Considering Prius T Spirit As Company Car

[Chris Macnamara]

Hi guys, as per heading and I think I need to take a reality check from some real life drivers of this car, please?

I currently have a VW Scirocco as my company car, it's the 2.0 TD GT 140 horse power model. Its great, however I get 42-43 mpg and the BIK is relatively high. It's not fast, but it goes round corners beautifully, and it is a very pretty car.

I do around 20000 miles per year, 75% on motorways at around 80mph.

I am reimbursed 12p per mile from my employer for business miles, which would rise to 16p with a Prius.

I don't want to go fast, and I don't want to go racing round country lanes.

Question is, am I going to be much/any better off financially, if I don't change my driving style, which I honestly don't think I will, and am I likely to be disappointed with the driving experience?

Thanks for any points of view.

Chris

[r04drunner1]

Hi Chris

Welcome on board the forum. If I were you, I would organise an extended test drive with Toyota. They do that for company car drivers and you can get 4 days with the car. That will give you the chance to really try it out.

To answer your questions:

Yes, you should save money. Quite a bit of it. The BIK is tiny on the Prius. Annual taxable value is only around £2,300. RFL is 0 (yes, you read that right: zero).

Doing 75% of your miles on motorway at "about" 80 mph I would expect you will get around 50mpg on the Prius. Which is 10 mpg better than your Scirocco, so you will save money there too. But if you drop your motorway speeds just a little, you should see even bigger savings. The drag force on a car is proportional to the square of the speed and even with the Prius having a world beating 0.25 Cd (the Scirocco is 0.34) it pays big time to drive at a more relaxed pace.

As for going around corners as if on rails, sadly you will not experience the same handling in the Prius. (I had two Mark II Sciroccos in my time, they were great handling cars. I am sure the newest one will be even better.) For 95% of the time on the road the Prius is a great car; very comfortable and safe. For the other 5% when you are hustling it around corners and pressing on, it's not great. Even in PWR mode. On that you get a sharpened throttle response which makes the car feel faster, but it does not change the suspension settings nor the handling.

To get the best out of the Prius, it's best to adapt to a more relaxed driving style. I would have been a fast driver myself in the past; but I changed once I'd had the Prius for a few months. I quickly worked out that the car did not feel comfortable at press-on speeds; it became a much better drive once I adopted a more relaxed style.

Remember the Prius is a more practical, roomy car than the Scirocco. You have 5 doors instead of 3 and more room inside. Also the Prius uses an automatic gearbox, which is great for city driving. I used to be indelibly wedded to a manual gearbox. But in today's driving conditions I now prefer automatic.

As for looks, I really like the high-tech streamlined look of the Gen 3 Prius. My teenage son also thinks it looks very cool and sporty, especially in pearlescent white. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Have a look at a few Prii around your area and see what you think.

As I say, best get the extended test drive and then you can see for yourself.

Happy motoring!

R04drunner1

[Jan&tone]

I'll go along with most of the above, I tend to keep to an indicated 67 with cruise control on and 90 percent of my motoring is motorways or Dual carriageways... I'm part owner of the M25 !!!!

The other 10 percent is on occasional forrays through some small Essex country lanes and I have found my T-spirit is excellent on these, goes round corners on rails. I rhink the lower profile tyres helps on that.

You will also find that Golf GTI's don't like Prius' they are faster away from lights than the Golf ! Great fun....

Oh , 67mph from junction31 round south (over the Dartford bridge) to Farnborough on the M3' 68mpg... What was your Sirrocco??

And of course Zero road fund licence, company car tax apparently is pretty good but I bought my own so don't know about that...

The Prius is a 5 seat, Avensis/Mondeo size automatic hatchback so loads of room... I'm 6'6" and fit with no problem...

Get yourself a test drive and then just buy one!!

Welcome to TOC btw

[Habu]

Chris, BIK on the Prius is 10% and, as others have said, road tax is £0. I also find insurance fairly cheap and servicing is as per any other Toyota so nowt to worry about there either. And as for toys...they're loaded. Even the base model has all the techy stuff like touch tracer display, HUD, groovy dash display, etc. Plus, as J&T said, the Prius is a traffic light monster. Shed loads of torque and with no gears to change (no gears at all really) it just surges away. You've around 136BHP on tap with the engine and leccy motor working together.

Get yourself a decent test drive and enjoy the smooooooooooth ride.

[Chris Macnamara]

[

Get yourself a decent test drive and enjoy the smooooooooooth ride.

Cheers guys, I'm really keen on a white one, with the solar roof. Does that really keep the car cool all the time when it's left alone, without using any fuel?

So next port of call is my fleet managers, and get them to organise a 4 day loan.

I've worked that just with the increase from 12p to 16p per mile, I'll be quids in, assuming I do get the mpg figures suggested by other forum members.

Again thanks for your replies.

Chris

[Bike Nut]

Hi, I took the plunge last September and took a Prius T4 as a company car and have not regretted it one bit. OK you have to adapt your driving style to maximise fuel economy but keeping up with the traffic I have been able to return low 50's mpg through the winter and recently with the warmer weather been able to achieve low 60's mpg. That's also with my boot full of gear for work. I have done nearly 16K miles so far and love the smooth drive and 'auto' transmission in city's and towns where I do around 80% of my driving.

