My Golf Cart With A Soul

I have never literally hugged a tree -- too barky -- but my reputation as one who would is nevertheless so firmly entrenched in the minds of my friends that not a one was surprised when I told them I bought a Prius.

After all, I was a diligent recycler long before Al Gore made it cool, and I’ve been using the other side of printed-on-one-side paper for years.

What a lot of my friends didn’t know -- and what I didn’t know myself until I did my homework -- is that the government (yes, our federal government) has a rewards program for people like me when we buy hybrid vehicles like the Toyota Prius, and it’s not just a bump to first class:  it’s $3,150.

So for me, buying the most fuel-efficient four-door vehicle on the road and getting three large back from the IRS was a pretty easy call.

And while none have been quite as pleasant as the three-grand tax credit, driving a Prius has been filled with lots of other surprises, too.

Like the key, for example.  It doesn’t really look like a key -- it looks like the keychain.  With a Prius, the key has no blade and no teeth, because you don’t turn the key to start the engine.  You put the square plastic unlocker thingy in the “key” slot, kind of like you’d stick a flash drive into a USB port, and then push the power button.  The whole process feels more like powering up your computer than turning on your car, only with the new-car smell.

This start-up process is appropriate, because in many ways, the Prius seems more computer than car.  The shifter looks like no other shifter you’ve seen, manual or automatic -- it’s more like the shifter for a golf cart.  When it’s time to put the car in park, you don’t shift into park, you push the P button.

What’s most computer-like, though, is the console in the center of the dash, a touch-screen panel that provides readouts on audio output, climate, and, most interestingly, fuel economy.

When the screen is in this latter mode, it shows you, with cool little colored arrows, where you’re drawing your power from -- the engine or the battery -- when you’re accelerating, and when you’re coasting or braking, it shows that energy being recaptured in the battery.

But my favorite part by far is the mileage data.  Not that a car is a game, but if a Prius were a game, the objective of the game would be to maximize your gas mileage, right?  I mean, sure, it’s a futuristic-looking vehicle, and there are plentiful, well-designed cup-holders, but if the Prius didn’t average 60 miles to the gallon in the city and 51 on the highway, it would just be another compact car.

To accentuate the difference between the Prius and other similar vehicles, then, Toyota lets you know exactly what gas mileage you’re getting, as you’re getting it.  The ready availability of this data has brought out both the competitor and the scientist in me.

The scientist is amazed by the constant revelations.  Who knew you could be driving 74 miles per hour -- and simultaneously getting 79.4 miles to the gallon?  I know this now, as well as approximately how much braking in relation to accelerating is needed to push the charge on the battery from the blue level into the green level.

The competitor, now knowing both his to-the-second and aggregate driving efficiency, wants to do better.  What’s the fastest I can go without sacrificing maximum fuel efficiency?  Can I improve my overall average mileage?  Can I get my actual mileage to surpass the advertised mileage?

In other words, every time I get in the car, I not only get to go somewhere, I get to test myself.

This challenge has been encouraged by the gentleman at Toyota who sold me my Prius, who off-handedly mentioned that at first my mileage probably wouldn’t be as high as I might expect, but “once I learned how to drive the vehicle,” it would improve.  Needless to say, I’m not one to back down from that kind of challenge.

That, and I’m getting tired of the condescending stares I get when I pull into the gas station, those dirty looks that sarcastically say, “Oh.  I thought those things never needed a fill-up.”  I’m working on it, people, I’m working on it!

Which is why I’m pretty sure one of these days I’m going to be pulled over on the side of the road with a police car parked behind me, lights flashing.

“Son, do you have any idea how fast you were going?” the officer will say.

“No, officer, I don’t,” I’ll reply.  “But do you have any idea what kind of mileage I was getting?”