And Mama Gets a New Car

I didn't want it.  We certainly didn't need it.  We didn't have a place to park it. But Dorcas just had to have a new car. Since trading the Element, Dorcas has been using the Pilot as her daily driver.  It was too big for her, and she was not happy.  When Mama's not happy, nobody's happy.  So ... since returning from Florida in May she has been researching small economical cars.  She looked primarily at the Toyota Prius and several Honda models.  After much fretting, hand wringing and worrying she finally set her sights on the Toyota Prius Prime.  The Prime is an EV (electric vehicle) hybrid combo.  Kind of a hybrid hybrid.  It has a significantly larger traction battery than the conventional Prius and can run 25-30 miles at 85 MPH on battery alone. Call it a fast luxury golf cart on steroids or a poor man's Tesla.  When the battery reaches about 25% capacity, it can operate in standard hybrid mode. This suits Dorcas fine, because she primarily wanted it to go to the "Y" each day (about 6 miles round trip) with a few excursions to the grocery store and local shopping and dining.

When she finally decided to buy the Prime it had to be Super Sonic red (no shit).   She negotiated at Modern Toyota and Rice Toyota and finally made a deal with Modern on a 2020 that would be delivered in about 12 days.  I think it was the first Super Sonic 2020 Prime off the boat from Japan. When the car finally arrived, we went to take a look and a drive, but were disappointed that the battery was discharged to the extent that it wouldn't let us drive in EV mode, which is what we really wanted to do.  The good folks at Modern let us take it home overnight, where we plugged it in (~5 hours for a full charge on a standard 120v outlet).  After it was fully charged we cruised for about a 30 mile test drive.  I even got to drive it for a while, which hasn't happened since.    The next day we went back to Modern and closed the deal. The Prime cost a little more than the standard Prius, but we expect a $4250 tax credit for qualified EV models, which actually makes it a little cheaper than the standard Prius. 

After driving the car for 3 1/2 weeks Dorcas had 549 miles on the odometer and had averaged 241.0 MPG.  The MPG would have read 999.9 had we not made trips to High Point and to Iredell County, where we had to drive in hybrid mode, getting a mere 55 MPG  As you can see in the photo below the fuel gauge still shows full at 549 miles.  The manual says to put in fresh fuel every 6 months, whether you need to or not.

Now Momma is happy, and I like it too, in spite of all my negative waves when she was shopping.

In related news: we really don't need three cars and a motorhome parked at the house.  My brother has been lusting after my Ranger for some time, and I had promised him dibs if I ever let it go.  So now Ran has a sweet new-to-him 1999 Ford Ranger, Super Cab 4-door pickup, a real cream puff in near mint condition with only 92K miles.  Now Bro is happy too.  The Pilot is now my daily driver, and I like that fine.  Life is good.