the owners think.
Good news, the air conditioning in our 2012 Toyota Prius is ice cold and immediate. Even after being parked in the sun for a few hours, it chills the cabin with shocking quickness.
It's the only thing about this car that's overpowered.
You ever sit in traffic and your favorite song comes on and you just start drumming to the beat on your steering wheel? Well, I'll have you know that our 2012 Toyota Prius C's steering wheel comes with a pretty decent substitute for a cymbal: that silver plastic trim on either side of the airbag. When you hit it with your nails it adds a nice sharp sound to contrast the dull thumps of the rest of the steering wheel.
I do a mean steering wheel backup to Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll."
The Toyota Prius C earned Consumer Reports' top score overall in CR's new reliability report, just released this morning.
Toyota is "setting the pace in reliability," Consumer Reports said. Scion, Toyota and Lexus swept the top spots in the reliability study.
Ford didn't fare so well.
Read the full story here.
Here are the sunroof buttons from our 2012 Toyota Prius C. Not there are buttons, plural, to operate one device that we paid $850 for. The buttons are also not smart enough to work together/cancel each other out.
For example, if I've tilted the sunroof but then decide to open it all the way, I can't simply hit "slide" and let the electrons figure out how to not kerplode the sunroof. Nope. Gotta "down" the tilt and then "slide." Lame, even for a cheap car.
I drew the short straw and
had
got to drive our 2012 Toyota Prius out to Vegas for SEMA 2012. I'm a big fan of our Prius C during my normal, 8-mile, all-city commute. On the highway? Not so much.
The Prius C deals well with the high winds encountered along the 15 — I didn't realize it was windy until I saw an Escape swaying along — but the Prius C is woefully down on power on the hills and it's incredibly loud at +/- 75 mph. So loud that my ears are still ringing.
On the other hand, I averaged 44.5 mpg — easily the best I've ever managed on this drive — and it only cost $25 to get to Vegas. That's like one hand of blackjack. Hard to argue with that.
When listening to an iPod in our 2012 Toyota Prius C, the playback will, every so often, skip for a full second.
The elapsed time counter resets to zero and 9/10 the song returns to where it left off. The other time, it simply moves onto the next song.
I tried this with five i-devices (two iPhones, iPod, iPod nano touch, iPod mini) and it skipped with every single one of them. None of them have Toyota's silly iPod override Entune system installed and none of them ever will.
As most of you have noticed (and some of you have disagreed with strongly) we LOVE cars with range and using every mile of said range. According to the EPA, our 2012 Toyota Pirus C has an estimated range of 428 miles out of its 9.5-mile fuel tank. With my commute, this works out to needing gas once every 23 days and then it'll only cost me about $43. A 30-day pass to take the bus to work here in LA would cost me $70.
Of all of the cars I put into the "Long Term Cars of SEMA 2012" gallery, the Prius Cs by HTNA garnered the most feedback.
And for good reason, they're crazy. The orange one they call "Sweet" and it's all leopard print and lace. The blue one's called "Luxes" and it looks like they skinned a teddy bear to make the interior.
Getting our Prius C modded by HTNA would certainly be one way to set it apart from the 9-billion other Cs on the road, but somehow I don't think Oldham will go for it.
Rich Guy Car?
So I have a friend who pretty much never has to worry about money. Travel, real estate, charter flights, and cars are just a whim away, yet he chooses to drive plug-in Prius. He's a very different rich guy than I'd be, primarily because he's still a rich guy, and by this point I would have squandered all of my money on my favorite indulgences.
That's not to say he doesn't have fun, though. He has a race car and a really nice modern collectable car. He's also looking into a classic roadster this weekend. But he can't stop talking about his Prius. Maybe it's the idea of lightening our reliance on foreign oil. Maybe it's the idea of leaving a better world for his son. Maybe it's politics, or maybe it's the whole Beverly Hills green movement. I don't really know. I started explaining where the Prius batteries come from and what it takes to process those materials, but it had little effect on him.
But I get it. Or, I would if I had an unlimited budget.
For the everyday errands, I can see how driving a track-focused car might get old for most people. I can also see how driving a really nice car can become nerve-wracking around the "talented" drivers in L.A. He loves his Prius, sure, but he wouldn't shed any tears if it got damaged in a fender-bender. It is essentially a very efficient workhorse.
He has an order in on a Tesla S, and that makes a lot more sense to me. It looks cool and it goes fast. I'm pretty sure he'd get rid of the Prius when that happens.
But that begs the question, if you had all of your dream cars, what would your everyday car be?
Any guesses as to what percentage of last year's total domestic hybrid purchases are attributable to the Golden State? Answer after the jump.
Roughly 25 percent of all hybrids purchased in the U.S. last year were bought in California.
Some other interesting facts:
- California purchased just under one-third of all electric vehicles bought in the U.S.
- the Toyota Prius is the best-selling car in California
- Californians also buy the most cars by volume. They purchased 11.1 percent of all cars sold in the U.S. last year
- electric and hybrid vehicles currently comprise 3.4 percent of the total number of vehicles in the U.S., a figure that represents a one percent increase from last year's
Full article here (much of data for the article was provided by Edmunds.com).
I'm working on a story about conversion vans for mobility-challenged drivers. Doing research for the feature required me to visit a couple of relatively far-flung mobility-conversion dealerships — Better Life Mobility in Riverside, and Mobility Works in Van Nuys.
My vehicle of choice was the Prius C, and in all, I put more than 250 miles on the odo over the past two days. Some driving impressions follow after the jump.
The Prius C feels bouncy on uneven stretches of highway. There was a lot of vibration going on over a particularly rough stretch of the 405. And on surface streets, this refinement deficit was even more jarring. Coming back from lunch at Govinda's, I hit a patch of uneven pavement on Bagley, and it wasn't pretty. For me, not a deal breaker. But we get emails every day from readers seeking cars with a serene ride. If that's one of your key priorities, this isn't the choice for you.
Also, this isn't a car that just allows you to weave in and out of openings in traffic without a care in the world. While power is adequate for most situations, it's not abundant, so passing maneuvers, for example, require some forethought. It definitely forces you to interact with traffic in a different way than you would if you were behind the wheel of car with a stronger engine.
However, criticisms aside, the ride to and from these dealerships was pretty pleasant. And I'd easily recommend the Prius C to buyers, for one primary reason: gas mileage. I got a very real, very tangible sense of satisfaction from checking out the fuel-economy gauge as I cruised past traffic on the 60.
Exact mileage figures from my trip will follow in my next post.
The Prius C is my ride for the Thanksgiving break and it's been a cheerful companion through all the holiday-related errands and runs. In the spirit of the season, I figured I'd make a list celebrating all the things I like most about this pint-sized Prius.
1: Hurray for its nav system interface, which is easy to read and use. The system is also relatively quick. I know we've criticized the nav system's voice control feature for being somewhat slow on the uptake, but to be honest, I have tried it yet — on a recent trip to unfamiliar Inglewood to sample the wares of a well-reviewed restaurant, it was simple enough for me to input my destination via touchscreen. Haven't felt the need thus far to get any fancier than that.
2: Its compact footprint makes it a breeze to park and maneuver. And despite its petite dimensions, the cabin still feels roomy enough for my frame.
3: And then, of course, there's its gas mileage. With all the recent drama surrounding a certain company that promised one thing on the fuel economy front and delivered something less impressive, you have to appreciate a car whose real-world mileage lives up to manufacturer claims.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Our little Prius C sipped its way past 10,000 miles this weekend. So far it's delivered as expected: completely reliable, and frugal to an almost unreal degree — excellent fuel economy, with no hypermiling required.
We got the car back in May, so it's on track to rack up 20,000 miles during its stay with us, which is always our goal.
Between this spicy little number spotted at the ongoing L.A. Auto Show (in a shade called Habanero, appropriately enough) and the cheery light-blue Summer Rain Metallic model in our garage, you certainly can't accuse the Prius C of having a boring color palette.
The Prius C comes in basic black, white and gray, but also offers bolder choices like Blue Streak Metallic, Absolutely Red and the two listed above. Wonder what the take rate is on these brighter colors.
Ordinarily, my commute is not really suited to the 2012 Toyota Prius C's personality. I live a pretty good distance from the office and I make the journey at off-peak hours to maximize my average speed. Of course, the Prius C (like the regular Prius) gets by fine at fast freeway speeds, but stop-and-go traffic is what it really prefers.
Well, this week, I've spent most of my time in downtown Los Angeles covering the 2012 L.A. Auto Show, and the Prius C has been in its element. I've always liked its smaller size and its reasonably precise electric power steering — it just feels more wieldy than the standard-size Prius.
