Rediculous Prius...

[Popeye the Sailor]

because you cant and he can.

0-60 in never.

Not a question of funds-it's a question of that's all you managed to get with that much coin?

It's like taking fifty grand to buy yourself a nice used car and coming back with a geo metro instead of a slightly older 7 series.

Where did the rest of the money go?

[lethe]

Not a question of funds-it's a question of that's all you managed to get with that much coin?

It's like taking fifty grand to buy yourself a nice used car and coming back with a geo metro instead of a slightly older 7 series.

Where did the rest of the money go?

To all the pregnant doges he picked up with his ride.

[erkishhorde]

My favorite part is how they even say that their fancy doors aren't very functional.  After spending that much on that car I'd at least expect automatic doors. You'll look so cool when you roll up to the club and have to wrestle your door closed. 

Then what's with all the useless LCDs? Like the ones that are sideways on the mid-bar thing. WTF is that thing anyway? Looks like it blocks half of the driver's vision.

[superjohn]

It needs more video screens. I mean, how can anyone possibly use a car with out 10 video screens..........

[derby]

if i read that article correctly, the car was built up for a tv show... sounds like somebody's marketing budget paying for a showcar that'll never really see much more road duty than what we saw in this video.

[NAKID]

+60 mpg

Not with all the extra weight he added to that thing. Hell, there's probably close to 1k lbs of extra audio in that....

[Rev. Millertime]

First thing that came to my mind:

You can't polish a turd!

[Doctor Woodrow]

I only got about 1/4 of the way through that video. Few words can properly describe that . . . that . . . thing. It's looks can now only be improved by either burning, or to smear dog poo all over it.

The Doc

[NAKID]

I kept watching til the end, much like a train wreck...

[PizzaMonster]

At 1min 30 I started to feel ill and stopped watching.          I take it the car didn't get any better in the remaining 4 minutes? 

[Sinister]

First thing that came to my mind:

You can't polish a turd!

Exactly.  It still has a larger carbon footprint than the Hummer.

[c_rex]

go drive a Pious and then judge.  no vehicle is worth that kind of money but as a (stock) daily driver it would kill me as I'd fall asleep behind the wheel. 

[triangleforge]

Exactly.  It still has a larger carbon footprint than the Hummer.

You do realize that's abject nonsense, don't you?  Yeah, Prius owners can be painful (though Hummer owners are special in their own ways) but that little urban legend is based on a bogus study by a automotive ad agency. Which, just for fun, has never ever released its basic data, methodology, or the formulas it used to cook up this tripe. I've read most of the CNW Marketing Research Inc's "Dust to Dust: The Energy Cost of New Vehicles From Concept to Disposal -- The non-technical report" (like that last little "get out of peer review free" bit in the title?), and on every page there are four or five brand new, unattributed, unexplained numbers that smell mighty ripe, like they were just pulled out of somebody's... It just seems like piling on to even mention that there wasn't even a pretend peer review on this sucker.

And the mental leaps they do admit are some real doozies, making you wonder just what they really are hiding. Some of my favorite assumptions in the study: that a Prius will head to the junkyard after 109,000 miles (the hybrid components, FWIW, are under Toyota factory warranty for 150K in California & other states that have adopted CA emissions regs) while the Hummer is going to go strong for 379,000 miles. And don't bother to check; those numbers are made up out of thin air. Just for fun, CNW also attributes every BTU expended in Toyota's hybrid development to the Prius alone -- that's right, those hybrid Corollas, Highlanders, Lexus models & every other hybrid Toyota makes or will ever make are wished out of existence in order to hit the conclusion the authors wanted. Think they included all the energy expended in in developing the High Mobility Mutlipurpose Wheeled Vehicle for the U.S. armed services in the Hummer's tally? Why that's just silly -- and more important wouldn't let them hit the numbers they wanted in the study's conclusion.

But, but, but... what about mining & refining all that nickel for the batteries? Leave aisde that nickel is a very useful metal in steel alloys as well (your Hummer's got about twice as much nickel in its frame as the Prius). Because it's valuable, nickel (especially from all the Ni-Cad batteries we all use, similar to the battery pack in the Prius) is VERY recoverable & recyclable -- up to 80-95 percent. When they were called on their bogus numbers about recycling the Prius battery pack, CNW's weak sauce response was "In Prius's case, the disposal of the battery pack and electronics has yet to be refined by the disposal industry." Not can't, not won't, not aren't already, not it's impossible under the laws of physics, but the disposal process FOR A THEN BRAND NEW ITEM "has yet to be refined."

And it's not like there's not plenty of evidence to the contrary -- published, peer-reviewed life cycle analyses of different autos by researchers at MIT, Argonne National Lab, University of Michigan and Carnegie-Mellon ALL have found that the life-cycle energy demands of hybrids is LOWER than the equivalent conventional car (not to mention a two-parking-spaces-at-the-shopping-mall 10 mpg SUV).  Can you point to a published, peer-reviewed article that opens up its formulas and methodology that shows otherwise?

Just for fun, click here:
http://www.slate.com/id/2186786 (full of links to PDFs
http://www.denialism.com/labels/George%20Will.html
http://hybridblog.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/about_that_cnw_.html
http://www.my350z.com/forum/2494537-post25.html
http://actionrecyclingcenter.com/nickel_recycling_0.html
http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_versus_prius.html

I used to own a first generation Prius and there's plenty not to like about them, along with some really fun things. The styling of the first & second generation ones is pretty fugly, and apparently is not improved at all by a couple of Swedes and $184K. Passing on a two lane road is out of the question for anything but 10mph farm equipment, and even that can get exciting. Though I wouldn't rule out another hybrid or non-conventional powertrain, I probably won't buy another Prius, though I didn't have any particularly bad experiences with the one I had (the electronic gremlins waited to show up until the title was fully in the name of my ex-wife  ).

But continuing to flog a widely-discredited bon mot just because you think Leonardo DiCaprio's an arrogant little brat is just silly.

[ryandalling]

4.  magnets with "beware: Stupid driver" and toss them on every car that deserves it (at least in my opinion )

Can I get a couple of those magnets? There are quite a few in my office parking lot that need them. One guy actually tried to share the parking spot with my motorcycle. aaargh!

[Pakhan]

The prius gets 60+ mpg from the factory line.  After mods who knows, but I'm guessing when the car is running "100% electric" it drains pretty quick powering 10 screens, one of which is a tablet computer and that sound system.  So with all of that stuff how often does that gas engine have to kick in to charge that battery?