Toyota Prius: Five by five

Read our Toyota Prius news report here.

Avocados without the stone, road trips without kids, Bert Newton without the make-up and toupee -- these are all things we'd prefer over the status quo.

And after spending weeks with it, we've trained our nit-picking sensibilities on Toyota's latest Prius as well, contemplating what we'd change in the car, given god-like powers of influence over the mere mortals who design, engineer, build and sell them.

We've covered the Prius in some detail elsewhere, including our launch review, but here, in concentrated form, is a summation of all that's best and worst about the hybrid Toyota, in the views of the Carsales Network.

Let's do it one for one, starting with the Toyota's packaging.

The good: An aerodynamic box. We remain stunned by how much car you can stuff into a slippery shape -- without detriment to turning circle, field of vision, ease of access, style and half a dozen other conflicting design criteria.

The not so good: Raise the ceiling speed in EV mode. We could genuinely see this mode being extremely handy in situations further afield than just stop/start traffic, but limited to just 30km/h?

The good: Steering feel. It's not up to the standard of a Focus or i30, but it's impressive by most other standards.

The not so good: Low rolling resistance tyres. They're noisy and lack cornering ability, letting the side down whenever the Prius enters a corner -- despite the Toyota boasting the right sort of fundamentals.

The good: Multi-information display. Excellent array of data presented graphically for easy comprehension. All we'd change about it is an option to present two screens at once.

The not so good: Centrally-located instruments. Head-up display or not, if you're bound to spend so much time watching the Multi-information display, your attention is going to wander away from the road -- so why not place the instrument binnacle directly in front of the driver, rather than in the centre of the dash? Or why not go the whole hog and have a head-up display that reflects over a wider area than just the small square immediately ahead of the driver.

The good: Reversing camera. It's a useful safety feature and aids parking if you don't see the need to use the IPA (Intelligent Park Assist) system.

The not so good: Reversing beeper. What useful purpose does it actually serve and how do you turn it off/reduce the volume/snip the wire?

The good: Comfy seats and convenience features. There was a time when 'economy' cars were not only cheap to run, but cheap to buy as well. They were cheap to buy because the product planners had ripped all the good gear out of them. Not any more. The Prius offers a plethora of features to keep even the most obsessive gadgetphiles happy. Things like keyless entry/start, for example.

The not so good: No Bluetooth for the price?

You'll probably be thinking by now that this list fails to address some of the more controversial aspects of Prius ownership -- like price, for example. Well, what can we say? It is expensive for a smallish car, but people can be convinced to buy it if it's going to save the environment. Our view is that a much broader segment of the population would consider the Prius if Toyota could just address the couple of minor flaws that restrict the car's appeal.

Some pundits will dispute that hybrid-drive technology is truly sustainable in the future or practical in the here and now. For them, the Prius and other hybrid vehicles are not the way of the future.

In the present, we would argue that the Prius represents baby steps in an emerging technology. Each successive generation of the Prius is substantially better than the last, but there's more progress to be made still. Yet the Prius, right at this moment in time, basically does what buyers would expect of it.

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