At city speeds, the blending of its gasoline and electric power sources feels smooth and refined — you don't really think about the transitions because the gas engine doesn't have to work that hard and doesn't command your attention as a result. I've been leaving the car in Eco mode and that has provided adequate throttle response for scooting away from stoplights.
Braking feels pretty natural, too — well, maybe not natural, but normal for a hybrid car with regenerative braking — but I think about it a lot, mainly because the car's Eco Score coaching display grades you on braking efficiency, plus starting and coasting. I do OK at braking, by the car's measure, but I'm better at starting.
About the only thing a Prius C owner might complain about in this environment is ride quality. It's decently smooth, but a lot of our surface streets are crumbling and it can be a little punishing over seams and broken pavement.
Suffice to say the Bridgestone Turanza EL400-02 is not an aspirational tire — especially not in the barely-there P175/65R15 84H size on our Toyota Prius C Three. But at the end of the day, this is an economy car that just happens to have an unusually elaborate and expensive drivetrain to help you get 50 mpg on the way to work. It doesn't have awesome tires and it doesn't need them.
But so far, I'm liking the wet weather grip of these Turanzas. We're in the midst of the first sustained winter storm in Southern California. It has been raining for a couple days, and the roads are saturated and in some cases flooded. It took me two hours to get to the office this morning. There was ample opportunity for slipping and hydroplaning, but the tires never checked out on me. A quick glance at the treads reveals dozens upon dozens of grooves for channeling water. Of course, my drive to work wasn't anything like the fun Magrath's going to have in the BRZ, but it was safe, predictable and comforting like a hot bowl of cream of wheat.
Honestly, I never expected much in the way of driver seat comfort from the Toyota Prius C. I've never found the standard-size Prius that comfortable, and this junior version is a subcompact, and subcompacts often compromise on comfort. The C's steering wheel tilts and telescopes, but the range of adjustment is minimal. At the launch event last winter, I remember opening the glovebox into my shins while riding as a passenger... the footwells are not large.
Due to poor planning this week, though, I made a couple two-and-a-half-hour drives in our long-term Prius C. And strangely, the cloth seats in our Three model proved quite comfortable. There's a plush layer of cushioning on top of each seat but also enough structure underneath that to give you some support. I do put the seat all the way back on its track, but for me (a 5-foot-10 adult), it's not maxxed out and I can still use the seat-height adjuster to improve the view over the dash without causing the seat-bottom cushion to angle too far forward.
Bottom line: If you find the driver seat/seating position in the regular Toyota Prius uncomfortable, don't assume it'll be the same story in the Prius C. For me, the smaller Prius is actually better.
Although I'm comfortable using my iPhone's Mapquest app for navigation, I really do like having a factory nav system embedded in the dash. It's easier to read; it puts nav, audio and phone functions in one place, and I never have to worry about it going to sleep or the voice instructions not being loud enough.
I used the nav system in our long-term 2012 Toyota Prius C every day last week, several times a day to get directions, and every single day, I went through the process of hooking up my phone via the USB port and booting up the Entune app. As you'll recall, Entune isn't necessary to use the nav system, but you need an active connection to see traffic data.
Yeah, the process is kind of a hassle, but over the course of five days, the system consistently did a competent job rerouting me around traffic based on the info it was getting via my phone's data connection. It didn't present incident/collision information with the specificity of say, Inrix, but it was good at knowing where the traffic was and suggesting appropriate alternate freeway routes and even some detours on surface streets that I wouldn't have thought of otherwise. (You're not seeing traffic data here on this map, because I took the photo in the garage where the phone is incommunicado, and also happened not to have the Apple cable with me.)
It certainly helps that my AT&T iPhone generally has a strong signal throughtout greater L.A.
I also haven't gotten any indication (i.e., threatening texts from AT&T) that letting Entune harness the power of my iPhone is resulting in heavy data usage. Then again, the real test would be for me to use Entune every day for a month, and then see how well I'm doing on data usage.
Any Toyota/Lexus owners out there who are using Entune/Enform on an everyday basis who can speak on this matter?
Finally, note that Entune was included as standard on this Prius C Three model, which at $22,395, is priced pretty affordably for a nav-equipped hybrid. So buying a car equipped exactly like this one is a reasonable proposition.
I've read the manual, quickly checked some forum postings, and I'm still left wondering: what the hell is the Prius C's EV mode useful for exactly? It shuts off at 10 mph. Apparently, the regular Prius, or earlier generations of, could run up to almost 45 in EV mode (say some forum posters). But 10 mph? Even stop-n-go traffic pokes ebbs and flows at around 20 mph. I guess you could argue that EV mode is helpful when trawling the parking lot at the local big box.
The Prius C manual says that it's possible to drive 1.3 miles if driving at a speed of about 25 mph or less. I'd like to first know how I can get to 25 mph. Maybe this section of the manual has been copied and pasted across the Prius lineup. Anyway, it's quaint to have the EV mode button there. But what else does the mode that it activates do exactly?
I got invited to bring my drums to a little jam session this past weekend. The father of one of my kid's classmates is new in town and he plays guitar. He heard I play drums, so it was one of those deals. The older I get, the lazier I get about hauling around the drums. I'd rather buy 10 drumkits off Craigslist and spread them around at all my useless musician friend's houses. Since I had the Prius C, I figured I'd only take the bare minimum: a kick drum, a snare drum, some hi-hats, and the hardware.
To its credit, the Prius C could've handled the full kit and more hardware. There was room for at least two more drums (toms), maybe three, while the front seat remained available. I only had to remove the cargo cover and one of the headrests. I was pretty surprised. And the car performed better than you'd expect, laden with the extra weight. Acceleration didn't feel much different. Still slow, but that initial EV twist helps get that mass up to momentum quicker than you think.
A drummer buddy of mine plays professionally in New York and hauls his gear between the city and his Jersey home in a Focus wagon. He loves it, but I think even he'd appreciate the Prius C. I'd say it's a solid New York/LA/Chicago or any big-city musician's car. Small footprint, easy to park, enough space to haul gear for most rock/jazz gigs. Pretty impressive.
Can't say I'm surprised that I can't use the Prius C's Entune apps suite with my iPhone 3G. Everything's moved to iOS 4.3 and beyond to iOS6. But it's a small bummer that soft and firmware has moved fast enough to render a four-year-old phone obsolete, in this application anyway. Heck, Apple doesn't even support this phone anymore beyond the 4.2 version of the software, and I've got no interest in jail-breaking it (some say it works, some don't).
It's a small matter of pride that I've kept this phone alive and operable this long, but a new phone is in the near future. I'll retire this one to iPod service for the car and Pandora streaming for home.
Every year, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) takes a look at the country's greenest mass-production vehicles, and produces a list showing which ones are friendliest to the environment. This year, the Toyota Prius C was the big winner, coming in at the number one spot in the annual rankings.
ACEEE Vehicle Analyst Shruti Vaidyanatha points out that the list is flush with hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and battery-electric cars — a sure indicator that a shift is occurring as automakers focus more on vehicles that emphasize fuel efficiency and clean emissions.
The runner-up was Honda's Fit EV, with the top five rounded out by the standard Prius, Prius Plug-in and Honda Civic Hybrid. Other models that made the cut include the Honda Insight, Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid, Smart Fortwo, Scion iQ and Ford Focus EV.
For the full story, click here.
During the Month of January, our long-term 2012 Toyota Prius C performed all the duties expected of a city car and not much else. Most of the miles logged were limited to our daily commutes and we averaged 41.34 mpg during the last two months. That's a good deal short of the EPA-estimated 50 mpg, but still nothing to scoff at, especially considering our heavier-than-normal feet on the gas pedal.
Worst Fill MPG: 29.0
Best Fill MPG: 56.2
Average Lifetime MPG: 44.7
EPA MPG Rating (City/Highway Combined): 50 mpg
Best Range: 422.8
Current Odometer: 10,725
When we ran the Fuel Sipper Smackdown back in 2009, the 2010 Prius we used had an overly optimistic in-car MPG meter. On the soul-sucking city driving section of the test, that Prius' meter read 5.4 mpg over the actual results, which came to an 11-percent difference. On the backroad section, it reported 6.8 mpg over actual (14 percent).
Since there's not a lot to inspire me in our long-term Prius C, I invariably pay a lot of attention to its fuel economy. And that's the whole point of this car, right?
