This weekend, a friend of ours commented on the environmental impact of the Toyota Prius, in which the Prius compares unfavorably to the discontinued H2. We’ve heard this claim before, but didn’t know where those claims started, nor what they were really based on other than fingering the Prius’ larger battery as the culprit. It turns out, this myth was started by CNW Marketing Research, in a study that was thoroughly debunked several times since it made the rounds. Slate has a good article up from 2008 which challenges CNW’s claims:

[CNW] posits that the vast majority of a car’s cradle-to-grave energy gets expended during production. That assertion runs contrary to virtually every other analysis of vehicular life cycles, including those conducted by MIT and Argonne National Laboratory.

If you think about it, the Prius is just a smaller vehicle compared to something like the H2, and so should, accordingly, have a much smaller environmental footprint. The only differentiating factor is the hybrid engine, in which the core component, the battery, is capable of being the lone smoking gun. When it comes to the battery, nickel is the element cited as having the most negative environmental impact, but it would seem that the impact is not so great so as to offset the difference between the Prius and H2.

Another major part of the anti-Prius meme is that the car’s battery uses 32 pounds of nickel, mined in Sudbury, Ontario. The skeptical e-mails often state that Sudbury is an environmental wasteland that resembles “a surrealistic scene from the depths of hell.” That assertion might have been true about three decades ago, long before the Prius. Nickel mining is by no means a clean endeavor, but Sudbury’s conditions have improved in recent years. On top of that, all cars contain nickel in their frames—the Hummer’s frame, for example, has twice as much nickel as the Prius’.

Ultimately, claims that a ridiculously fuel-inefficient vehicle like the H2 has less of an environmental impact than Toyota’s hybrid flagship is just anti-Prius propaganda used to justify buying a vehicle that gets around 10 MPG. Meanwhile, in real-world conditions, our Prius doesn’t strain to get over 50 MPG in mixed driving conditions, with our best full-to-empty tank to date coming in at just under 58 MPG. That’s none too shabby. Still, it’s a shame that over three years later, the Prius vs. H2 myth is still out there.

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The announcement of the 2012 Volkswagen Beetle has a lot of people excited, though to be fair, most of those people are probably ex-hippies and the same folks who got excited when the “new” Beetle was offered in 1998. When that happened, it wasn’t long before the retro bug was deemed a girly car, which is partly why concept cars like the 2005 Beetle Ragster were lusted over. VW touted the simplicity of the new Beetle’s three-arch design, but masculine it was not. The 2012 version of the Beetle was finally redesigned with more machismo, taking on a more aggressive look for the militant hippy population¹.

What’s missing is all-wheel-drive (AWD) and variable suspension, like the 2000 Beetle Dune concept. Also, a beefier engine than the 200-horsepower TSI option the new Beetle will get. Then, VW might have a compelling, aesthetic answer to the Subaru WRX, Mitsubishi Lancer, or dare we say, the VW R32. But rather, VW is positioning the 2012 Beetle as a GTI variant.

Luca De Meo, the Volkswagen director of marketing, boasted of the car’s XDS traction control system, available on the top-end TSI model. “It makes it sporty like the Herbie in the movie,” he said, referring to the original Beetle’s star turn in a series of campy films. He called the TSI, with its 2-liter, 200-horsepower turbocharged engine, “a GTI that is different, for the ‘I have a Mac’ person.” (When asked later to clarify the association, he explained that he was referencing the I.B.M. person/Mac person advertisements.)

VW hasn’t had any difficulty attracting Mac fans. In fact, if any car company can be said to parallel Apple’s aesthetic and attitude, it’s VW. That’s why R32 owners get a VW instead of a Subaru or Mitsubishi, and explains why VW was rumoured to be working with Apple on a computerized, in-dash automotive interface (and perhaps why the Bulli concept includes an iPad to control certain components). Maybe De Meo didn’t mean to be literal, and meant that the 2012 Beetle was a more polished alternative to the GTI, but then why not offer an R-series Beetle aside the upcoming R32 successor? Sounds to us like De Meo just doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and made a poor appeal to emotion. Why else effectively call your flagship compact “shitty in comparison?”

The 2012 Beetle is definitely an improvement over the last-generation Beetle, both in terms of looks and performance, but VW could have gone further. If VW really doesn’t want to release a variant that competes directly with the R32, then bring back the rear-mounted engine and rear-wheel drive, and sell the vehicle as an alternative to the reborn muscle-car fad². As it stands, the 2012 Beetle is only going to cannibalize Rabbit and GTI sales, and offer a reason not to get a Mini S. That’s not good enough.

