Prius Prime Is A Finalist For Green Car Reports Best Buy

As you may surmise from the name, Green Car Reports focuses on cars that minimize their impact on the environment. It started off looking at hybrids and even diesels, and of course, now EVs are a major focal point. In the winter, Green Car Reports selects their Best Car to Buy for the upcoming year. In December, they chose their four finalists for the award, and Valley Hi Toyota is pleased to report that one of those finalists was the Prius Prime.

Candidates must be new or redesigned for the model year to be considered. Green Car Reports doesn’t just select the least polluting of these new models, or only EVs would be considered. So they also consider how much this model could impact the environment. In other words, a model with drastically lower emissions that sells 250K units a year is likely to have a larger impact on the environment than an EV that is sold to 10K consumers in the same year.

The competition is tough for the Prius Prime with the three other finalists all EVs, including the Hyundai IONIQ6, the Kia EV9, and the Nissan ARIYA. The Prius Prime is singled out as the only Hybrid in the running for this prestigious recognition.

Green Car Reports does like a non-polluting car, so they zeroed in on the Prius Prime. Its estimated 45 EV-only miles easily exceeds the average daily round trip commute of 32 miles, which means that more than half of commuters could plug in their Prius Prime at night and run on nothing but electrons through the work week and even possibly weeks on end until a road trip is planned. Once the 45 or so miles are spent on the road trip, the Prius Prime still heads down the remainder of the trip with an EPA-estimated combined 52 miles per gallon. Get a few 100,000 people to trade in a gas-only car getting 32 mpg for one that gets 52 mpg and emits nothing on short trips, and you have some positive environmental impact.

Green Car Reports isn’t blind to the new Prius’ other virtues: “The latest Prius Prime offers sexier styling, a futuristic design that returns to Prius form, and much-improved performance that breaks the mold for this eco-warrior.”. They also mention the Prius Prime’s starting MSRP of under $34,000, which they point out is “…about the same numerical base price that the Chevy Volt got for 2016, but a much better deal adjusted for inflation.”The Green Car Best Buy for 2024 will be announced in January. And even if it isn’t selected, the Prius still boasts some top-notch honors as Motor Trend’s 2024 Car of the Year and one of Car and Driver’s 10Best. The biggest question, of course, is if the Prius or Prius Prime could be a winner for you. Visit Valley Hi Toyota to find out for yourself.

Tags: Events, informative, news, Prius
Posted in Events, Informative, News, Prius No Comments »