The light was red so I gave the unsuspecting old guy in the black 10-year-old Cadillac Seville a hard look.
"So do you think I can take him," I asked Chris from Toyota?
He looked at the Cadillac and nodded his head in agreement.
"But he's serious," I said. "He's wearing leather driving gloves," I added keeping one eye on the traffic light.
"Those are gardening gloves," Chris said as I floored the 2010 pre-production Prius and edged ahead of the gardener.
I
was in Tucson, AZ testing the newest generation of Prius. Toyota was
kind enough to invite about two dozen automotive journalist to test the
new car with only two rules:
1) No reporting driving impressions and 2) no reporting real world mileage numbers until March 25th.
We were given about 10 new Priuses (or it is Pre(i) to test on a mixed city/highway driving loop around Tuscon.
The goal: to get the best combined mileage with an "untold" prize going to the skillful journalist who got the highest mpg.
To
make things interesting they had brought in a ringer. His name was Dan
Bryant. By day Bryant works as a computer engineer. At night, and on
the weekends he's a new breed of driver that have taken the new skill
of hypermiling to a science.
His
goal in life is simple: to get the highest possible mileage. He's best
known for having driven a current generation Prius around the entire
state of Texas on one tank full. That would be about 800 miles on 11.9
gallons of gas.
"So Dan," I asked him with a wry smile at the dinner before the big competition. "How do I get the worst possible mileage?"
I
figured anybody could drive a Prius like a crystal dealer going to a
weekend flea market with a load of antique glass in the back.
The
real test of the new car would be to drive it like most people. In
other words, I was going to drive it like a horny senior on the way to
his post prom date.
Bryant
had given me some good tips. "Remember," he said. You want to kill the
battery as fast as possible so always start like a jackrabbit, turn on
as much stuff as possible, and put the car in neutral when you come to
s stop light so it can't use the regenerative brakes to charge the
battery.
So that's how it came to be that Chris Risdon of Toyota
University and myself found ourselves racing the black Cadillac Seville
with the sunroof open (a first for the Prius) the air conditioning set
to arctic cold, the XM radio blasting, and (unfortunately) the heated
seats (another Prius first) turned off.
I would have turned on the seat heaters but 1) I could not find the switch, and 2) Chris would not have let me even if I did find the well hidden switch as he was already a bit leery of my impromptu experiment.
So how did the car do?
I
can't tell you until the 25th of this month, but what I can report is
that the official government mileage number for the 2010 Prius is a
combined city/highway 50 mpg.
Sitting impressions
Once again I can't go into driving details but Toyota never mentioned anything about sitting impressions.
The
new generation Prius feels much more substantial when you get behind
the wheel. While the current car feels like a bit of a Toyota science
experiment, the new car feels altogether very normal, and dare I say
substantial.
The redesigned cabin is a much improved place for
the daily business of driving, while the 2010 model comes with about
every comfort and convenience feature that Toyota offers including some
interesting party tricks like:
– self parallel parking
– adaptive radar cruise control
– lane departure warning and self correction
– solar powered interior cooling
– and even the brand new for Prius sunroof and previously mentioned heated leather seats.
Toyota
has not yet released pricing for the new model, but the cars (2010
models) will start arriving at dealerships in the next few months.
You'll
have the choice of 4 different package levels with the most expensive
cars coming filled to the brim with everything from Bluetooth to
satellite radio, navigation and even radar for the cruise control
hidden behind the Toyota logo in the nose of the car.
I can't
report 0-60 acceleration numbers yet, but suffice it so say that like
the old Rolls Royce Horsepower marketing term, the best Prius word(s)
to describe the car's acceleration is "adequate" or perhaps even "more
than adequate."
But let's face facts, most people don't buy a Prius for impromptu stoplight races.
I
can report that I did just barely beat the gardener in the Cadillac,
but had my hands full with a Ford F150 pickup at the next stoplight.
For
a more detailed review, please come back in a few days when I'll post
the official "worst millage" numbers, and reveal my driving impressions
along with the "untold" prize I of course did not win.