But then again, neither is the Bulli, which is VW’s answer to bringing back the Microbus. Unlike the earlier 2001 Microbus concept, the Bulli is more like a Scion xD with VW styling. But the styling isn’t quite right, resulting in a much more angular appearance, and too-short a storage space to make the Bulli much more than a commuter vehicle. The electric powertrain is nice, and we can see VW hedging their bets on this and not offering a gasoline version, but we’d much rather have a more practical and faithful rendering of the Microbus if production becomes imminent. You can keep the iPad interface, though, VW.

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Our 2010 Prius has an annoying problem, and it’s all about the EV. It’s nice to cruise around a parking lot without using gas, but the EV speed limit is inconsistent. Not only can you not cruise around at-will until the battery is depleted (the EV mode shuts off if you accelerate or move too fast), but the EV speed limit varies too. After turning the Prius on, EV mode is capped at 10 MPH, but after the system warms up, it generally lets us cruise around at up to 25 MPH (though it kicked us out at 20 MPH on more than one occasion). There are two major issues with this.

1. The driver has no idea what the speed cutoff is at any given time. Sure, she can estimate based on how long the car has been on, but there really should be some sort of visual notification. Knowing if the cutoff is 20 or 25 MPH, for example, will certainly affect acceleration decisions. Plus, weather affects the EV speed limit; in colder temperatures, the system may never warm up to the point of letting you drive up to 25 MPH in EV mode. Apparently, hot temperatures also have an adverse affect on the system.

2. The residential speed limit in the United States is typically set at 25 MPH. If that’s the speed you have to stay under in order to avoid being kicked out of EV mode, then you’re typically traveling around 22 or 23 MPH. In low-traffic areas, maybe that’s not a concern, but anyplace there are more cars on the road, it means that the practical driving speed is somewhere between 30 and 35 MPH. If Toyota raised the EV speed limit by even five MPH, it would mean that a Prius could comfortably drive in residential areas at around 27 or 28 MPH, and that means you’d no longer be that Prius-driving-asshole-going-below-the-speed-limit.

In a weird Toyota Prius testing ground, we suppose it’s possible that Toyota engineers decided it would be better to limit acceleration and speed in EV mode in order to conserve the battery better, under the assumption that this would mean more mileage per gallon of gas. In practice, however, the math doesn’t work out like this, because a typical Prius owner is not in bumper-to-bumper traffic all day. This means that for most Prius owners, the battery rarely gets low (or even half-empty), so there’s excess juice that could be tapped. We would rather see additional battery energy used for slightly better acceleration (hey, EVs are supposed to have higher low-end torque) and a higher speed cap. This would let the Prius keep up with other cars when leaving stop lights, without transitioning to the gas engine for acceleration. Further, it would mean being able to stay in EV mode longer when traffic crawls at a slightly faster pace. (In our experience, being able to drive in EV mode at 30 MPH would mean staying in EV mode about twice as often.)

Toyota engineers take note: the Prius hybrid system needs tweaking in EV mode. Better yet, add a “advanced” customization menu for owners and let them tweak the EV cutoff within a reasonable range. If the battery never gets low, it’s not being used efficiently.

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The 2010 Toyota Prius IV isn’t the type of automobile that car aficionados lust after. Rather, it’s the type of car that those who only want to get from Point A to Point B will love because it’s fuel efficient and reminiscent of a luxury sedan. That’s not to say that it is a luxury vehicle, because it’s not, but the Prius IV has a number of comfort features that aim to impress: heated leather seats, good sound system, rear-view camera, sun roof, and vent-powering solar panel.

(Let’s clarify for a moment: we’re talking about the Prius IV, not the more basic I, II, or III packages. The differences between these may be slight, but to be fair, it’s the IV and V that are reminiscent of a luxury car, whereas the other packages can be significantly more spartan.)

It’s a hybrid.

For us, coming off a Volkswagen R32, the difference in performance is significant. The trade-off is obvious, however: a more quiet ride, with twice the mileage per tank and half the price. That trade-off may not be appealing if you’re prone to aggressive driving with open stretches, but in metropolitan areas where traffic patterns are dense, with fun escapes from this traffic being rare, then having a car without much oomph isn’t a huge issue, as long as basic driver comfort is met. And here, the Prius IV delivers fairly well.

And let’s be honest, that twice-the-distance-half-the-price thing is pretty awesome. With basic unleaded gas (87), we’re talking $25 for a fill-up, which gets us over 500 miles of range. Considering that the only other car to do that is the now-discontinued and very compact original Honda Insight, the Prius naturally wins the MPG race, and does so packing more people/stuff.

When we first looked at the 2010 Prius, the salesperson was keen on pointing out that the car had three driving modes. One was the “EV” mode, for forcing the car to run only on the battery. “Eco” mode was next, for focusing on best gas mileage. Third was “power” mode, for getting more juice to the wheels. Let’s be fair, though: in real-world use, you’re only going to use the second mode most of the time, because power mode doesn’t really add that much spin to your wheels, and EV mode shuts itself off when you go beyond a certain speed/acceleration, or if the air conditioner is up in high gear. So really, EV mode may be fine for just cruising around the parking lot, and maybe you’ll push the power mode button when trapped between two trailers on the freeway, but slowing down to a snail’s pace or putting the petal to the metal as it were accomplishes both of these things as well; eco-mode will automatically draw power only from the battery at low speeds, and provide more juice from the engine when needed. Perhaps giving consumers the perception of micromanagement is helping sales, but these options feel almost silly to us.

