A look back at the Prius' first decade

Source: Pete Szilagy, Austin American-Statesman

If by slim chance you were on Barton Springs Road on an August morning 12 years ago, you might remember a befuddled man steering an unfamiliar car left through the intersection onto South Lamar Boulevard.

That was my first experience in a car with right-hand drive on normal Texas left-side-drive streets. Odder yet was the car itself: a Japanese domestic-model hybrid, the first Prius.

The Prius was already on sale in Japan, but it was almost two years before the car was to be introduced in the States. Toyota sent a few domestic Priuses to key U.S. cities in 1998 to give auto writers a look. In Texas, where truck sales were booming, I sensed my colleagues' reaction as somewhere between indifferent and lukewarm.

As Toyota marks the Prius' 10th year on the U.S. car market this month, Austin and much of the country have embraced this distinctively shaped and creatively powered automobile.

The Prius has become Toyota's third-best-selling model nationally, with nearly 900,000 units on the road since July 2000. Another 900,000 Priuses have been sold in Japan, Europe and elsewhere.

Consumer magazines regularly rate the Prius among America's most reliable car models as well as the most stingy with a gallon of gas.

In this year of bad press for Toyota, the company is proud of the Prius and its accomplishments, both on the market and on the roads. The company gambled on hybrid-electric power trains when other automakers started projects to develop cars with hydrogen fuel cells, the presumed propulsion system of the future. Today hybrids are generating profits, while hydrogen cars remain hugely expensive science projects.

Prius and its high-mileage power train has become such a strong brand that Toyota appears poised to spin it off into another nameplate, like Toyota divisions Scion and Lexus. That way, the Prius' Hybrid Synergy Drive system could be used in a Prius-badged unibody compact pickup or a compact Prius-badged van.

For the record, Honda's Insight was the first hybrid to hit the U.S. market, seven months before the Prius. Just a two-seater with limited cargo capacity, the mid-60s-mpg Insight appealed to a niche audience of gearheads. Toyota had broader aspirations for the Prius and the marketing power to achieve them.

Toyota has compiled statistics to demonstrate the Prius' eco-friendliness compared with conventional autos'. The company claims the 900,000 or so Priuses in America have prevented an estimated 9 million tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere, conserved approximately 650 million gallons of gas and saved Prius owners an estimated $1.5 billion in fuel costs.

Toyota acknowledges that the first Prius, which went on sale when U.S. gasoline averaged $1.50, seemed to many a solution looking for a problem. However, the Prius did signal the owner's sensitivity to the environment.

It didn't hurt that a few high-profile Hollywood celebrities were seen valet-parking their Priuses.

That Japanese domestic Prius that I was fortunate enough to preview in 1998 was fundamentally the same as the first U.S. Prius, except I was told that the software was altered on our export model to increase acceleration at low speeds. Still, with only a combined 97 horsepower from the gasoline and electric motors, it was no sports sedan.

The EPA estimated that it delivered 41 mpg. Today's Prius has a 50 mpg estimate, with 134 horsepower and a much roomier, more sophisticated cabin and contemporary safety and media systems. And performance is spirited for a small family car. Base price is about $2,300 more than the original Prius, which was $19,995.

Inspiration for Toyota's gasoline-electric hybrid power train came partly from desperation over Japan's steep fuel prices and stifling air pollution in metro areas. Combining a mostly conventional four-cylinder gasoline engine with one or two electric motors elegantly addressed both problems.

A hybrid automobile saves gasoline and limits tailpipe emissions by salvaging and storing the energy lost in deceleration and braking and then using that energy to assist in powering the vehicle. Devilish are the details, however, which require seamless transitions between power from the gasoline engine and the electric motor, or a combination of both, and the car's front-drive wheels.

The Prius' Hybrid Synergy Drive system has been so successful and ahead of the game that other auto manufacturers use hybrid technology licensed from Toyota.

While Toyota and others have taken huge steps with the hybrid, development is continuing, with the imminent adoption of a new generation of efficient automobile batteries of lithium-ion chemistry.

Mass-marketers Volkswagen and Hyundai, among others, will be rolling out hybrids in the next two years, and most car makers are at least exploring plug-in hybrids, which further extend the operating efficiency of the hybrids developed in the 1990s. Toyota and Honda again will probably be first to market with plug-ins late next year.

In his 29 years of writing a column for the Austin American-Statesman, Pete Szilagyi has driven more than 1,500 new cars and trucks and is also a host at Marfa Public Radio. Follow him at twitter.com/drivewithpete.