We rented a Prius at CLT for Sara’s wedding from National Car Rental. We showed up, the dude said “pick any car”, just like in the commercial. Took us 15 minutes and reading the manual to figure out that you have to press the brake BEFORE pressing the Power button. Or else you get an error message that does NOT explain the problem. Aargh. Here are some other notes.
Zippy. Powerful enough. Some issues up hills. We did many fast starts to beat people around turns to change lanes with no problem.
Cheap interior. Leaning on the console while rearranging your body causes alarming cracking noises. From the console, not the body. Not sure if it was broken or normal.
Fully equipped with audio aux jack and 12V plug in the console. Too bad I forgot the audio cable for the MP3 player. Lots of cup holders. Seats comfortable, normal three hour pains. Kinda low for folks with hip issues like me but doable.
We sat in traffic on the way from Charleston back to CLT for two extra hours and filled it up on $8 of gas. And that lasted enough to look full where we turned in the car, 50 miles later.
Controls sometimes confusing. Why is Reverse to the front, and Drive to the rear? Not intuitive to me. Hard to see miles till empty – small numbers, and a symbol, not letters.
Very loud – the car, not the motor. Love the shark sneakup. Hate the road noise.
Summary: If you drive a lot it, especially stop and go, and don’t care about loud – do it. I wish they would be a little clearer on the 5 year-$10K battery packs.