We assume that for power-management purposes, Toyota pulled the daytime running lights from the Prius, despite the fact that models such as the Matrix come standard with this feature: it’s a safety feature, after all. We can’t imagine that the power draw is that big of an issue, especially since the car will never be sucking battery juice exclusively when not cruising a parking lot. The mystery continues when you forget to leave the Prius’ lights on when the car is off, because unlike most other cars on the market now, the Prius doesn’t complain with an audible beep – the lights just stay on.

A cool family car.

The Prius IV is now considered an intermediate sized-car, up from the “compact” footprint that hybrids were previously known for. With four doors and adequate cabin room to fill the back seats, the Prius can make for a good family car, whether that means you have kids or just a backseat-filling dog. The rear seats fold down completely, and by “completely” we mean that they don’t angle upwards towards the front of the cabin, so sliding furniture or boxes or whatever else in is easy. There’s also no drop behind a lip when the trunk is open, again making for easy loading and unloading of whatever you plan to haul around. This is a solid hatch-back feature, and it’s a wonder that other car companies haven’t come around to this, as it really complements the already-spacious interior.

Locks on the Prius IV are keyless, as is starting the engine. There’s a key-fab that’s proximity-based, so as long as the fab is on your person, you can lock and unlock doors just by touching the car’s door handle(s). It’s a nice feature with a physical override in the event that you key-fab’s battery dies, and the effect of keyless entry is another space-age touch that makes the Prius cool.

Inside, the Prius doesn’t disappoint aesthetically – the dash is full of sexy, mesmerizing LCDs, letting you see where the car’s power is currently coming from (battery or engine), and not even displaying things such as RPMs, as most people could care less about this in the first place. This is indicative of the Prius’ market: not gear-heads, but people who appreciate a clean interface and straightforward usability. Were it not for the lack of little touches here or there, the Prius could almost be considered the Macintosh of cars.

Unfortunately, as space-age looking as the interior is, it’s not perfectly polished: the leather trim is minimal beyond the seats, with much of the dash and doors trimmed in a hard, patterned plastic. It doesn’t look bad, but it doesn’t look as clean as leather either, and while likely more durable in the long run, it doesn’t feel particularly robust when giving some areas a slight push and not feeling much resistance.

The car’s climate controls are nice, but aimed at the front seats. Rear passengers have it tough during very hot or very cold weather, because there are no rear vents – not even under the seats. Even our R32 which had little space in the back seats had vents beneath the front seats and at the rear of the center console. That the Prius, which is a larger car aimed more at a family market doesn’t have this, is almost ludicrous. “But WyldKard, we’ve had cars for decades without rear vents, and our rear passengers have made out just fine. ” We’ve made out fine without power steering for decades too, but that doesn’t mean modern cars should shirk this feature today.

The nav-stereo.

The stereo with built-in navigation is pretty good considering just how poor most stock navigation systems are. The downside is that a number of features are disabled when the car is in motion, such as entering an address or manipulating bluetooth controls for wirelessly connecting to, say, an iPhone. The nice thing is that none of these features require add-ons, which was the case with our R32 and bluetooth telephony. It’s pretty stupid for a car manufacturer to disable features temporarily under the guise of safety, however, when real-world use cases mean that a passenger should be able to use the navigation equipment when the car is in motion. In this sense, it’s rather sad that the car detects the presence of a passenger for the purpose of enabling the passenger airbag, but that this same detection mechanism isn’t used to unlock navigation controls.

The stereo itself is good – not as good sounding as the premium system that came stock in our previous 2005 Ford Mustang GT, but with adequate base nonetheless. Control-wise, the Prius IV’s stereo is fantastic, and truly shows how much better touch-screen interfaces are than the pitiful controls on our R32 were. Surely, it’s no iOS interface still, but it’s better than much of the competition.

Speaking of iOS, the Prius IV’s stereo connects to iOS devices via A2DP, letting you listen to any audio from an iOS device (not just from the iPod app), as well as letting you make and receive calls using the car’s speaker system. Thus far, no one we’ve talked to in this manner even knew we were calling from the car, and assumed we were using our Jawbone headset or stock iOS hardware. So good and convenient are these calls, that we haven’t recharged our bluetooth headset since setting the car’s bluetooth connection up.

