selo

I'm surprised to find I'm not alone!.
Even though I love fast cars, in our DDs I'm always looking for good mileage. And I hate to admit it but I try for good mileage in our performance cars too. I can't help it. I had an allocation for a Raptor at almost MSRP, but when it came in I passed. It was just too much of a piggy - ended up with a Wrangler MT and averaging 19 mpg.
Right now I'm shopping the new Bolt vs a CMax. The Bolt sounds like a car of the future, but I have more of a comfort level with the CMax that's been out several years than the Bolt, which I view as very complicated tech.

36couper

My brother-in-law has a Cruze. It gets better gas mileage than a Prius. I'll never have a Prius in my driveway. There is a reason they are 'giving them away'

7Corvette5

Corvette plus winter Camaro. 2010 2SS/RS, 6 speed manual, remarkably good in our snowy Canadian winters! (With snow tires of course)

Racingswh

^^^ Not much bi-polar there. lol!! Everything pretty sweet. The house, the cars, very nice!!

patentcad

Over the first 300 miles or so the Prius Prime has averaged 65 mpg. We drove out to Middletown and back for dinner the other night - 26 miles round trip - and got a solid 25 miles in pure electric mode, so I figure that trip used like 1.2 oz. of gasoline. The car appears to get 25 miles in pure EV mode, which is slightly better than advertised.

But here's where it gets interesting: I'm reading a Car & Driver road test of the 2017 Prius Prime from the last year or so (whenever the car magazines got the car, maybe a year ago). In the article it says that Electric Vehicle mode wasn't so useful once you got the car out on the highway because once you start going highway speeds the EV range 'plummets' (their words from the article) to 12 miles or so. Hmmmm. So we drive the car to dinner the other night, 26 miles round-trip, I'd say 18 miles are highway. I wasn't driving in a heavy-footed manner, but I wasn't hyper-miling either. On the highway I wasn't driving 55 mph, I was going with the flow of traffic, 60-80 mph (in EV mode the car will go up to 84 mph). And we got an honest 25 miles of pure EV range. Yesterday going to work (90% highway) my wife also experienced 25 miles of EV range before the big battery ran out of juice.

Which does beg the question about Car & Driver's editors: are those idiots capable of driving any car in anything approaching a normal manner? I get the impression they would drive a Tesla and report they got 11 mpg.

SK360

No worries... My Plugin is more fun at times

patentcad

Anyway, 65 mpg is amazing, the 2011 (now my back-up/winter car) averaged 45 mpg (EPA rated 50 mpg, 44-45 mpg is what Consumer Reports got, that publication's mpg reporting tends to be spot-on). So the Prius Prime is a hybrid on steroids more than an electric car. The plug-in hybrid model is ideal, EV capability, no range limits or worries. If you live in a close in suburb like Bergen, Westchester or Rockland Counties you'd hardly ever use gasoline if you kept the car charged. Here distances are greater (the supermarket is 4 miles away, not 1 mile, it's 48 miles to the GWB, not 15 miles) so it's harder to stay in EV mode all the time, but we still can make it round-trip to the two places where all the shopping is within the range of the car's electric range, and when you do that your overall mpgs go way up.

Increasingly I think future cars will either be electric or if they have internal combustion engines, they will mostly have a plug-in capability. I'd be surprised if there are many straight i.c.e. cars by 2030, my guess is mostly EV and a lot of plug in hybrids.

I wouldn't panic, either way there will be sports cars. A greater threat to the car culture we all love and grew up with are autonomous, self-driving cars. The cover story in Car & Driver this month is headlined: 'Is Driving Dead?'. Good question, eh? You have to wonder if 30-50 years from now human drivers aren't determined too risky vs. self-driving cars to be allowed on the roads.

