Comments by "Tony Sterbenc" (@tonysterbenc) on "" video.

  1. It looks to me like this Prius reflects a fundamentally changed mission. When there were no other hybrid mainstream cars, the Prius was meant to sacrifice nothing. It was mandated to have the passenger room of a Camry, the versatility of a hatchback, the mileage and emissions of an eco-car. But now, that mission has evaporated. The hybrid concept is everywhere, including in Toyota's own lineup, and the Prius was losing sales fast as it'd lost its original reason to exist. With this Prius, Toyota consciously didn't try to recreate the original. In an effort to save the brand, they've reconstituted it as a more stylish, better-performing, higher-priced, less practical style leader. That's why it has snappy little sayings in the plastic all over it. More importantly, it's why it now has poorer outward visibility and no headroom. The target audience for the Prius now is basically single people or couples who have some money and love the idea of the Prius. Toyota figures that for others, there's now the Camry hybrid, RAV 4 hybrid and Corolla hybrid. Now, the sad part is that they deliberately refuse to make a Corolla hatchback hybrid, which would have been the true successor to the frugal and style-free original Prius. At least there's the CorollaCross hybrid, a true successor to the Prius V wagon (except for its crappy Alabama manufacturing). Times change.
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