Unfortunately, while the bluetooth connectivity is solid 80% of the time, there’s the occasional glitch. Normally, as soon as we turn the car on, bluetooth connectivity is achieved and playback from whatever audio app we used last resumes, be it from the iPod app or Pandora. Every once in awhile, however, we have to run through a couple menus to get bluetooth to work properly, and while even rarer, there are times that bluetooth playback of our music suddenly stops, and we have to disconnect the device manually and reconnect it using the car’s stereo interface (when the car is stopped). We don’t know where the problem lies, as it may be an issue with Apple’s bluetooth implementation or Toyota’s, but it’s annoying either way. Fortunately, the only time we regularly have to touch the car’s bluetooth settings is when ours was not the last device used, such as if our significant other used the Prius with her iPhone. In those cases, when we start the car up, we have to tell it to look for our iPhone instead, but then we’re off five seconds later with streaming audio goodness.

Mandatory conclusion paragraph.

We didn’t get a chance to play around with previous Prius incarnations, but judging the car on it’s 2010 build, the Prius IV is every bit as comfortable as other “premium” cars in its price range. What you give up is base performance, but most families don’t care about raw performance as much as safety anyway. What they care about is getting from one place to another, and these days, doing it as cheaply as possible. Raw fuel savings may not be spectacular compared to a cheaper, non-hybrid car that’s still considered fuel efficient, but the Prius epitomizes fuel efficiency in a package that greenies can put on a pedestal for not supporting terrorism and being slightly more earth-friendly.

While the Prius still takes top honors among “alternate fuel vehicles,” we realize that’s partially because the respective roster is so thin right now. As this roster grows, the Prius will have to keep getting better, not just in respect to its hybrid engine, but in terms of features and polish as well. Right now, the Prius IV is slightly above middle-ground when it comes to in-car comfort, meaning that Toyota has a solid platform for building more budget-oriented vehicles, or more premium models. Whether the Prius maintains its position as Toyota’s flagship standard for hybrids remains to be seen, but with only a little more polish, we easily see it holding its ground for the immediate future, especially if other titans like Honda aren’t able to quickly capitalize on hybrid technology (e.g. the Insight’s sad resurrection).

Oh, also, the Prius’ brakes seem to work fine, in case you were wondering.

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Over the course of several months, Volkswagen has released a series of bizarre ads that leave me conflicted. I really like Volkswagen. My first non-crappy car was a Jetta … my Jetta … Jorgan … flashback to a Ford F-150 slamming its way into my backseat … driver fleeing … saying good-bye to Jorgan in a lot filled with other broken and battered vehicles… sniff

Uhm, so, anyway, VW. Ads. Oh yeah. The first bizarre series of ads that I saw were based upon the GTI. They came up with a cool, albeit rather creepy mascot called Fast. It’s a sleek little ball of evil that makes me laugh and shrink away all at once.

The second series of ads involved a psychotic German and his mannequin-like assistant “un-pimping” automobiles (which IS funny). Those of you familiar with the movie Fargo, however, will recognize this creepy German engineer as one of the villains. All I can think of is him grinding his companion in the wood chipper out back. shudder (I feel I must point out that Stormare is actually Swedish, not German. Go Sweden!) (Yes, I realize this is contradictory since I called him creepy, but I wanted to point it out simply because VW is passing him off as German. It’s more proof that Germans just really want to be Swedish.) Again, this series of ads leaves me feeling like I want to laugh and cry out of fear at the same time. I also find it ironic that while the tag line for this series is “German engineering in the house,” (said German ghetto, if there is such a thing) their cars are mostly assembled in Mexico, which saddens me greatly. (and could explain quite a few of the problems I had with my Jetta, even though I loved him.)

Most recently, VW has taken a more serious, yet equally disturbing, approach to their ads that are a complete 180 from the previous two campaigns. These new ads show people having normal conversations in a VW before a car slams into them without warning. The point is that they have a good front-impact rating, but really, it just makes me feel unsettled. Maybe it’s my previous trauma with my little Jorgan (although that was a rear impact), but I can’t see how shocking people with an accident will make them focus on the safety of the car.

I guess VW has achieved their goal, in that I’m thinking about them and their products, which makes me feel like a tool, but do their ads have to be so disturbing, yet intriguing? It makes me conflicted. Is this really a positive image for VW, or is it driving people away?

So, I am left with but one major thought: “Volkswagen!!!! WTF is up with your ads!!!???”

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Regardless of assumed maturity or profession, I have spied a factor omnipresent in group outings. There is even consistent arguing over the specific rules for this factor, and so it is that I have unearthed from the dusty tomb of my hard drive the International Shotgun Rules, which likely require some updating. Nonetheless, since I am slowly digging through the plaintext of the site’s old database, I bring back online the definitive Shotgun resource, such that you may have a single reference for arguing with your cronies about who gets to sit in the front passenger seat of your current mode of transportation.

02/12/2007 Update: The aforementioned article was relocated.

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