I have been riding a road bicycle daily for nearly 30 years. The risk of being clipped by a texting or drunk driver is what worries me. Happily I live in a semi-rural area, the traffic load here is half what it was in Bergen County (closer-in suburb to NY, the G.Washington Bridge NJ end is Bergen County). I myself think I will be MUCH safer on my bicycle with autonomous cars passing me than with texting teens and drunken adults behind the wheel. I've read articles where it's projected that autonomous cars would reduce the accident rate so much it would negatively impact body shops and car part sales (far fewer accidents).

But I do think all those larger issues (like autonomous cars displacing traditional cars) are 20+ years off, I'm nearly 60, so I'll get to drive my Corvettes into the long good night, and that's fine with me.

Nice. I actually like the styling of the first generation Chevy Volt more than the newer one that I drove this past summer.

Unpossible.

There are two things you should never believe: ***** size claims and anecdotal mpg claims. 'My car gets 47 mpg'. Right. On the highway. Once in a while with a tailwind. A Prius gets 45 mpg (the last generation) or 50+ mpg (the newer version) day after day, in all kinds of driving, in fact the cars get higher mpgs in urban driving. People are utterly clueless on this, 95% of them have no friggin idea what their cars really get when it comes to fuel economy, they'll see some higher mpg number on car's dash display one time, and THAT becomes the number the use to tell everybody for the next 5 years even though it doesn't really represent the car's actual fuel efficiency.

The reason Toyota is giving them away is gas is historically as cheap as it has ever been in the USA. The average price for 87 fuel today is about $2.85 in the U.S., if you adjust that for inflation back to when I was in high school (I graduated in 1975) that's 63 cents per gallon, the national average in 1975 was 50 cents. If the price of 87 jumps to $3.50 to $4.00 per gallon then suddenly the Prius gets hot and it's hard to find one in stock. Truck and SUV sales are booming now, they'll cool off if gas prices spike. Same as it ever was in the USA.

Another factor is the car is so face-palm ugly. Good grief, you'd think they'd try to make it better, but they made it worse. That has to kill sales, I don't think people even consider the car for that reason. Which is a shame because I have to say in many respects these are the best cars I've ever owned. Astonishingly reliable, fuel efficient, cheap to own, comfortable, safe, etc. etc Prius owners are about the most satisfied with their cars of all car owners, and among the most loyal, and it has less to do with tree-hugging than people appreciating a car that's so easy to own and so hard to kill. And the 2017 is a huge improvement in most respects from our 2011, which was a great car too.

All that being said, I mostly drive a Corvette.

Consider: Toyota has built the Prius name into a very valuable automotive brand, and how? With cool styling, performance, etc.? Hardly. The brand value is because they have sold over NINE MILLION cars bearing that name plate globally over the past 15+ years and the car has an well established reputation for amazing efficiency, reliability and customer loyalty.

So people can **** on the Prius all they want, it's here to stay and Toyota is expanding the Prius line-up of vehicles, I even heard rumors of the company considering splitting it off into its own automotive nameplate (like Lexus).

Oh yeah, that comment above about Lexus owners just driving re-badged Toyotas is about as ignorant as it can possibly get. Also 1991 called, they want their auto trash talk back.

joemosfet

My C7 gets better gas mileage than my coworkers prius. True Story.

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Bill Dearborn

Same can be said about Volt owners. I have met a bunch at various cruise ins that are in love with their vehicles. One reason why I suggested my daughter buy a used 2014 for my grand daughter after she got her DL. My grand daughter loves the car, she uses it to drive in the Palos Verdes Peninsula area near LA and with the charger in the garage she hasn't had to use any gas in the car except as mandated by GM to make sure the gas gets used Vs sit in the tank. The car definitely looks better than any Prius I have ever seen and it is well appointed in the manner a young person wants nowadays.

Bill

ZenicaPA

↑ Couldn't agree more. Loved my Volt but alas, I wanted self driving so I got a Tesla.

