1000km weekend spin

Darn this is a good car! It seems to have everything right. Okay, not everything to be honest. The one and only complaint I have is road noise coming from tires. Bit too high. But that is really only negative I have so far.

Last weekend we decided to go to see my parents with my family. We are family of three. Wife and 2 year old kid. Loaded trunk quite full. Big suitcase, bed for kid, trolleys and some smaller stuff. Everything fitted very well. Our previous car was a SUV, which is bit bigger in everything. But if I compare cargo space, Prius has almost as much space as SUV had. Interior is bit smaller but we are not that big guys :)

At the day one I decided to drive bit faster than it would be wise with car like this. Beginning of our journey was mostly highways. There was plenty of others travelling too. So I kind of drove left lane in queue. I knew it would hurt my MPG. Also I had A/C running at 19 Celsius degrees. I wanted it to be comfortable also at the backseat.

Few stops here and there. Eating some delicious fast food at the fuel stations. Highways turned to bit slower roads. Speed limit mostly at 100km/h, sometimes 80km/h and even 60km/h showed few times. Enjoying  nice scenery. Shame I had no time to take better POV photos. Specially when clouds formed a view as there was mountains ahead (we do not have mountains at all).

But back to the car. Consumption for the whole 1000km trip was around 4 liters per 100km. I did not calculate it but I took the reading from the MultiFunctionDisplay. I have understood that if you add 5% to the MFD reading, then it is quite close to right value. On way back to home I drove much slower speeds, to get better MPG's.

It is also amazing how well car accelerates. Merging to highways or passing trucks is very easy with this car. Though I have never owned high power/torque car, so comparing to those doesn't make sense. But considering that this is an 122hp car. It drives very well!

Driver's seat is also very good. Specially power lumbar adjustment helps a lot. Though whole seat is very good. It is enjoyable to drive long journeys. Just adjust lumbar setting bit and here we go again. 

Though questions is that is this really that much better car eg than Auris Tourer. It is much cheaper car and nowadays offers also Toyota Safety Sense and LED based headlights. Well I decided to go with Prius. It is newer technology, also had new platform. And really I can say that car drives well. But as always, better to check yourself all alternatives.