Toyota Prius C leaked

[madfast]

That doesn’t mean the Aqua/Prius C will be no fun to drive. On the contrary, Toyota officials say that the car features a low center of gravity and sport-tuned suspension, which will make it one of the best-handling compact cars around. We’ll take their word for it now, but we’ll see for sure when the car comes to the U.S. next year.

http://www.roadandtrack.com/auto-sho...yo/toyota-aqua

looks like the FT philosophy has reignited the whole of toyota, even in a prius! this car looks interesting. i may look into it as a daily driver.

Anybody here drive a Prius? How slow is it really? The electric motor should generate pretty good tq, but does the feeling of tq/acceleration taper off real quick? the 0-60 of the prius is abysmal (from an enthusiast's perspective), so i was hoping some of you guys here have experience in one and can tell it like it is. for DD duty im sure it's fine, but how is the car on the highway merging, on-ramps, passing, etc. is the car ridiculously slow? or is it actually quite peppy due to the electric motor's tq?

[serialk11r]

I sat in one during a family trip, it's honestly pretty slow, but it's obviously adequate for transportation usage. In Asia and Europe people get by with much less power.

[WingsofWar]

cool but i still wouldnt buy one

[madfast]

But is it slow because people drive it slow or because the car is actually that damn slow? it's very hard to find any review of the car where they talk about the actual performance of the car, instead of how great mpg they can get. and i ask only because i will never buy a "dangerously" slow car. you know what i mean, people doing kamikaze maneuvers just to pass you, or the old "what? you want to merge ahead of me? hell no!"

[brrneon]

They are not really that bad, they are slow but not dangerously slow. I have an 07 and I don't have trouble when I need to pass a car. But I wouldn't try to pass more than 1 at a time on a two lane road. On the highway I get about 45mpg when driving at 80 mph, but if you drop down to 60 mph I get about 55 mpg.

They do have their cons like when I floor it, the engine takes about a second to respond, so you have to take that into account when passing. Also the seats are not really comfortable to me ( I'm 200lbs) and its a boring ride.

The car will hit 110 if you really want to.

[Longhorn248]

I like those headlights. If it's like all the other Prius models then it probably has a 0-60 of like 30 seconds right?

[madfast]

Originally Posted by brrneon

They are not really that bad, they are slow but not dangerously slow. I have an 07 and I don't have trouble when I need to pass a car. But I wouldn't try to pass more than 1 at a time on a two lane road. On the highway I get about 45mpg when driving at 80 mph, but if you drop down to 60 mph I get about 55 mpg.

They do have their cons like when I floor it, the engine takes about a second to respond, so you have to take that into account when passing. Also the seats are not really comfortable to me ( I'm 200lbs) and its a boring ride.

The car will hit 110 if you really want to.

thanks! how about on ramps and such? do you ever feel it doesnt have enough power to confidently merge into fast moving traffic?

[brrneon]

no, unless you are trying to merge from a dead stop into 80 mph traffic, most on ramps have more then enough room.

It has a CVT type transmission so it stays in its peak power when accelerating. There is also no chance of making it any faster then it already is, there is an article online somewhere where a guy added a turbo and his 1/4 stayed the same but his mpg increased.
http://autospeed.com/cms/title_The-S...8/article.html

I'm at 110K miles and the only problem I've had is the auto doorlocks stoped working.

[serialk11r]

hehehe the HSD actually has discrete gear ratios, except the motor gives variable assist to make it feel like the power is constant. Sorta weird that they'd sacrifice a bit of acceleration (on a car that's considered really slow) for "smoothness".

And yes, if you add a turbo you'll have trouble spooling because under full throttle instead of having about 2 bar absolute pressure in the exhaust to work with you only get like 1.3 due to the late intake valve closure. It has less exhaust gas volume than a typical 1L engine. mpg increase is almost expected because the 13.0 CR or whatever is actually very conservative when the intake duration is taken into account, the turbo would increase the pressure ratio a bit.

[CSSM]

I wish they would have made it look more like the concept, with the lights coming off the windshield

[ZetaVI]

Change the name, make it look exactly like the concept, and turn into a hot hatch they might actually have something.

[ahausheer]

A recent article on www.caranddriver.com says the Prius C will weight 2,500 lbs and achieve 50 mpg average. Of course this could be an error, but what the F? 2,500 lbs, makes me think the FT-86 is heavy.

[Dimman]

Is this the next-gen 'normal' Prius, or a new smaller entry-level Prius? Like a Yaris with HSD?

[CSSM]

Makes a little sense, its a small cheap Prius: