Diary of a Noobie Prius Owner

So, it's 2 weeks since I bought a 2007 Toyota Prius T Spirit. Here's what I've discovered so far.

If you're European then the most obvious difference between a Prius and a standard car is it's an automatic. None of that endless mucking about with clutches and gear-changing when you're in town or heavy traffic. Plus, with the Prius, you don't get the poor fuel economy that usually goes with an automatic.

The 'Key'

Starting the car takes a bit of getting used to: 'Key' in it's slot on the dash; foot on the brake; press the Power button; put it in Drive; foot-brake off; and you're away.

About that "foot-brake": The Prius doesn't have a hand-brake - Presumably because they wanted maximise the amount of storage in the centre of the car- instead it has a foot-brake down where the clutch would have been. It seems to act just like the hand-brake (i.e. It's a mechanical thing rather than a glorified electronic switch), so it's not too difficult to get used to. It's just a bit....different.

Driving home after buying it was interesting - A 90 mile journey, mostly on motorways - I was a bit unsure about over-taking because I hadn't figured out the blind spots. The view out the rear window is limited (The worst aspect of Prius) so you're more reliant on your side-mirrors and looking over your shoulder. Anyway, I think I've figured it out now.

Strangely, given that rear window, reversing seems easier in the Prius than with my old car (a Primera).

Fuel economy: I've only been on one motorway journey so far (See above) but I still hit the manufacturer's 'extra-urban' miles per gallon figure. It seems to be all about driving smoothly (No heavy braking or acceleration) and sticking to the speed limit.

Fuel Consumption Monitor

Their urban figure (56 mpg) takes a little more thought but I'm regularly getting 53.5 now. The technique seems to be more smooth driving, accelerating steadily up to the speed limit (no hanging about necessary), then lifting your accelerator foot until you're just maintaining the speed. When I do this, I generally find the fuel consumption monitor (see picture) shoots up to 75 to 100 mpg! Unfortunately, there's not much you can do when going uphill or when the engine's first started. You just have to take the hit.

Of Lofts, Priuses, and Green Communities

As you might have noticed, I've not posted anything here for a month now. The main reason for this is that I've been busy with, amongst other things, a number of carbon cutting projects:

Loft Insulation
After over a year of going on about it in this blog, I've finally got organised enough to get it done. Our loft was complicated. Some insulation, mostly not. Most of it boarded (with no insulation underneath), some of it not. And a lot of junk filling the loft, getting in the way.

This would involve boarding over the unboarded section, raising the level of the floor to allow enough insulation underneath, insulating between the roof joists and boarding over them too.

In the end, the only way we could get it done properly was to get someone in to do it. If it had been just a case of insulating an empty loft between unboarded joists, we could have done it ourselves to the recommended depth for just £90! In the end, it cost a fair bit more, but we now have a space that can be easily converted to living space. Plus we're saving up to £200 a year off our heating bill and cutting our carbon footprint by up to a tonne.

Toyota Prius
I finally found one that was within my budget and bought it. These things are being snapped up as soon as they go up for sale these days. This is thanks to rising petrol prices. So I was lucky to get it at all.

I've had it for 2 weeks and I'm loving it! It's quiet, surprisingly quick to accelerate (when I need it), has plenty of storage space, a reversing camera, automatic parking (a gimmick really), a great sound system, cruise control, it's an automatic, has a tight turning circle, and gives me 2 or 3 times the mileage per litre of my last car. All that and I'm saving up to a tonne of carbon each year.

Green Communities
Up until the end of March, the Energy Savings Trust (an organisation set up to encourage energy saving by individuals, communities, and businesses) were offering free 'Green Community' courses in things like energy auditing.

Sadly, our "greenest-ever government" decided to cut funding to the EST, so they had to cut the courses.

I just managed to get onto one of the last ones, and very interesting it was too. I'm not sure I'll be able to start a local green community (a bunch of people helping each other to save energy) because I don't think the locals can be bothered, but I'll be looking into it. Maybe I'll do a summary of the most useful parts of the course in a future post.