The Prius to me is about achieveing exceptional fuel economy and safety, which is still acheived with carrying 4 or 5 adults in the car. Yes it is over priced in my opinion, but I think it is a great car, expecially in the I-tech specification. Not too many cars sold here in Australia around the Prius price can claim they have the same fuel economy, room inside the car for all passengers and the safety advancement that the I-tech has. the Pre-collison radar system and the self parking systems are very impressive and the batteries now have a 8 year warranty. the car is very friendly to the enviroment especially when it is at the end of it life cycle, if people made an effort to reserch a particular car before passing judgement, they would have found the current prius has highly recycable components/materials. that can be reused and made into other products.

I’m yet to know any of the 5 big Manufature’s GM/Holden, Ford, Toyota, Mitsubishi and Nissan not to have some type of recall with their vehicles sold both here in Australia and overseas over the years.

I guess in the end it comes down to personal preference as to what type of car you purchase. If you don’t like the Prius thats Ok but many people that buy them do, if petrol and LPG prices continue to rise, I think hybrid/ electric cars will become more popular in the future. I would be down to my toyota dealership tomorrow to buy one if I had the money.

For all of the technology in the drivetrain the economy figures are unremarkable. They do not come close to justifying the expense. The tyres and aerodynamics have as much to do with its fuel consumption (and with why the back seat is only suitable for short people) as its hypridness (sic).

There are so many problems with hydrogen that I can’t list them all. For starters:
1. Highly explosive (have you never heard of the Hindenberg?) – despite what you see in movies petrol is actually extremely hard to ignite and therefore fires after car accidents are very rare even when the tank is ruptured. Not the case with hydrogen which ignites very easily.
2. Hydrogen is hard to store and transport as it is very bulky in gas form and has to be kept extremely cold to get it into liquid form.
3. Because of 2. it is very hard to carry enough hydrogen in a vehicle to give a decent range.
4. The main commercial way of producing hydrogen uses huge amounts of electricity – I don’t have the figures handy but to replace petrol with hydrogen you would need a huge increase in electricity generation capacity – which of course in most cases is produced by burning fossil fuels.

Of course the funniest part of your comment is that almost all research for hydrogen powered cars is based on fuel-cell technology. In simple terms the hydrogen is used to generate electricity which is then used to power an electric motor to drive the car! So a hydrogen powered car is really just an electric car that uses hydrogen as the power source instead of a normal battery.

Tank capacity is 45 litres so that gives a range of around 1000km on the highway and just over 1100km in the city (I have done 1140km on a tank and the only time I have ever filled up with less than 1000km on the clock was because I was doing a big trip the next morning).

The Prius definitely gives the best results around town but it is no slouch out on the highway either (there aren’t too many cars that can return 4.5L/100km on the open road). If I was ONLY doing highway driving I would probably go for a diesel option but like most people I do a fair bit of suburban driving so am very happy with my choice.