This weekend, I logged a decent amount of miles, with a lot of them on the hilly 5 Freeway north of Los Angeles. Because of our past experiences, I figured the Prius C was just as overly optimistic as the Fuel Sipper's Prius. The in-car meter read 45.7 mpg when I refueled Monday morning. Some quick calculations later, I found that the actual mileage came to 43.6 mpg. At about 5 percent off, that's not too bad in my opinion.
As a car enthusiast, I appreciate vehicles that hit their intended target, whether it be as an all-out performance machine, a versatile family shuttle or an economical and environmentally friendly commuter. Upon grabbing the keys, the Prius C may not get me giddy the way the 911 would, but it hits the bulls-eye in terms of achieving its mission.
Although the Prius C's performance isn't exactly thrilling, in the real world of crowded city driving, it has enough poke to deal with L.A.'s hordes of inattentive drivers. And of course it feels good getting over 40 MPG while slogging through rush "hour" traffic. Yes, the C's dash design is ugly, but the seats are comfortable, the controls are easy to use, it has a good Bluetooth setup, it's got satellite radio, and it's a snap to park. Monday through Friday around these parts, this is the right tool for the job.
Honestly, I could take or leave the hybrid drivetrain in our long-term 2012 Toyota Prius C. But the combination of a 1.5-liter Atkinson cycle four-cylinder and a front-drive electric motor powered by a nickel-metal hydride battery pack provides adequate acceleration most of the time.
And that's how it is in other subcompacts I've liked: The Honda Fit and Mazda 2 come to mind. Performance was never more than OK in those cars. The only difference was I felt like I had more control over it because they both had a five-speed manual gearbox.
Why bother declaring that three inexpensive hatchbacks are adequate? Well, our long-term Prius C is maybe the only hybrid I've ever driven that truly feels like one of the gang. Ours weighed in at 2,562 pounds, which is only 50 pounds heavier than our long-term 2009 Fit.
And so like the Honda, the Toyota goes down the road with a minimum of fuss and unwanted ballast. It feels pretty light and there's a directness to its responses, even if it's not sporty. Driving the Prius C doesn't feel like a game (and indeed I don't watch the efficiency displays much), it just feels like driving.
Of course, you still have batteries on-board, but at least they're packaged underneath the backseat (along with fuel tank), so that you can still fold the rear seat-backs down. Of course, the Prius C's rear seats won't fold every which way like the Fit's, but it's certainly as useful for light hauling jobs as other subcompacts, including the Mazda.
It's hard to imagine myself buying a Toyota Prius C, simply because I can get a Fit or Mazda 2 or Fiesta and shift my own gears. I really like shifting my own gears.
However, if I were going to get a subcompact with an automatic (or a simulated automatic), the Prius C would be on my short list. Most of the conventional automatic transmissions in this class don't shift when and how I want them to, and the fuel economy isn't so good that I'm willing to put up with that. But with the Prius C, I'd be getting a planetary-type CVT that doesn't annoy me any more than those automatics, and I can break 40 mpg every single tank. That's worth something to me.
So our long-term 2012 Toyota Prius C has center-mounted gauges. No serious car guy would choose to have the instrumentation mounted in the center. But the actual, on-the-fly legibility of the setup in the Prius C isn't bad. And certainly, it could be a whole lot worse.
Toyota's decision to go all digital with the instrumentation has actually improved the functionality, compared to the center-mounted analog gauge packs offered in earlier Toyotas and Scions. The Prius C's digital speedometer is closer to being in the driver's direct line of sight. The way I sit in this car, the speedo ends up just over the right side of the steering wheel, so I never really need to turn to look to the middle of the car. (That is, unless I'm inclined to check in on my Eco Score or my average mpg. I rarely allow myself to get caught up in that game.)
That's quite an improvement over the arrangement in, say, the discontinued Scion xA, which had an analog speedometer and tachometer squooshed in the center of the dash.
I don't remember a lot about the xA, but I do remember that I could barely read the gauges. I also recall that the automatic-equipped car I drove didn't gather speed with much haste anyway.
Designing gauges for the Prius C (well, any Prius really) must have been an easier task, of course, since there's no pressing need for a tachometer, given that the planetary-type continuously variable transmission (CVT) handles the "shifting" and operates the gas engine and electric motor at different rpm.
I'm torn on the acceptability of center-mounted gauges. No one will ever persuade me that there's any kind of ergonomic, line-of-sight advantage to them. Nah, it's all about cost-savings. In the right-hand-drive version of this car, they just reconfigure this display so that the digital speedo readout is on the other side.
But reducing cost in small ways only makes sense when you're trying to price your hybrid subcompact in line with non-hybrid hatchbacks, which is exactly what Toyota is doing with the Prius C. And while I don't love having a digital speedometer offset to the right, I don't hate it, either, and it doesn't annoy me when I drive our Prius C.
How do you feel about the instrumentation in our junior Prius...yay, nay or meh?
We recently brought in the Prius C for its 10,000-mile service, which essentially consisted of an oil change/filter and a 32-point inspection that included an eyeballing of other vital fluid levels and a check on brake wear.
Despite a constant diet of stop-and-go commuter traffic, the Prius C's brakes are holding up very well. Both the front pads and rear linings have a full 90 percent life left in them.
The bill showed a normal cost of $91.55 for this service (it calls for synthetic oil) but "No Charge" was stamped across it. Yep, it cost us zippo as the Prius C came with two years/25,000 miles worth of free maintenance.
The service experience at Santa Monica was pleasant too. We dropped the car off sans appointment at 8 am, and despite the flurry of activity we witnessed at the service department they called us less than two hours later to tell us it was done.
"What car is that?"
"Oh, that's the small Prius."
That's what I heard myself saying when I pulled up in our 2012 Toyota Prius C at a non-car person's house. It just seemed more natural to explain it that way rather than go into an extended explanation about how it uses a modified version of the B-segment Yaris platform architecture but has a hybrid drivetrain. She instantly knew what I meant: It's a little green car that gets great mpg and comes in a cuter color (with "cuter" open to interpretation).
Frankly, I think of our Prius C as a Prius (well, a Prius and a subcompact, as I wrote a few days back) first and a Toyota second the whole time I'm driving it. Oh, I know it uses different architecture than the regular Prius, V and plug-in. But just look at the car's face: It has the same do-gooder expression as the other cars.
Then, there's the driving experience. Like the others, it's not quick and is at its best when scooting along in slow traffic in electric mode. Ask for more and the 1.5-liter engine (versus a 1.8-liter in the bigger Prii) feels thin on grunt and makes a racket, but dutifully gets you up to 70 mph. Fuel consumption is comparable, too.
In other respects, the Prius C is more likeable than the rest of the family. The steering is more precise, and there's a touch more feel to it on center and off. The freeway ride is harder, but I'll gladly give up some of the original Prius's isolation in exchange for the C's more buttoned down feel.
Also, I'm always struck by how much better the seating position is in the junior Prius. You would think this would be the worst Prius to commute to work in, but for me, it's the comfiest. A redesign for the standard Prius will come in a couple of years, and I hope Toyota will make its cockpit feel more like the C's.
The more miles I put on it, the more the Prius C appeals to me as a total package. There's no one thing I love about it, yet I find it agreeable on the whole. That strengthens the case for a Prius brand (hybrid hatchbacks, big mpg ratings, angelic image, mostly tolerable to drive). And indeed, I now find the Prius family easier to explain than the Scion brand, which, um, is for kids under 40?
So here's a look at the driver seat in our long-term 2012 Toyota Prius C.
As you'd expect, it has full manual adjustments, including a simple seat-height lever that moves the seat-bottom cushion forward as you crank up the height. The steering wheel tilts and telescopes, but as in the bigger Prius models, not very much. I'd bring it closer to me if I could, but I can't, so the whole driver seat has to come forward instead.
These are typical compromises in a subcompact car, but the surprise is that comfort is still quite good for a 5-foot-10-inch, 150-pound adult. Seriously, I could commute for hours in this thing without feeling kinked up, which is exactly what you'd hope for in Southern California traffic.
I also like the Prius C's backseat, but not because it's especially roomy.
Frankly, rear legroom's not that great when my spouse and I are up front. As with pretty much any other subcompact, I wouldn't recommend a Prius C for kid-carrying unless you're short, no more than 5-foot-4.
What I do like is that Toyota packaged the exhaust system so that the car has a flat floor. Obviously, this isn't revolutionary (especially since Honda kicked off the trend), as there are now plenty of budget, front-wheel-drive cars with flat floors in the backseat.
But not only does this packaging give you more functionality when you're trying to squeeze a third person (or kid, in this case) in the middle seat, it provides more space for stowing bags of produce from the farmers market. My latest routine has me stopping at the market on the way into work, and the fragile winter greens and bruise-prone Satsumas are more secure back here than they would be in the cargo bay.
I've been commuting to work in our 2012 Toyota Prius C for about a week. As I've written here, it drives fine for a budget hatchback. The acceleration is OK, the ride quality is good enough, and the seats are comfy. I'm probably doing well at the mpg game, too, though I wouldn't know, because I'm living the hybrid car dream: I haven't had to refuel yet despite driving 30 miles each way.
With that said I'm realizing that a big part of the Prius C's appeal for me is the high level of connectivity in the cabin. I've never driven a car this cheap (well, with an as-tested MSRP of $23,470, it's not exactly cheap, but you get the idea) that had this much tech in the cabin.
Yet, if it weren't for my smartphone and its data contract, I wouldn't be nearly so entertained, er, infotained.
OK, so our Prius C is a Three model, which includes Toyota's entry-level factory navigation system and a touchscreen audio-nav interface. But every time I get in, I hook up my iPhone so I can get traffic data via Entune. Granted, if I was using an Android phone (and I'm planning to test out my spouse's Galaxy S III in here as soon as I can wrest it from him), I would have to plug it in with a physical cord. Although, plugging in is a sensible thing to do if you don't want to drain your battery. It just would be nice if the cord wasn't always so visible. When I have a passenger, I'm always tucking the cord into the tray above the glovebox to get it out of the way. At least, the phone doesn't slide around much.
Lately, I've also been playing the Baseball Tonight daily podcasts to get in shape for the upcoming fantasy season. Never been a big podcaster, but they're interesting and I like that the art downloads just like it would for a music album.
So life is great. What's the problem? Well, when I run errands, I unhook the phone and take it with me. And when I return, I have to plug it in again and hit OK and Continue a bunch of times on the nav screen to reestablish the internet connection. And sometimes the phone and the audio system get confused, like last night when my podcast decided to play through the phone's speakers instead of the car's.
Considering the price tag on the Toyota Prius C, I can put up with some inconvenience. But I'm not sure I'm ready to deal with a setup like the BringGo app for the Chevrolet Spark, where navigation functionality is provided entirely by your phone, at least not until real 4G coverage becomes widespread.
The rear bumper of our long-term 2012 Toyota Prius C caught my eye this week and not just because it was dirty from recent rains. The bumper on our car is bare.
Toyota offers a bumper protector as a $79 port-installed accessory on 2012 models like ours as well as 2013 models. Although our Prius C's bumper remains pristine after nearly 12,000 miles in service, I consider a protector a necessity on any vehicle with a hatch and if I had it my way, this feature would be standard.
I'm given to clumsiness at times when loading up cargo bays. And if I was suddenly the sole owner of our Prius C, I'd phone up the parts department and order the bumper protector straightaway. What about you?
As I was backing up our Toyota Prius C into my garage parking space, I noticed that something didn't seem quite right.
"Wait, why isn't it beeping?"
If you back up a regular Prius, it beeps like crazy when in reverse. It's absolutely infuriating.
"Yes, thank you, I know I'm backing up. This isn't a garbage truck. I remember putting that little nub shifter thing in reverse."
And that, I suspect, is the difference between the Prius C and Prius Original Recipe. The C has a traditional shifter, which I suppose is easier for absent minded Prius drivers to observe is in reverse. Whatever, at least it's not beeping.
Why is the Prius C wheel an oval? Is there something about hybrid and/or environmentally friendly driving that decrees a circle is inappropriate?
On a possibly related note, you may notice the bottom is nearly flat. Now, I would seriously doubt it's flat for the same reason a Volkswagen GTI's is flat. I'm guessing it's because Toyota identified that its customers are apt to put a single hand in that gap and drive at 6 o'clock. And why not, that's how all the pros do it, right?
The answer is "NO!," in case you missed the sarcasm. However, given how little the wheel telescopes (as Erin wrote earlier this week), it's somewhat hard for me to NOT drive like that if I actually want to bend my arms. Or rather, arm. I fight the urge regardless.
That still doesn't answer why the wheel is an oval.
There's no doubt the 2012 Toyota Prius C is currently the most frugal vehicle in our long-term test fleet, earning an average of 44.7 mpg so far during its year-long test.
It's going out on a road trip soon, so we'll see if adding a few hundred miles moves the mpg needle.
Worst Fill MPG: 29.0
Best Fill MPG: 56.2
Average Lifetime MPG: 44.7
EPA MPG Rating (City/Highway Combined): 50
Best Range: 473.7 miles
Current Odometer: 11,756 miles
There was a time when shoppers had to pay steep premiums for the privilege of enjoying hybrid technology. It was a backward way of looking at things, really. After all, the primary benefit of owning a hybrid is that it'll save you money at the gas pump, and if an unreasonably high price tag eats into those savings, the car's advantages become more nebulous. Cleaner emissions are great and all, but they won't put cash in your pocket.
These days, there are many hybrids that offer not just gas savings, but very affordable pricing as well. To celebrate this fact, we put together a list of the 10 least expensive hybrids. The hard-working Prius C was one of the top-ranking choices, with a second-place finish.
Other hybrids that made the cut include the Honda Insight, Honda CR-Z, Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid and Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid.
Spring training games are some of the most enjoyable baseball games you'll ever watch in person. No, they don't count, but the stadiums are small, the weather is mild, the fans are friendly and every team is still in contention. Taking a page from James Riswick's playbook, my husband and I drove the long-term 2012 Toyota Prius C to Arizona for a pair of games.
Now, this might not strike you as a terribly compelling vehicle choice for a road trip. The Prius C makes a fine commuter car, but who would want to drive 1,000 miles in one over 48 hours?
Well, it turns out I would.
That's right, this subcompact hybrid gets a passing mark as a road trip car. A big reason for this is its ride quality. It's downright compliant over most pavement.
Mind you, we've complained before that the Prius C rides harshly over really rough and broken pavement. But most highways and interstates aren't that bad, including California Highway 60, Interstates 10 and 17, and Arizona's Loop 101 and 202 freeways. We drove 'em all, and I never got annoyed with the Prius C's ride. It soaked up most impacts yet never felt floaty. On the contrary, it feels buttoned down and there's enough steering feel that you have the confidence to stay on the throttle through the fun freeway interchanges.
In this regard, it is a better road trip car than every subcompact car I've ever road-tripped (both generations of the Honda Fit, Mazda 2, first-gen Nissan Versa, Suzuki SX4, stepdad's 1992 Civic VX, I could go on), save for maybe the Chevrolet Sonic and that's probably a tie.
Next, let's talk about noise levels. When you have to accelerate up a long grade in the Toyota Prius C, its 1.5-liter Atkinson Cycle four-cylinder works hard. And you hear it working hard. But that is the only time you really hear it. At a steady cruise on flat ground, there's enough NVH control between you and the engine compartment that you rarely notice it. Meanwhile, in other subcompacts like the Fit and Mazda 2, there's plenty of engine roar audible at a steady 75 mph (the speed limit on most Arizona interstates). This makes the Prius C more relaxing to be in on a road trip.
That said, the amount of wind noise that comes into the Toyota's cabin almost offsets the lack of engine noise. This does get annoying, because the audio system really isn't good enough to overcome it when you're listening to talk radio or a podcast. Ultimately, though, I think this is a trade most people (not necessarily most car people) would be willing to make.
Finally, the straight-line performance is totally livable, even though this is a car that runs a 10.8-second 0-60 and a 17.8-second quarter-mile. Sustained uphill grades remind you that it's really a slow car, but the rest of the time, it keeps up with the flow, no problem.
The blending of gasoline and electric power sources is handled so nicely by the planetary gearset-regulated CVT that you can't hold it against the car. At least I can't. Oh sure, compared to a Fit or Mazda 2 or Sonic, you've lost the opportunity to shift your own gears and interact with the car on a more personal level. So, I don't know, maybe I'm still not ready to go out and buy a Prius C, but I wouldn't hesitate to take a road trip in one. I'll share my fuel economy totals with you in my next installment.
By the way, we saw the Arizona Diamondbacks play the Oakland Athletics at historical Phoenix Muni Stadium (it's the oldest remaining spring training park in Arizona), and during the game, the great A's reliever Rollie Fingers wandered out on to our deck, handlebar mustache and all. The next day we sat above the visitor's dugout as my Dodgers took on the Milwaukee Brewers. Great times.
