Everybody knows about Toyota’s Prius, a hybrid car that gets around 55 miles per gallon. But with me being a teenager, most of my male peers who are at all interested in cars, are interested in ones that go really fast, and look cool. A department where at least in the second case, the Prius obviously lacks. This may give the overall impression that alternative energy vehicles cannot perform well in those categories. But this is not so. On the “going really fast” front, the Prius goes 0 to 60 in 9.8 seconds, according to a Motor Trend article. I don’t know how good or bad this number is, but since Ferrari’s are generally accepted as “fast” cars, here are a Ferrari’s numbers. The Ferrari F430 can go 0 to 62 in 4.0 seconds, according to a document on the Ferrari website. So this may conclude that the Prius is rather slow (I have no idea, for I know nothing about car performance). This is not the case for all alternative energy vehicles however. The Tesla Roadster, a rather expensive sports car from the new Telsa Motors is fully electric, gets the equivalent of 135 miles per gallon and, more importantly, goes 0 to 60 in “about 4 seconds” according to the Tesla Motors website. This is very close to the Ferrari F430, and seems rather impressive. If time is on my side for the next year-and-a-half, and I don’t find something else to do, I may pursue converting an older car to be 100% electric. It appears to be a rather involved project, and the resulting car may not have very good range, but I’m going to do some research on the subject and see how feasible it is.

1. Where are you getting these MPG figures from? According to Top Gear, a Prius gets around 30MPG, which is severely stunted when compared to modern diesel cars.

   
   — Fophillips    601 days ago    #

2. Am I one of your peers? The only cars I’m at all interested in are gas/electric hybrids and car/boat hybrids, and I don’t know very much about either, but I’m pretty sure they don’t go really fast and don’t look cool.

   
   — Daniel    601 days ago    #

3. well your implying that “fast” means 0-60 in a short amount of time. fast is actually not that, Fast means the top speed. for example a car can go up to 60 mph in 4 sec but its top speed might only be 120 mph.

   
   — Teddy    601 days ago    #

4. I’m pretty sure I’m not a peer, so that leaves me free (don’t have to spend time attacking your assumptions) to comment on writing style.

   Toward the beginning there is one non-sentence that would work better if it were a sentence.

   I suggest breaking this into 3 paragraphs. Will make it easier to follow your points—it seems to me that you are making three distinct points.

   
   — Alison    601 days ago    #

5. From being a passenger in the Prius, it seems like it doesn’t accelerate very fast. But, it has an automatic transmission which I don’t think is as efficient as our (manual) Camry was.
   Anyway I think it’s a cool car but it’s not meant to be a sports car. I’m guessing that the Ferrari and the Tesla might be twice as expensive!
   And…Fophillips…we calculated about 60 mpg for our Prius – mostly highway driving which uses the gas engine the most.

   
   — Rena    597 days ago    #

6. Rena, even so, 60mpg isn’t exactly ground breaking. A diesel Jaguar can get 70+ from London driving, which uses considerably more petrol.

   
   — Fophillips    567 days ago    #