FOXNews.com – Green With Envy: Prius Owners Smile as Neighbors Fume
This story is so true. People driving around town in their Hybrids love to talk about their Hybrids as if they’re doing some tremendous deed for society, and, at the same time, saving loads of money at the gas pump.
Well, news flash to you hybrid lovers: You’re not saving money, and you are making asses out of yourselves. Keep feeling smug driving around in your crappy horsepower clean machines. Even though my Jeep Liberty gets 15 mpg, I’m still saving more money than you based on the fact that I didn’t overpay to get it.
-Tyler
The South Park episode regarding this is hilarious, South Park becomes heavilly polluted with “smug” from all of the holier than thou prius drivers. BTW, my Suburban pollutes less on a trip to SLC than my riding lawnmower does cutting my grass once a week.
MTW, did you know that to replace the battery (which has to be done after a few years) costs around $8K?
Nice “savings”.
But you are missing the whole point, Tom. There is nothing “practical” about it… it is a status symbol, and that is priceless!
Well put, tyler.
Most Prius owners belong to the “right tool for the right job” club. We use our Prius for single driver or light-duty, passenger chores and other vehicles when there is a different payload or purpose. We don’t care to burn-up our money and have no problem at all if others wish to burn up theirs. As the price of gasoline has gone up, the resale prices of our used Prius have increased, thanks to higher gas prices. We’re also finding the supply of used batteries from salvage Prius handles non-warranty battery failure: the batteries have an 8 year, 100,000 mile warranty. Regardless, I have a spare battery from a salvage bought for $550 in the car port but my current battery is doing quite fine. Like a vulture, I keep looking for used Prius with bad batteries to replace our 2001 Echo. So you see, we’re all happy.
Prius is not clean. Worse over entire life than a Range Rover, very tough to recycle.
The prius is a status symbol just like the hummer before it, that much is certain.
Whether it saves money is unclear, the car is damn expensive even used. My ford focus gets 36mph highway and cost 1/3 of what a prius costs. I have heard about the battery issue of the prius being kind of a load of hogwash as it is easy to replace and in practice has more of a 200,000 mile lifetime.
Good for the environment? also uncertain after you factor in the cost of production and disposal. However you could spin outward since everything is connected and include the emmisions from oil extraction and whatnot making this a difficult thing to quanitify.
What is clear is public opinion is changing and being green is cool right now. We may see public opinion turn on the prius as it did the hummer in recent years.