My road trip to Arizona provided a good opportunity to see how fuel-efficient our 2012 Toyota Prius C is as a highway car. Remember, we spend a lot of time commuting in city traffic in this hatchback, and its series-parallel hybrid drivetrain is at its most efficient in stop-and-go conditions (well, really, it's all the stopping it likes).
During sustained highway travel, the Prius C gets precious few opportunities to shut off its gasoline engine. Its EPA ratings reflect that, as it comes in 53 mpg city, 46 mpg highway and 50 mpg combined. That large gap between the city and highway numbers shows up in our mpg totals for this trip.
Here are my three tanks for the trip:
|
Odometer
|
Trip
|
Gallons
|
MPG
|
|
12,199
|
390.0
|
9.320
|
41.8
|
|
12,283
|
84.1
|
1.653
|
50.9
|
|
12,694
|
411.3 |
9.180
|
44.8
|
The first and third tanks were virtually all highway. The middle tank was a mix of freeway and surface street travel in Phoenix, as we drove to and from spring training baseball games. Note the much higher mpg.
Still, the highway numbers are low, and it's logical to assume they're the result of my driving style, which typically involves leaving late and rushing to my destination. Except this time I wasn't in a rush. We never cruised above 75 mph, even in Arizona, where many interstates are posted at exactly that. My husband also did some driving, and he got into the hybrid game. He used the car's Eco mode and cruise control, and generally kept his throttle inputs smooth in an effort to raise his Eco Score.
But there are plenty of steady uphill grades on the road to Arizona, plus considerable crosswinds on the drive to Phoenix as James mentioned in his CX-5 road trip report.
Combine these factors with a 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine that's rated at 73 hp (with a total of 99 hp once it gets the battery-powered electric motor assist) and has to work hard to overcome the hills and the wind, and you're looking at a car that gets 40+ mpg on the highway, not 50s. Still, I'd have been looking at mpg in the high 30s in most other subcompacts in these conditions, so I'm not too disappointed with my totals here.
If you're driving down any random California street, chances are you'll spot a Prius. And another Prius. And another Prius. We here in the Golden State love our hybrids, and the Prius line trumps all others in popularity.
Toyota recently released data that shows just how mainstream the Prius family of vehicles has become. The numbers reveal that Toyota's ubiquitous hybrid was the best-selling model in California for calendar year 2012. Prius models accounted for 61,893 new-vehicle registrations in 2012, more than any other model.
Now there's a caveat, and it's a big one. The data counts all the models in the Prius lineup, which includes the Prius, PriusV, Prius Plug-in and Prius C, as a single model. As such, it hardly provides an apples-to-apples comparison. Still, it's testimony to the fact that in California, the Prius is a major player.
I use Toyota's Entune system every time I get into our long-term Toyota Prius C, because it's the only way to see traffic data on the navigation system's maps. But as we've written, it's kind of a hassle to set up, because my iPhone 4S (and the 4 before it) has to be plugged in and running the Entune app before you can establish the Internet connection.
During my recent trip to Arizona, we used my spouse's Samsung Galaxy S III for Entune purposes, and honestly, it's easier with an Android phone.
First, as you see here, you don't have to have your Android phone plugged in to make Entune work. Eventually, of course, you'll probably want to plug it in to prevent battery drain, but it's not required.
Second, you get a little more functionality with an Android (at least the Galaxy III). In addition to the traffic data and access to Entune's apps (Pandora is the only I really use), you get the equivalent of on-screen push notifications for text messages (though no speech-to-text capability for replies that I could see). And that's sort of useful.
Days after I returned from Arizona spring training, our long-term 2012 Toyota Prius C and I hit the road again for San Diego. It's a much shorter drive, but would our hybrid hatchback wear out its welcome after two road trips in a week?
Not really.
See, the Prius C is one of those cars that look terribly unexciting on the surface: It's a subcompact with a hybrid drivetrain, 99 total horsepower, steel wheels and plasticky interior.
Yet, it ends up being more than the sum of its unremarkable parts. The ride is comfortable. The seats are comfortable. The planetary gearset-regulated transmission is far less annoying than other CVT-type transmissions.
"Are you getting the EPA fuel economy?" a man asked me while I was taking this photo.
"I'm getting close. Although it's hard to do better than low-to-mid 40s on the freeway, given the way these people drive," I said, gesturing to the 70-mph-plus pace of Interstate 5 behind us. We were both pulled over at one of the state's many scenic vistas.
Honestly, as with our old Smart (which was much slower), you manage the Toyota Prius C's lack of torque by keeping your foot on the throttle. I'd say about 25 percent of motorists forget to use the throttle when merging onto Southern California freeways. As a result, the Prius C is automatically quicker down entrance ramps than all of those cars.
I also think the Prius C has more steering feel than most people expect a Toyota hybrid to have. And the steering ratio borders on almost quick. As a result, detouring onto surface streets in San Diego and later Encinitas and then Huntington Beach to escape Friday traffic was not unpleasant. This car is kind of fun around turns when you're picking your way through city traffic.
My only complaint during the three-hour trip back from San Diego was a familiar one: The driving position isn't optimal. I end up sitting closer to the dash in this car due to the steering wheel's limited adjustment range. And with my legs crowded into the footwell, my feet began to cramp up.
Not sure what I did to help the cause, but the average lifetime mileage of our 2012 Toyota Prius C edged up to 44.8 miles per gallon in March. Pretty impressive given that this little hatchback needs a serious helping of right foot to get it up to speed on the highway.
Like the standard Prius, the Prius C manages to deliver its huge fuel economy numbers no matter how hard you drive it. Go light on the pedal and I'm sure it would have no problem hitting its claimed 50 mpg mark.
Worst Fill MPG: 29.0
Best Fill MPG: 56.2
Average Lifetime MPG: 44.8
EPA MPG Rating (City/Highway Combined): 50
Best Range: 473.7 miles
Current Odometer: 13,487 miles
Our Prius C is far from luxurious. In fact, it's one of the most bare bones cars we've had in the fleet for some time. Toyota didn't cheap out, though, it simply eliminated any wastefully heavy options. It's what makes this Prius deliver the incredible mileage it does.
There are still plenty of nods to convenience throughout the car, however, so it's not a complete stripper. I was pleasantly surprised to find this flip-out cupholder in the backseat. It's not huge, so it won't hold anything bigger than your average soda, but at least it's there.
I've driven plenty of higher end cars that lack any kind of cupholder for the rear seats which always seems like an odd oversight to me. People in the back need drinks, too.
No, we didn't go camping in our long-term Prius C. Barbie did.
During the Easter holiday we loaded Barbie and her camper full of treats into the Toyota Prius C's roomy cargo area and delivered her to a sweet, little four-year-old friend.
Neither Barbie, nor her pet Peeps complained about the hybrid's ride quality.
Here's a game I like to play in the Toyota Prius C when the sun comes through its side windows at a low angle as is common on my evening commute. It's called: "How fast am I going?" Bonus points to anyone who figures it out. Also, should you figure it out, you'll see my colleagues' rich sense of humor at work.
Every time I drive our Toyota Prius C it reminds me of a long-term car from some time ago, the original Honda Insight. We had one back in those days and it was considered ahead of its time in terms of technology.
It was kind of fun to drive in an odd way. For one, it was a stick shift, so it would turn on and off as you depressed the clutch pedal at a stop. It was also very small and low, so you really felt like you were in the world's more elaborate recumbent bicycle.
But all those things were just minor quirks compared to the Insight's most noticeable feature, its lightness. Everything on that car was trimmed to the bone to boost the car's mileage. Our Prius C isn't quite so extreme, but it's pretty tinny as modern cars go. Whether you're closing the door or rolling over a pothole, this Prius feels like it's had every last ounce of weight sucked out of it.
The result is a car that feels a bit cheap even though it's well built. If you can put up with that in the name of great mileage, this Prius won't bother you a bit. Personally, I would rather give up some MPGs in the name of refinement.
If there's one thing that makes the Toyota Prius C enjoyable to drive, it's the simplicity of its interior. Much of that is due to the fact that it's an inexpensive car designed to go as far as possible on a gallon of gas. There isn't room for anything extra.
That doesn't mean the Prius C shouldn't get points for a thoughtful design. I mean, the temperature dial is a little bigger than it needs to be, but everything else is about as simple and easy to use as possible.
It's yet another reminder that the latest and greatest user interfaces in some of the more expensive cars in our fleet have some work to do. None of them are so seamlessly intuitive that you can take one look and get what you want. I don't expect those systems to look anything like the bare bones setup in our Prius, I just wish they worked as easily.
