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Around
town
in the Prius: gimmick or glimpse into the future?
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To me, electric
cars conjured up the image of putting batteries inside a toy for
my two boys to play with on the carpet.
Toyota's dual fuel demonstrator is an altogether bigger proposition.
It looks like most other modern saloon cars on the road today.
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| Big boot,
big battery but still plenty of space. |
Even when you
open the boot, you can easily miss the heart of the green car concept
- its high voltage battery pack.
Snuggled around the boot sub-frame, it is said to allow the car
to reclaim up to 30% of the energy used to drive its front wheels
- and you can still get your suitcases in.
A further greening of the car's design is its battery.
Separate cells can be replaced individually if they start to decay,
avoiding replacing the whole unit.
On
the road and among the traffic
Start
the car and a digital speedometer lights up, below which is an LCD
screen economy gauge, charting what energy is being saved or lost
depending on how you drive.
On
the road, I had my first introduction as to how radical this car
is. The petrol engine, having completed its job of firing the car
up, had shut itself down.
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| The dashboard
mounted energy gauge charts how you are driving. |
At this point
you would quickly reach for your ignition key before a barrage of
impatient honking started up behind you - not so in this case.
Put
your foot down and you glide away smoothly - the loudest noise comes
from the tyres as the electric motor gets us underway.
The dashboard
economy gauge showed me how efficiently I was driving and how much
I was able to top up the battery charge.
A bit like a video game, it is a challenge to keep the display in
the green 'saving' sector instead of the red 'using' sector.
But in practice, the display is not distracting and you can switch
it off if you find yourself intently watching the progress of the
graphics instead of the antics of the vehicle in front of you.
In traffic, the extra weight of the batteries creates a sure- footed
ride, while the automatic gears let you focus on what's happening
around you.
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| A good
driving position and visibility help the driver to negotiate
busy streets. |
Having the
two engines working for you is the secret of the cars claimed 61mpg
around town.
Driving around the city, I managed to use only the output of the
33kw electric motor and a quick stab of the accelerator provoked
the 1.5 litre petrol engine to give me an extra boost.
Most importantly,
when in congested stop-start traffic, you will run only on the electric
motor, meaning you give out zero emissions.
Imagine the impact that would have on rush hour traffic and the
school run. There are rumours of a modified people carrier aimed
at just such a market and Toyota have plans to extend their hybrid
technology throughout their range.
When used on the crowded streets of New York, there are stories
that the air leaving the Prius' tailpipe was cleaner than the air
entering the car at the front! Food for thought there...
Was I swayed by the Prius charms?
Overall,
my lasting impression is of a very quiet, family-sized car.
You do not feel like you are simply driving around in one of the
motoring world's "fresh approaches" to fuel and environmental-friendliness.
You could regard the Toyota and Honda dual fuel cars as just a toe
in the water towards greener transport but at least it's a step
in the right direction.
It's all very well reading about this sort of technology and some
of you will be tempted into taking a test drive but what
I really wanted to know, what it
is actually like to use a car like this on a daily basis?
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Motorway
gridlock special