Let us know how you get on with your test drive?

[Gmac70]

Hi I was in a similar position, wanting to cut costs etc of a company car and fuel. I tried the Prius and auris hybrids. I felt the Prius made you change your driving style which was a good thing. The auris didn't do that for me and therefore felt I wouldn't get as good MPG as I'd drive like a normal car.

So I placed my order for 10th anniversary model, however my fleet department have just added the lexus. Having had a short test drive and a paw over one at the local lexus dealership i decided based on the level of refinement in the lexus, that would be my preference. So although my Prius was less than 6 weeks away I've cancelled and ordered a lexus but won't be here till Nov. I suspect a Prius with solar roof will be on similar lead times with the ongoing difficulties in Japan

[r04drunner1]

Cheers guys, I'm really keen on a white one, with the solar roof. Does that really keep the car cool all the time when it's left alone, without using any fuel?

Hi Chris

Not quite. AFAIK you can activate the solar roof remotely before you enter the car, but it doesn't run all the time. All it does is kick off the air conditioning to cool the car down from when you activate it. I am not convinced that it's worth worth it? If I want to quickly cool down a heated up interior, I find a down / pause / up of the windows does the trick. With 4 electric windows you can have a nice through draft blowing through the car in no time!

Also be aware that to get the solar roof you have to go for the smaller 15 inch wheels. I am not exactly sure why, but I do know it's required.

I like the T4 (or T spirit) with the 17" wheels myself. The car looks better and handles a bit better, which makes me think that would be a good combination for you coming from the Scirocco.

Still, worth checking out the solar roof in your test car to see what difference it makes. For example, if your office is close to where the car is parked you could activate the air conditioning from where you are sitting, then by the time you get down to the car it would be cooled down for you.

Enjoy!

[Chris Dance]

I agree with all the above. Prius is everything we want to be, economical and cheaper than most cars to run. Have used it as a rubbish carrier to the dump and the loading space is more than adequate. I would suggest getting the T-spirit with its built in Sat/nav and other goodies. Go and see your Toyota dealer I am certain you will not regret it.

[johalareewi]

Not quite. AFAIK you can activate the solar roof remotely before you enter the car, but it doesn't run all the time. All it does is kick off the air conditioning to cool the car down from when you activate it. I am not convinced that it's worth worth it?

The Solar roof powers a tiny fan which draws air through the vehicle when it is left parked in the sun.

There is also remote control air con which is what you have described.

If you want to know about fuel stats, check out the fuelly website.

There are loads of Prii on there.

http://www.fuelly.com/car/toyota/prius/2010

[r04drunner1]

The Solar roof powers a tiny fan which draws air through the vehicle when it is left parked in the sun.

There is also remote control air con which is what you have described.

Thanks for clarifying that. I am a little uncertain when it comes to describing features my car doesn't have.

[cbcdesign]

12P a mile! That seems rather low. At 42MPG that's £5.04 a gallon which means you are losing around £1.00 per gallon by my calculations. I trust your employer is making up this deficit in some way? You will certainly be better off with a Prius and it will handle 80MPH on the motorway quite nicely in my experience. Well worth dconsidering the safety pack for the Adaptive cruise control too. It works really well.

[r04drunner1]

If you want to know about fuel stats, check out the fuelly website.

There are loads of Prii on there.

http://www.fuelly.com/car/toyota/prius/2010

The fuelly stats looked poor to me. Then I realised they are in US MPG! You should add 20% (specifically, multiply by 1.201) to see the GB equivalent.

[Daveyonthemove]

If you want to know about fuel stats, check out the fuelly website.

There are loads of Prii on there.

http://www.fuelly.com/car/toyota/prius/2010

The fuelly stats looked poor to me. Then I realised they are in US MPG! You should add 20% (specifically, multiply by 1.201) to see the GB equivalent.

Or click the 'UK' tab in the top left ;)

[r04drunner1]

Or click the 'UK' tab in the top left ;)

Yeah I found that out too but only some time after I had posted! It didn't work for me at first, but the site got there in the end with a little encouragement.

Hmm, I notice the best consumption (in UK MPG) was 71. Some way short of the 72 MPG advertised... The median seems to be around 56 MPG, which is where my car is at most of the time as well. Still pretty good, considering that I'd budgeted for only 50 MPG.

[Daveyonthemove]

You can't argue with the figures, they give a good real life feedback of what these (and other) cars can achieve.

It would be good if the Gov't made these figures the MPG statistics instead of the manufacturers lab results.

[johalareewi]

You can get all the Prii on fuelly using this link

http://www.fuelly.com/car/toyota/prius

This will include gen2 and gen3 (and possibly some gen1).

You can then filter by year.

There is a big mpg difference between winter and summer (15 mpg spread for me) so those prii that have done more winters than summers (like mine) will sit a little lower in the ratings.

If you trawl through the individual cars, you will find the odd prius that has done over 80mpg so the official figures can be beaten.