Until I drove this long-termer, I hadn't driven a Toyota Prius since before 2000. It was a right-hand-drive, pre-production model, so back then the car was more a novelty than anything else. For the last few years my driving experience has mostly been with European machinery, and frankly, it's sort of made me a snob. I approached the Prius C looking down my nose at it.
My personal ride is a Volkswagen TDI that does no worse than 38 mpg in the city, which I always thought was pretty great, so I set out determined to prove that this hybrid wasn't so superior to my own car in terms of fuel economy. I mean, how much better could it possibly be?
I wasn't going for any kind of hyper-mile excursion to try and wring every last possible mile out of the gallon. I wanted to drive the Prius just like I'd drive my car: freeway driving and a lot of puttering around town. I logged 271.1 miles in the process of burning a half tank of fuel. Afterward, I topped the tank with 5.292 gallons of gas. By doing the simple math, you can see that my stint driving around town netted 51.228 mpg overall.
Simply put, the Prius whooped the TDI's butt and I stand corrected.
This guy, believe it or not, is a Toyota Prius owner. He's six-and-a-half-feet tall and his 2008 Prius required the use of seat rail extenders to provide adequate leg room. So, naturally, when he saw me driving the smaller Prius C he wondered how he would fit.
With the seat travel maxed out rearward, there's little space between the front and rear seats, but there is better driver legroom than a second-generation Prius. Nobody will be sitting behind Gigantor, however. Headroom was OK once the seat was dropped vertically. Overall, the Prius C is a livable car if Gigantor were willing to live with compromised passenger space.
This, friends, is a simple HVAC setup. It's essentially one knob, one mode button and one fan button. Yes, there's an "off" button and an "auto" button as well, but it's a fairly Spartan arrangement.
The only way to make it simpler is to use more knobs, which clearly cost more money and that's not happening in this $23,000 hybrid.
Call me crazy, odd or both, but I like the satellite steering wheel buttons in the Prius C. They are some of the strangest buttons I've seen in a while, whether the car was cheap or expensive.
On one hand, they look almost waterproof, like they belong on a GoPro camera you stick on your surfboard. On the other hand, they also have an inexplicable mix of controls. The trip meter reset is bundled with the air recirculation toggle? Huh?
Despite all this, they work great. The indents are very positive so you can use them without looking. The rubbery surface looks odd, yet feels good to the touch. It's yet another example where the sheer simplicity of this Prius makes it a nice car to use on a daily basis. It's also a reminder that some controls might look ridiculous at first, but were born of practicality that comes through after considerable use.
It's fair to say I've been an eager supporter of Entune in our long-term 2012 Toyota Prius C. I think it offers decent feature content (most notably, on-screen traffic data) for a decent price, well, decent in the realm of factory-installed navigation and electronics interfaces.
But last night Entune let me down. I hadn't driven our Prius C in a while, so the Entune app on my phone had logged me out of my account. I waited until I was topside (that is, not in the depths of our subterranean office garage) and hit the sign-in button. The little pinwheel spun on my phone, but the app was unable to talk to Toyota's network. I tried a couple more times while waiting at a traffic light, but no dice. I had to get on the freeway with no traffic information on the nav system's maps.
If I really owned a Prius C, I could see this being an annoyance for the second driver of the car (i.e., my spouse). He'd probably drive it once a week at most and would likely have to deal with this sign-in issue. I still like the idea of Entune, but this is an example of why I'm not ready to rely completely on apps to "power" the electronics in whatever car I'm driving.
Most months we struggle to accumulate miles on our long-term Toyota Prius C. This car is built for city use. And in the city, you just don't cover the sort of ground possible on the open highway. This month was somewhat of an exception.
We made a point to send the Prius C on some longer trips, totaling over 1,200 miles. As expected, it returned good fuel mileage, but not enough to match the best lifetime single tank of 56.2 mpg.
Worst Fill MPG: 29.0
Best Fill MPG: 56.2
Average Lifetime MPG: 44.8
EPA MPG Rating (City/Highway/Combined): 46/53/50
Best Range: 473.7 miles
Current Odometer: 14,706
A lot of cars nowadays seem to incorporate technology that allows them to "recognize" their drivers. Examples include Jaguar's ignition button pulsing with a heartbeat cadence, or Cadillac's CUE system initiating the moment your posterior hits the leather.
The Prius has a similar feature, though it's a little more akin to Jaguar's in its subtlety. Approach the car at night with the key on your person and the interior dome lights warm to a welcoming glow, even before you actively unlock the car or reach out to open the door.
It's a small thing, but after a long day at work it's cool that your car is there waiting to greet you. Or maybe I'm just easily amused.
The low-speed braking tendencies of our 2012 Toyota Prius C long-term hybrid are annoying.
I found this out as I was driving slowly at the test track, dropping slalom cones out the driver's door into their respective painted squares. Just a little before I wanted to stop each time to drop the cone, the braking force would suddenly increase and cause the Prius C to jerk to a stop.
It's completely non-intuitive, difficult to modulate and hard to get used to. I noticed the same type of sudden increased braking force later in the day in stop-and-go traffic, and when pulling slowly up to a stoplight.
It's this kind of crappy driveability that can make hybrids frustrating.
Seems that time has been flying in our long-term 2012 Toyota Prius C. So much so that the 15,000-mile benchmark whizzed by and we didn't even realize it.
It occurred somewhere along the dusty stretch of California Highway 395 as I made the obligatory trek back to visit Mom for Mother's Day. The round trip is roughly 340 miles, and the Prius returned 49.6 mpg. Not quite as good as the 51 it got driving around in the city, but impressive nonetheless.
My brother drives a 2012 Toyota Prius V and loves it except for one thing: the driving experience is "squishy." By that he means the soft suspension and the disconnected feeling of the CVT. My brother says the squishy feeling doesn't bother him because he's getting amazing fuel economy.
I took our Prius C to reacquaint myself with the driving experience of this little hybrid and here's my open email to my brother.
Hey Pete: I took the Edmunds' Prius C and I agree with you about the squishy ride. It's not noticeable until you really ask it to accelerate hard or pass a slower car. Then the whirring is pretty irritating and makes it feel even slower than it really is. Your Prius V has a bigger engine so it's probably not this bad. But, like you, most people are going to use this as a commuter car and they'll be stuck in traffic with nothing to look at except the readout that says they're getting 51 mpg. That will make them feel good.
As you know, I've been commuting for the past two years in a Nissan Leaf and I like the ride quality of it a lot. Although both cars are "green" the Leaf couldn't be more different. It's not actually fast but it feels quick and responsive. And it doesn't have a CVT. In fact, it doesn't have any transmission at all. So, for the 75 miles of range I get, I'll really enjoy it. After that, I'll wish I had a Prius.
Safe driving, Phil
Our 2012 Toyota Prius C was due for its 15,000-mile service, so we dropped it off at the dealer yesterday afternoon. We called ahead to confirm the car could be ready for us by the end of the day. "Yes," we were told. Then we drove to Toyota of Santa Monica.
After our brief phone conversation with the service department rep, we felt confident this would be a simple drop-off-the-car-and-come-back-later-in-the-day situation. When we arrived it took far too long for somebody to help us. "You spoke with somebody on the phone? Do you remember who it was?" They would not see us until it was determined who we spoke to. When an advisor eventually introduced himself, he was nice enough, but we were already flustered. Still, the car was ready that afternoon as promised.
This wasn't our best dealer experience. But under Toyota's free maintenance program, it was free of charge. We like free. It included an oil change, new oil filter, tire rotation and the basic list of safety checks.
I received an email this morning titled, "The Least Manliest Thing I Hope to Ever Ask of You." It had to do with our long-term 2012 Toyota Prius C. Here's what it said...
"I think I left the wife's new box of detergent in the Prius C, rear seat floor area. I am slightly in the doghouse because of it. If it's in the Prius C, can I hassle you to slide it inconspicuously under my desk, however inconspicuous one can be with a lime green and orange box of detergent?"
If nothing else, my job can be pretty entertaining.
All right, come on: is this not the cutest rear wiper you've ever seen?
Among rear wipers, this is like a puppy, kitten and gosling combined. Not sure I've seen one smaller on a modern car. Maybe on a Mini.
I've driven a couple of examples of the 2012 Toyota Prius C. The first was a loaded 2012 Prius C Four. I took it out on our One Lap of Orange County suburban fuel economy loop and coaxed 58.2 mpg out of it without much coaxing. It loves city traffic.
For all that, this high-mpg city runabout couldn't flip a U-turn to save its life. It failed miserably in front of my house, and my street isn't all that narrow.