ZenicaPA

What camera did you use? The speedometer shows 80MPH yet the sign in the left corner of the windshield is legible.

spinkick

My volt is just awesome. The ride is amazing, it's comfortable and is pretty worry free

JimNeedsC7

We feel your pain.

patentcad

I really was disappointed in the quality of the Volt I drove for a couple of days. And I am well aware of how much Volt owners LOVE their cars. On paper it's the best plug-in on the market. Oh well. We're loving this new Prius Prime, it's just amazing. The car just oozes friggin quality and it's kind of like they took the Prius and sent it to Lexus finishing school, it's SO much nicer than the old Prius. And over 550 miles the car is averaging over 75 mpg. The EV range is as advertised and then some, we got 27 miles last night. And when it kicks over to hybrid mode the car averages 53 mpg or so in the real world (reports I'm getting back from the new Volt are 40-42 mpg in hybrid mode). I think it's kind of a wash for where we live with the distances we drive. The longer distances you drive the more suited the Prius Prime is, the shorter the more the Volt would work more efficiently. I'm just amazed @ how much that relatively short electric range boosts the overall mpgs. I guess if the car stays home for a week (my wife alternates cars on her longer commute) and just just shorter trips within the EV range of the car the overall mpgs start going up.

I'll be amazed if 10 years from now most cars aren't electric and/or plug-in hybrid like the Volt and Prius Prime. The good news is I think that's going to CRUSH oil prices and make it easier to drive a car like the Corvette. Except I think Corvettes will be plug-in hybrids by the time the C9 rolls around too : ).

Avanti

Just noticed this thread... perhaps this will qualify.

My 1966 Excalibur SSK (still with its original Corvette 300hp/327 engine from the factory), and my still quite new 2018 C7 (still with its orginal Corvette engine, too--hehehe)!

joemosfet

Thanks, it's a Pixel XL, I've really been impressed with the camera on it.

frednino

I owned a 2017 Chevy Volt for a little over a year, and my experience was completely opposite (or “bi-polar”) to your brief stint. To me, the Volt was the car that “just oozes friggin quality” and I LOVED the car. I was quite pleased with the interior (see pics) and loved the two-tone color combo. I did have the higher trim level (Premier?) and pretty much all the options, so I don’t know if that compares to the vehicle you drove. Leather felt comfortable, the nighttime interior blue ambient lighting was “cool,” the dashboard and interior door areas were relatively soft to the touch, fit and finish to me seemed quite good. I’ve owned European and Japanese luxury cars, and the Volt compared favorably to them (I traded in a Mercedes E250Bluetec for it!). And, honestly, the Volt is the first American car I’ve owned, and its quality and reliability inspired me to look into the Vette. Two minor annoyances were the lack of homelink garage door opener and lack of electric seat adjustments. Loved the tech safety features and was actually surprised that my C7 lacked them (especially the blindside warning signal on the mirrors, the blind spots on my C7 are a minor annoyance currently). The Volt was also a great fit for me because my daily commute is relatively short (about 24 miles RT), and the electric range of my Volt was consistently between 50 – 60 miles (decreasing with higher highway speeds and increasing with stop and go traffic), so I was in electric only mode most of the time. So I would go all-electric for the commute, then plug in to recharge overnight (no special outlet, just the one where the washing machine goes). Kinda reminded me of my cell phone. I put on under 11K miles in the year+2 months I owned it, and used under 30 gallons of gas total (I had hoped to use only 26 gallons in 52 weeks time, but I had a road trip to Vegas near the end that required gas operation). Oh, and I liked the instant torque provided by the electric motors. I never tested a Prius Prime (they weren’t out in early 2016, when I got the Volt), so I can’t compare, but it is hard for me to envision its interior totally outclassing my Volt’s. And I liked the Volt’s exterior because it was more traditionally styled; I can’t see myself warming up to the exterior of the Prius. Good for you that you like your Prius Prime, I’m just wanting to toot the horn of the Volt as a “responsible opposing viewpoint.” Cheers!

egp

Another Vette-Volt owner here. Our 2012 Volt has been a fabulous vehicle, and we were early adopters to support American engineering and workforce.