Rental Car: Toyota Prius

So I found myself in southern California on "Earth Day" 2009. My rental car was a 2009 Toyota Prius. It's like some Bizzarro world where everything is backward. I can't think of a more opposite way to define myself than "driving a Toyota Prius through southern California on Earth Day".

I ended up with this car because it was very late when I landed in LA and this was the only car left with GPS navigation. In retrospect I should have just skipped the GPS. When introducing a new type of car technology I don't understand why you wouldn't want to make it similar to the old car technology to ease the transition. Why not turn a key to turn on the car? Why not have a standard transmission shaft on the steering wheel or the floor? Why not a standard layout ventilation system?

Instead, you insert a key-like-thing into a hole in the dash then push a start button. Sometimes this made a TV in the dash turn on or resulted in cryptic lights blinking on top of the dash. There was a small joystick looking thing near the wheel that was reminiscent of a transmission, except it provided no tactile feedback that what you were doing had any impact. All the controls were replaced by a touch-screen in the middle of the dash that was extremely distracting with animated displays while driving, especially at night. It often was a 15 minute exercise in frustration just to figure out how to get the vehicle moving.

Once it was moving it had surprisingly peppy pickup and surprisingly uninspired, mushy steering. There was a lot of under-steer to the car, perhaps a result of the low-friction tires which is part of how it gets high mileage.

The interior had good head room for me, although the styling of the exterior leaves a lot to be desired.

Final verdict: I suppose the car is attractive to those seeking some kind of environmental statement and willing to put up with a learning curve on how to drive it. But, a bad choice as a rental vehicle unless you have one already and are used to its quirks. The rental price premium I was charged far outweighs any fuel savings you would get, even with extremely long driving.