Ancient Nerd

Seems appropriate. The boot is seriously puny.😊

I would say that the PHEV is noticeably better than the standard Gen4 on a long journey, despite all the extra weight. It is definitely not worse. As Jay says, the boot is a bit of a joke. It is not a problem for me, as there are just two of us, and I can always drop one of the rear seats if necessary for the main journey. As far as the charger is concerned, if you are paying for it yourself, which you will if buying used, don't use Chargemaster - or at least read the reviews on Trustpilot first. Far better to go for a good local installer. You still get the £500 OLEV grant, and the charger is a whole lot easier than using a granny cable.

If you have 5w30 oil instead of 0w20, then you will see a hit of a few mpg. It took a long time for dealers to get the message. However, a relative had their Auris HSD serviced a few months ago at our (under new ownership) dealer, and had 5w30 oil used. She would have taken it back for replacement if she hadn't px'd it for a Prius shortly afterwards. I avoid the problem by taking my own oil, which incidentally saves about £30 each time. As PeteB says, dealers always overfill the oil, as they take the Toyota figure as gospel. My dealer (also PeteB's) learned after I got them to take out the excess for the third time. The Gen3 and Gen4 only resulted in qround 5mm overfill, but the Gen2 was ridiculously over Tyres may have a even greater effect on mpg. As Jay says, the EU ratings are a pile of poo, mostly because (AFAIK) manufacturers do their own testing. My experience is of replacing a set of Michelin Primacys with Hankook Ventus Prime 2, which had a significantly better economy rating. In practice the Hankooks had 2-3 mpg worse fuel consumption, had much shorter life, as the tread pattern had vanished by 3 1/2 mm whereas the Michelins were still good at 2mm. All in all the cheaper tyres were much more expensive per mile than the Michelins.

I had a 2008 Gen 2 for 40,000 miles. My son took it over and took it to 185,000 miles when he PX'ed it for another Toyota hybrid in 2014. My replacement 2009 Gen 3 did 135,000 miles before I changed it, also in 2014. No problems and no sign of any reduction in capacity throughout their lives.

Get the correct battery from Toyota. I'm fairly certain that it is a gel battery, like the original. The battery for the Gen 2 is in the boot. So if the car is rear-ended and the battery cracks, then a conventional battery is likely to spray the occupants with battery acid. Not a nice thought.

There is definitely an option to stop the recirculation coming on at startup, because I changed it on the Gen 4 after getting very fed up with it. The snag is that it was over two years ago, so I can't remember what the setting is. So far, it hasn't affected me on the PHEV, however I guess it will do so soon as the weather gets colder. The one thing that I do remember, is that its description on the car menus bears no relation to recirculation. I think it was some sort of ECO setting. I only found it because someone else got there first. I suspect that it might have been Grumpy Cabbie. If not, then possibly it was on Priuschat somewhere. Anyway, I'll look soon.

Hi Phil, I've just measured mine. It is actually seven metres, excluding the length of the plugs, with thee control box around 1/2 metres from the plug end. The only available outdoor socket was about 15 metres from the nearest place I could get the car. So I bought a 10 metre IP rated extension lead to extend it to the plug. Unfortunately, the 13 amp plug on the granny lead is massive, making it totally impossible to close the cover on the extension socket. I ended up with a large plant pot (builders buckets weren't big enough) upside down over the plug and socket connection to keep it dry, with another over the control box where I also stored the car plug when not in use. Less than ideal, but there were three RCDs in series before the car.. To play safe, I also reduced the charging current to 8 amps from the standard 10. Fortunately, I had a proper charger installed just before the weekend. Not from Chargemaster - another story- but life is now a lot less stressful without having to crawl under hedges.

Correct, it is seriously annoying. The nearest I can get is to switch to sidelights when parked and still in the car, so that I don't blind passing pedestrians.

There is no dipstick. I must admit that I rarely used the one on the Gen 3. I have always topped it up at regular intervals to ensure you never run out. In my case that was usually monthly. I always found that you could hear the fluid I. The filler pipe when it got near to full, so you could slow down before it reached the top.

At least the PHEV has the battery as a reason for losing boot space. I still can't see the justification for filling the standard Prius under boot space with a load of polystyrene foam.

The description says that it is intended for use in Toyota (and Honda) hybrids. However, I would be very reluctant to use it while your Auris is still under warranty, unless I knew that this grade had Toyota approval. It has API SN rating, which should be OK, but I'd still want it confirmed. I've got no problems with Motul oils, I've used them a lot in the past. Although I've had my car serviced at the dealer for many years now, I usually take my own oil. This started with a Renault Laguna diesel that had 18,000 mile sevice intervals and specified semi-synthetic oil. I bought an electric oil extractor, and changed the oil mid-service using fully synthetic Motul oil from Opie. As this was a lot cheaper, and better, than the dealer supplied stuff, I took it to the dealer for the full service, and have done so ever since. I carried on using Motul oils until they suddenly jumped in price, when I switched to Total Quartz 9000. Between these two oils, they have covered well over 300,000 miles ( of around 435,000 miles) for hybrids in our family. I've also uset Toyota oil for two or three services when it was available at a very reasonable price from a Toyota dealer on eBay, but I prefer to use oil from one of tbe major producers. I now use Shell Helix Ultra, because it is available from Opie at a good price, and more importantly, I don't think any other company matches the amount of R & D that Shell puts into its lubricants. I'd have switched to this much earlier, but they have only recently started producing a 0w20 oil.

I am intrigued to know if anyone has experience of using radar cruise control on single carriageway roads, or has knowledge of what might happen. The car warns that you should only use it on freeways and highways, which I assume to mean dual carriageways. This seems to be very sensible, given my experience of using it, and I have no intention of ever using it on single carriageways. However, as an academic exercise, I would really like to know how it would work in that situation. My suspicion is that the biggest risk is from overtaking vehicles in the opposite direction, when the system might assume a high closing distance, and do a crash stop. Or would it, given its apparent lack of awareness if another car pulls in front? Or its over-awareness when the car in front is leaving your lane. These are easy things to deal with on a dual carriageway, but might cause serious problems problems elsewhere. Again, I have absolutely no intention of trying this, but I would just love to know.

As Catlover says, tne main cabin area is very much the same. I can't remember any significant change from Gen 2 to Gen 3 to Gen 4. However, Toyota seems determined to progressively reduce all the incidental storage over time. There was some loss between Gen 2 and Gen 3, but I can"t remember the details. However, the change was more significant from Gen 3 to Gen 4. The double glove box is now single and much smaller. The underfloor boot storage is non-existent in the Gen 4, where it has been replaced with a very expensive slab of polystyrene foam. Door pockets in the Gen 4 seem to have shrunk, especially in the back. On the other hand, the Gen 4 is a much better car to drive than both predecessors. It also gets much better mpg, while the Gen 3 only had marginal improvement over the Gen 2, probably due to the increase in wheel size from 16 inches to 17 inches.

I like the colour! But then, I'm not often accused of good taste.

That does work. It is a whole lot easier to update the xml file using a proper keyboard, than to use the Prius touchscreen.