Our options initially were the Honda Insight and the ever popular Toyota Prius. I did some initial research where I was then introduced to the Toyota Camry (Hybrid). We went out mid-December to test drive, settling on our financial institute to do the haggling for us. Let me first say that the Prius is a good second car. It's built to save gas. The Camry, on the other hand, is a first car. With the added horsepower from the electric engine, it pushes about 185 HP, compared to about half that for the Prius. There was more passenger room with the Camry, and some other features we were sold on.
We've had the car two months now, so I feel I can comment on it since most of the newness has rubbed off. It's my wife's car for the most part, but she lets me drive it on the weekends. Performance wise, the thing handles like a dream. You'd swear it was an AWD. During the huge dumps of snow Denver got in late December, it was unstoppable. We've taken it for a few trips in the mountains skiing and it can push 80 up some steep inclines with ease. It's so incredibly quiet on the inside as well with very little road noise seeping into the cabin. The read-out has been re-tooled to include a MPG meter instead of a tach. If you want to maximize fuel, just adjust your driving to meet maximum MPG. Coming down from the mountains last weekend, I managed to get 85 MPG (~50 miles). No shit! Of course going uphill is a little less efficient. More on that later...
As for the interior, it's roomy and we decided on a touring package (sunroof, 6 CD changer with JBL speakers, heated mirrors). The Camry comes standard with power everything. One thing that's annoying is they put the MP3 player plug in way in the back of the mid-console compartment. Another complaint is the trunk space. The battery takes up some of the trunk and you're left with a small window when folding down the seats which (luckily) is big enough to fit a snowboard and two pair of skis through. We'll eventually get a Thule or other rack, so I'm not that concerned. Another cool feature is the "keyless" ignition. The keys never have to come out of your pocket, which is pretty neat, but has me wondering about how safe it is.
Getting back to gas mileage, we've been averaging about 31-35 mpg, which is far off the sticker mpg of 40 mpg. We can probably squeeze another 2-4 mpg out of it, so it's not that bad. We're planning on having this car a while, so we wanted something with staying power and the Camry recently won the Motor Trend car of the year. The safety features were awarded a 5-star rating as well. If the car is operating under 40 mph, you can keep it on electric if you're going downhill/level, which is pretty cool and dead quiet. The engine will typically shut off completely when stopped. Another interesting feature is the "Automatically controlled continuously variable transmission". It's somewhat jerky, and whines a lot, but being married I'm used to that. We've only had one problem, when the front tire blew out. Toyota wanted $200+ to install a new factory tire on the car, but we went to a tire dealer and got a better tire for under $100.
Overall, we're very pleased with our purchase. It makes the wife happy, so that's what matters most. I wanted to get personalized plates to read "NOTSMUG" to play on the South Park episode, but I chickened out.