At 37.4 feet its turning circle was simply dismal. By contrast, our long-term 2013 Lexus GS 350 F-sport cleared the curb comfortably.
Today, our 2012 Toyota Prius C Three long-term test car flipped around with even more room to spare than the Lexus. This result makes more sense. A small car optimized for urban environs should run circles around a big Lexus, even if that Lexus has a trick 4-wheel steering system.
What's up with the Prius C Four, then? Why the big difference?
The Three comes with 15-inch wheels and tires and a 31.4-ft turning radius. So does the Prius C Four, when it comes to that, but at that trim level you have access to a $1,150 option that includes 16-inch alloy wheels and tires and a sunroof. Thing is, they throw in the crappy 37.4-ft turning circle — exactly six feet worse — at no extra charge.
This all comes about because the 16-inch tires are also 195 mm wide, some 20 mm wider than the stock rubber. But the wheel offset differs to prevent the extra rubber from sticking out. Instead the extra tread shifts inward toward the inner fender liners.
This is no problem in a straight line, but in parking lots at full lock that extra 20 mm is significant. The engineers were forced to mechanically restrict the ultimate steering angle to prevent rubbing. This, of course, Bogarts the turning radius.
The tale of the tape tells the story. The asphalt part of my street is 31 feet 8 inches wide, with two additional feet of gutter to the curb. That's 33 feet 8 inches total from my starting point at the starting seam to the base of the opposite curb.
When all is said and done the closest protuberance of our 2012 Prius C Three's front bodywork clears the curb by 2 feet 8 inches, which means it spins around in exactly 31 feet, a wee bit under Toyota's number.
If I attempted this with a Prius C Four equipped with alloys and a sunroof I would have ended up on my neighbor's lawn, possibly the sidewalk.
Moral of the story: If you go for the top-level Prius C Four, think long and hard about the 16-inch alloy wheel and sunroof option. Save your money if you live on a narrow street, regularly park in tight quarters or have a general aversion to 3-point turns. Six feet is a lot to give up in a city car.
The Prius C continues to impress, delivering real-world mileage of 45.3 mpg combined. That's a real number most metropolitan commuters can relate to and plan around. More than that, the Prius C delivers convenience. You'll cover anywhere from 350-400 miles, sometimes more, before needing a gas station.
And when you do, you'll struggle to fill the tank to its 9.5-gallon rated capacity (although we once managed to jam in 9.924 gallons). In May, we covered 1,513 miles, filled up six times, and averaged 6.4 gallons per fill.
Our best tank last month got us 50.6 miles and it's the fifth time we've hit the 50-mpg mark in the 16,265 miles we've driven. This month, we also eclipsed 400 miles of range for the fifth time.
Worst Fill MPG: 29.0
Best Fill MPG: 56.2
Average Lifetime MPG: 45.3
EPA MPG Rating: 46/53/50
Best Range: 473.7 miles
Current Odometer: 16,265
You can tow any car behind a motorhome if you strap it on a trailer. But motorhome aficionados rightly consider trailers to be a pain in the butt because they represent extra towed weight and a storage problem. They'd much rather tow the car on its on wheels with a simple tow bar in so-called four-down or "dingy" fashion.
Easy is the keyword here. This is, after all, a recreational activity. Upon arrival, a dinghy can be quickly unhooked and driven around on side trips while the motorhome sits parked with its awnings unfurled and its sliders popped out in full relaxation mode.
Of course there are mechanical implications for the car involved.
Can the 2012 Toyota Prius C join this club? Can you tow a Prius C behind a motorhome?
In a word, no. And the manual makes no bones about it. The hybrid drivetrain of the Prius C — or any other Prius — cannot tolerate being dragged about for any length of time.
As you can see, they don't go into details. But the reason has to do with the way a Toyota hybrid planetary transmission works.
The main electric drive motor is directly connected to the transmission's outer ring gear, the big one that encircles all the others with inward-facing teeth. The ring gear housing directly drives the differential and front wheels. Tow the car with the front tires on the ground and you spin the shaft of the electric motor. The "N" position on the shifter doesn't work like it does in a normal transmission.
But there's more to it than that. Any rotation of the ring gear will set the planet gears that mesh with it in motion, too. Unless the computer is fully awake and engaged, the orbit speed of the planet gears, and the engine's crankshaft which is connected to them, will be unregulated. That's because in normal use the central sun gear is the director that controls the whole works via a second motor/generator that's connected to it. The transmission doesn't work, even when being passively towed behind a motorhome, without the sun gear's full active participation.
A Prius "Hybrid Synergy Drive" planetary transmission is highly-optimized to carry out its high-mpg mission. Mechanically, it's simpler and has fewer parts than most other transmissions, but its control software is amazingly complex. On either front the needs of flat-towing would stand in the way of a drivetrain design capable of 50+ mpg.
Most people don't realize how much time and energy manufacturers go through when it comes to selecting wheels and tires for a car. Appearance is way down the priority list after more important things like strength, durability, price, ride quality and noise.
Clearly, the wheels on our Prius C were selected for their cost (steel) and aerodynamic properties (relatively smooth plastic wheel covers) while the tires were all about durability, minimal rolling resistance and noise. They're not a pretty combination, but this car is about maximum efficiency right?
Well, judging from the numerous Prius models I see on my daily commute, efficiency is secondary to their owners as more than half the Priuses I see have aftermarket wheels and tires on them. Yep, their owners spent all that money to get the most efficient car possible and then torpedo the whole thing with bigger, heavier wheels and stickier, low-profile tires.
Can't blame them for wanting to make their cars look better, but I'm guessing they have no idea how detrimental their vanity upgrades are to the efficiency of their Prius.
The Prius C has left our fleet. It never got a ton of love around here. Or rather, never a ton of miles. I liked it well enough. A tool of some limited use, but for what it was designed for, short-range hops and running around town, I liked it. I liked that you could get in, press the button and put it in gear, and glide out. It was easy and erased some of the dread from doing local errands. You knew it would drive easy and it wouldn't be hard to park. A VW Golf is also easy to drive, but a Golf doesn't get you 46 combined mpg.
Before the C left the rotation, I took it for a mini road trip, just out to Palm Springs, a 200-mile round trip. That hardly qualifies as road trip distance, but it was a chance to put on some miles and do a short MPG test. Both parts of the trip offered a period of stop-and-go congestion, wide-open highway, and twisting grades (the 60 highway through Moreno Valley being a minor driving highlight).
I realize now why no one chose the Prius C for longer trips. The CVT just isn't built for this kind of drive. In traffic, it wasn't bad. That nice little burst of electro-torque means you can maintain your position in traffic, keep a consistent following distance and not be the guy seizing up the accordion.
But when things opened up and we needed to pass trucks, RVs and drivers who seem too stoned to remember that Coachella ended a month ago, the C struggled. You have to mash it. Mashing it makes it bray, and braying is just no fun in a car as acoustically thin as the Prius C.
That said, the three of us were comfortable enough. The A/C blew strong even into 108-degree heat and we had plenty of room for our stuff (granted, not much for a short stay). We averaged 47.8 mpg.
My lady is a good barometer of ride quality, the kind of driver/passenger who believes a good car rides as quiet and controlled as a bullet train. She thought the C's ride was fine, but when it came time to pass a rig at full throttle, I got that look, the one that says "I'm glad this is part of your job."
The lesson here: Gentlemen, don't take your date to Palm Springs in a Prius C. Unless you're staying at Frank Sinatra's house and he's come back from the other side to perform a private set for you that evening. And serving wine from his collection and revealing who killed Jimmy Hoffa. Borrow your friend's F-150 if you must.
I was aiming for a "three-peat" of selling long-term cars to employees (our Lexus ES300 and our Jeep Wrangler were the other two), but the 2012 Toyota Prius C broke the streak. Its private party True Market Value of $19,500 was a bit too close to the price of a new model. After a week, there were no takers among Edmunds employees and it was time to move on.
This meant it was time to take it to Carmax. The week prior, the trade-in TMV was $18,305. I re-ran the TMV appraisal to get a fresh number and was surprised to see that trade-in TMV had dropped by about $650. Edmunds adjusts its used TMV on a weekly basis to account for any changes in the market. In this case, the re-evaluation coincided with our selling process.
The new trade-in TMV was $17,649. Take a guess on what Carmax offered before you click over to the next page.
Carmax offered us $18,000, which was $351 above trade-in TMV. After a day of mulling it over, we decided to take the offer. The 18 grand that Carmax offered was about $1,000 less than the price of a new base model Prius C. Ours was a "Three" trim level with options, so it's not really an apples-to-apples comparison, but many people shopping for a car might not look at it that way. Unless we priced the car at $18,500 and held firmly to that price, it wouldn't be worth our time to handle this as a private party sale.
