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I find that Prius drivers in my area seem to be some of the most aggressive, pedal to the medal drivers around. I imagine that they're probably getting nowhere near the advertised gas mileage out of them.

Your imagination is most likely wrong. Fast acceleration is not penalized in mileage significantly in a Prius since it is the stored energy in the battery giving the boost. Doing a lot of braking is penalized however. Tailgaters suffer, so do people in city traffic. I have a lot of experience driving Priuses and being driven in them (250,000+ miles) and the real-time MPG readout provides an excellent means to monitor this. Even the worst mileage I have seen in a Prius though is better than almost any other car.

You don't have to take my word for it. The TrueDelta site allows side by side comparisons of mileage reports on all makes and models.

does this fall in the "faint praise" department? or are you just being a smug elitist asshole?

And if you trust Consumer Reports' methodology, you have less than half a brain.

http://www.allpar.com/cr.html
http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2011/03/consumer-reports-admits-reliability-data-was-scarce-for-chrysler.html
http://www.truedelta.com/pieces/shortcomings.php

There are plenty more articles out there explaining the problem.

The study you cite is apparently from a marketing firm not a scientific journal. So....you're busted. I advise everyone to click this young feller's link and then read the comment at the bottom debunking it. It's always telling when an article refers to someone as a "fanatic" as in "energy fanatics are idiots and love the prius" (not a direct quote).

Here's a debunking link to your FUD article: http://www.truedelta.com/blog/?p=48

There are a few interesting critical pieces on CR car ratings. I am not overly experienced in statistics, so I have no idea if any of this really means much. It is interesting reading though.

http://www.allpar.com/cr.html
http://www.truedelta.com/pieces/shortcomings.php
http://www.truedelta.com/pieces/newdots.php

There are a few interesting critical pieces on CR car ratings. I am not overly experienced in statistics, so I have no idea if any of this really means much. It is interesting reading though.

http://www.allpar.com/cr.html
http://www.truedelta.com/pieces/shortcomings.php
http://www.truedelta.com/pieces/newdots.php

The original article is an opinion piece for a small college newspaper. The whole article is garbage. 1. Take the "spitting distance" mileage, for example. The new EPA combined mileage put the Chevy Aveo at 26 mpg, the Toyota Prius at 46 mpg. So I guess 20 miles more per gallon is "spitting distance." 2. The "Dust-to-dust" study is from a marketing firm, not a science journal. It arrives at an artificially high cost for the Prius by assigning it an arbitrary lifespan of 100k miles, and a Hummer 300k miles. There's Prius being used as cabs that have 200k on them now: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8839690/ And, insofar as a car lasting, what car do you expect to repair less? A Toyota Prius or a GM Hummer? You can check Consumer Reports for the answer to that one. A good analysis of the flaws in dust-to-dust is available at: http://www.truedelta.com/blog/?p=48 3. The Sudbury info is seriously outdated, and the comment about moon buggies (like, when did Nasa test moon buggies -- early 1970's) ought to have given the author a clue. Sudbury was polluted by a century of mining (1870 on). In fact, some of Sudbury's nickel went into making the Statue of Liberty. Currently, the mine is owned by INCO (not Toyota), and produces 100,000 tons of nickel a year, of which Toyota buys 1% (1000 tons). Nickel, by the way, is primarily used to make stainless steel. The Mail on Sunday newspaper, which ran the story the college article is a thin re-write of (visible here http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/ news/news.html?in_article_id=417227&in_page_id=177 0 ), used a stock photo from 1994 to illustrate the pollution (visible here http://www.photoboy.com/bin/Cklb?vmo=1173985067754 ). There were, of course, no Prius in existence or being manufactured in 1994. Sudbury is no longer as polluted, as INCO and the city have planted over 8 million trees there since 1979. The best history online of the Sudbury devastation/reforestation comes from GM Canada (the trees were all cut down in 1871 to help rebuild Chicago after the fire), and it provides telling photos of some of the reclamation from 1979 to present. http://www.gmcanada.com/inm/gmcanada/english/about /MissionGreen/Daily/Sep22.html The acid rain problem David Martin of Greenpeace is talking about in is the situation pre 1972. INCO on regreening and SO2 emissions http://www.inco.com/development/community/profiles /sudbury/default.aspx

In a second blog post (I'm the author of the other critique above) I look more at the other assumptions CNW made:

http://www.truedelta.com/blog/?p=66