As far as depreciation goes, I would give the car a C+. Fitting isn't it? We paid $22,701 (plus tax and title) for the car, which means it depreciated about 21 percent. Our long-term fleet average is around 22 percent.
And so this compact city crawler leaves our fleet. It delivered on the promise of excellent fuel economy at a low price, but it never quite inspired our editors to take it out all that often. Consequently, we came up short on our 20,000 mileage goal.
Final Odometer: 16,664
June marks the final month with our long-term 2012 Toyota Prius C. Little changed since last we posted a fuel economy update on the Prius C. All mpg milestones remain intact from May. After all, we drove it just 400 miles before it sold June 13. The only change between this month and last was the odometer.
Worst Fill MPG: 29.0
Best Fill MPG: 56.2
Average Lifetime MPG: 45.3
EPA MPG Rating (City/Highway/Combined): 46/53/50
Best Range: 473.7 miles
Current Odometer: 16,664
Wrap-Up
What We Got
We set our sights on a 2012 Toyota Prius C Four, which was the top of the four trim levels offered. Since there weren't any in California in our preferred Summer Rain Metallica paint color, we shifted to the Prius C Three.
Carson Toyota had a Prius C Three in our color. It sold us the car for $22,701 after some negotiation. This price landed us the standard 1.5-liter, 73-horsepower Atkinson-cycle four-cylinder and a 144-volt nickel-hydride battery pack. With its two electric motors, the overall system was rated at 99 hp. A continuously variable transmission (CVT) was standard along with keyless ignition, satellite radio, navigation and Entune. Optional equipment was limited to the moonroof ($850) and floor and cargo mats ($225).
Our Impressions
"I finally got some freeway time in our Prius C.... This little hybrid is quite the wanderer on the highway.... Don't get me wrong, though, it's not some darty little death trap. It's just a small, lightweight car with hard tires, so it tends to follow grooves when it finds them. The fact that the steering isn't particularly responsive doesn't help matters much. I guess that's the price you pay for big mileage numbers. Apart from the vague highway handling, it's surprisingly comfortable for such a small car. It has a decent seat, simple controls and good visibility. It's about what you would think a stripped-down Prius would be." — Ed Hellwig
"I made a couple two-and-a-half-hour drives in our long-term Prius C. And strangely, the cloth seats in our Three model proved quite comfortable. There's a plush layer of cushioning on top of each seat but also enough structure underneath that to give you some support. I do put the seat all the way back on its track, but for me (a 5-foot-10 adult), it's not maxed out and I can still use the seat height adjuster to improve the view over the dash without causing the seat-bottom cushion to angle too far forward. Bottom line: If you find the driver seat/seating position in the regular Toyota Prius uncomfortable, don't assume it'll be the same story in the Prius C. For me, the smaller Prius is actually better." — Erin Riches
"Before the C left the rotation, I took it for a mini road trip, just out to Palm Springs, a 200-mile round trip.... I realize now why no one chose the Prius C for longer trips. The CVT just isn't built for this kind of drive. In traffic, it wasn't bad. That nice little burst of electro-torque means you can maintain your position in traffic, keep a consistent following distance and not be the guy seizing up the accordion. But when things opened up and we needed to pass trucks, RVs and drivers who seem too stoned to remember that Coachella ended a month ago, the C struggled. You have to mash it. Mashing it makes it bray, and braying is just no fun in a car as acoustically thin as the Prius C." — Dan Frio
"Mind you, we've complained before that the Prius C rides harshly over really rough and broken pavement. But most highways and interstates aren't that bad, including California Highway 60, Interstates 10 and 17, and Arizona's Loop 101 and 202 freeways. We drove 'em all, and I never got annoyed with the Prius C's ride. It soaked up most impacts, yet never felt floaty. On the contrary, it feels buttoned-down and there's enough steering feel that you have the confidence to stay on the throttle through the fun freeway interchanges." — Erin Riches
"The amount of wind noise that comes into the Toyota's cabin almost offsets the lack of engine noise. This does get annoying, because the audio system really isn't good enough to overcome it when you're listening to talk radio or a podcast. Ultimately, though, I think this is a trade most people (not necessarily most car people) would be willing to make." — Erin Riches
"I found this out as I was driving slowly at the test track, dropping slalom cones out the driver's door into their respective painted squares. Just a little before I wanted to stop each time to drop the cone, the braking force would suddenly increase and cause the Prius C to jerk to a stop. It's completely nonintuitive, difficult to modulate and hard to get used to. I noticed the same type of sudden increased braking force later in the day in stop-and-go traffic, and when pulling slowly up to a stoplight. It's this kind of poor drivability that can make hybrids frustrating." — Mike Monticello
"I averaged 44.5 mpg, easily the best I've ever managed on this drive [to Las Vegas], and it only cost $25 to get there. That's like one hand of blackjack. It's hard to argue with that." — Mike Magrath
"The bill showed a normal cost of $91.55 for this service (it calls for synthetic oil) but 'No Charge' was stamped across it. Yep, it cost us zippo, as the Prius C came with two years/25,000 miles worth of free maintenance." — John DiPietro
"[Our Prius C] has Toyota's Entune interface for smartphones.... Several editors have commented that the setup process requires too many steps and that the apps themselves add minimal functionality. I can't say I disagree... but the reality is if you want traffic data to show up on our Three model's standard navigation system's maps, you have to set up Entune. I wouldn't suggest that this traffic data is as accurate as that provided by the Inrix app on my phone, but there's still something to be said for having it on a larger screen embedded in the dash." — Erin Riches
"I wish the Bluetooth in all cars worked as well as it does in our long-term Toyota Prius C. Pairing my phone to the Toyota is quick and simple and the sound quality is wonderful, maybe even better than the sound quality in the Bentley Mulsanne I also drove last week." — Scott Oldham
"I'm a serial over-packer in the best of times, and I've heard that a suit will be called for during this trip. So of course I'm using one of those large international suitcases. It just fits behind the rear seats and beneath the cargo cover, with just enough space for my laptop case to slide alongside." — Dan Edmunds
Maintenance & Repairs
Regular Maintenance:
Routine service on the Prius C was as simple as it gets. The ToyotaCare free maintenance program covers two years or 25,000 miles, whichever comes first. We did not pay a dime for service at the prescribed 5,000-, 10,000- and 15,000-mile intervals.
Service Campaigns:
There were no recalls or TSBs issued during our test.
Fuel Economy and Resale Value
Observed Fuel Economy:
The EPA rated our 2012 Toyota Prius C at 53 city/46 highway and 50 mpg combined. Our lifetime average fell below expectations, at 45 mpg. We did have a handful of 50 mpg fill-ups, however. The farthest we traveled on a single tank was 473 miles.
Resale and Depreciation:
We purchased the 2012 Toyota Prius C for $22,701 one year ago. With 16,664 miles on the odometer, Edmunds' TMV® Calculator valued it at $19,500 based on a private-party sale. This figure was so close to the price of new Cs that we didn't expect many takers. When CarMax offered us $18,000 we couldn't resist. This sales price marked 21 percent depreciation and can be considered slightly above average.
Summing Up
Pros: We averaged 45 mpg over 16,000 miles, zero maintenance costs, hatchback utility, comfortable front seats, simple cabin layout, not a single issue over the course of a year.
Cons: Barely tolerable level of power, considerable road noise, follows grooves in the highway, touchy brakes.
Bottom Line: Come to terms with the inherent power deficiencies of its hybrid platform and don't look back. The 2012 Toyota Prius C offers a lot of value for those seeking a practical 45 mpg subcompact.
| Total Body Repair Costs: | None |
| Total Routine Maintenance Costs: | None (over 12 months) |
| Additional Maintenance Costs: | None |
| Warranty Repairs: | None |
| Non-Warranty Repairs: | None |
| Scheduled Dealer Visits: | 3 |
| Unscheduled Dealer Visits: | None |
| Days Out of Service: | None |
| Breakdowns Stranding Driver: | None |
| Best Fuel Economy: | 56.2 mpg |
| Worst Fuel Economy: | 29.0 mpg |
| Average Fuel Economy: | 45.3 mpg |
| True Market Value at service end: | $19,500 (private-party sale) |
| What it Sold for: | $18,000 |
| Depreciation: | $4,701 (21% of paid price) |
| Final Odometer Reading: | 16,664 miles |
Edmunds purchased this vehicle for the purposes of evaluation.