2024 Toyota Prius Review - Buy This Instead of an EV

I'm Jacob. I'm Yuri. I'm going for a drive. The fuel efficient 2024 Toyota Prius. XLE all-wheel drive without launch control. It's not bad though. CVT, CVT. That's all right. It's great. Hit me with the horsepower and torque. A combined 196 horsepower and 139 pound feet of torque from a two-liter four-cylinder hybrid. I bet you could get like a thousand kilometers to the tank on this bad boy. Potentially depending on the size of the tank. So everyone that's shopping for this probably cares about fuel economy. Let's get that up front. It is rated at 4.8 liters per 100 kilometers combined or 49 miles per gallon and I reset this when I got it and it's about 5 to 5.2 liters in the winter which is still really good. Heck yeah and this is the non-plug-in hybrid. The plug-in hybrid was called the Prime. Yeah and we reviewed that last year and really liked it. And then USA gets a front-wheel drive but Canada only gets all-wheel drive. Yes and with the all-wheel drive which is the only one that we get, we get two extra horsepower. So if you get a front-wheel drive in the states you get two less horsepower. I assume the front-wheel drive would have better fuel economy too. That's a good assumption. Yeah honestly I don't need all-wheel drive in Canada. Give me some more front-wheel drive only car companies please. Yeah but people seem to think that they need all-wheel drive but if you do need all-wheel drive or if you feel like you want it, go to tsp.truecar.com. Discounted price offers. I'm sure you can get these things for a pretty good price and save fuel. Americans just buy the front-wheel drive ones on tsp.truecar.com. Especially in the states. Or one of the older ones, the original Prius. Yo if you live in California do not buy an all-wheel drive version of this or potentially even anything. Do people in California even care about this car anymore or is it just Teslas now? No I mean I think this is probably still second to Teslas, third to Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. All right looks-wise does it look any different than the other one? Kind of looks like a four-door Prelude. Get it, get it, since we first reviewed this the Prelude came out. Yes, not Prologue, Prelude. Anyways I think this thing looks really really good. It's got that hammerhead front end which they're putting on a lot of the new Toyotas now. It's a really wedgy looking car and it's very hard to film with a wide-angle lens and make it look cool. And it looks fast standing still. And the wheels are okay, they're not electric-y, they're not luxury, they're just they're very Toyota. Yeah you know. And then the door handles are kind of weird because you do have keyless entry which is really nice on this XLE trim on the front doors but on the back you have the weird upper handle thing. Yeah that'd be weird for a kid to open the door I think. Or impossible depending on their height. Yeah okay and then you pointed out something hilarious and awful about opening and unlocking the doors from the outside. So when I first got into this car it was set to the and it makes this piano key sound every time you lock and unlock it. I don't know why somebody thought that was something that needed to happen but thankfully you can turn it off. Yeah. But yeah that would drive me nuts. If it was undefeatable. Oh my god I thought it was at first but luckily I found it in the infotainment. But the crazy part is it's for the unlock as well. Like I sort of understand for the lock but for unlock. Okay because there's nothing worse than a loud horn honk on locking. Yes. Like you come home late your kid's sleeping or your neighbors or anyone. Like a bloop bloop. Cool yeah that's cool that's luxury or like a soft honk. I don't know how they program a soft honk. Like a half honk like a 25 percent. I didn't I didn't know that was a thing engineers could do but any company needs to be like reprimanded by the government for having a loud horn honk on every lock. I'm with you on that. European regulations if you want to do that yeah I'm okay with that. But as for the rest of the looks of this thing the back end looks very sleek nice tail light because it goes across the whole back which basically everything. How's the view out the back window? Well I definitely don't like that. I haven't been enjoying that. It's quite narrow. Is it better than like old Priuses that had the double window? Because I thought that was always cool. No because at least you could see like headlights and stuff because you had that second kind of lower window. Here you don't even see like headlights or front bumpers. What if you tilt down? Probably don't see anything. Okay okay. So yeah the the narrow visibility out the back is still not my favorite. I don't know. What if I angle this up higher and then tilt it down? That doesn't. No no it should. Okay look you can angle this back part and now tilt down. Does that help? No. A little bit. Yeah. But then I can't see farther back. But yeah okay. Yeah yeah. There's a weird workaround. This part here adjusts unlike that original Veloster where it was like. Yeah yeah. But anyway it's still a little bit too narrow and then there's no rear wiper which I guess Toyota determined is the appropriate angle for the back end which I sort of understand. However it's been raining this week and I got like pine needles and stuff on the back and nothing comes off in the rain. I bet you if they put a rear wiper on there that would ruin the drag coefficient and then ruin their fuel economy and then make it so that they can't build as many Supras. Yes. So you know it's all right. If that is the case. Yeah. If it's money saving that should have gone into the Supra wind buffeting budget. Yeah. What if they were able to fix the wind buffeting but if they fix the wind buffeting it would have less horsepower. You know maybe they're doing it right. Yeah. Anyways back back to the Prius. Going around back this does have a trunk. It's a hatchback. It is quite small but it's nice that it's a hatch. Not power. No it's manual. Probably because. This is an XLE. Weight. But also I think. Motors, weight, fuel economy. I feel like the top trim would have something like that. I don't think so. Remember like the old ones just have it like super carbon fiber. Well we're already displaying that on the screen thanks to our editor. Yeah. We don't know if we're right or wrong. We don't know. This is the most unscripted authentic car review channel ever. That's right. I'm not not scripting anything. I'm not I'm not hiding here while you do your monologue. What do you want to talk about next? I don't know. I haven't thought about it yet. Hey you've gone off script. Because there's no script. What do you think about this color? I don't know. It's great. Just like a hammerhead shark like the front end Yuri. I thought of that right in this moment. Nice. Good. Good. That's good. Okay. Is there any flake or sparkle in this paint? I'm going to use my microscope lens. I got some crazy lenses from Sandmarc because I keep seeing their ads. And then there is some sparkle in here but it's very hard to see. Looking at it from a broad picture that we're used to I don't see anything in here and it's kind of overcast today. It's not the best so whatever. It's gray paint. But at least it's not like you know cement gray primer gray paint. It's still a little darker than that. Yeah but like primer it's not quite the same. But hey maybe it blends in more. Thieves can't see it and it won't get stolen as easily. Potentially. How many cars did they recover in Toronto recently? Like 300? I thought it was 600. Maybe it's it doesn't matter. You know what the problem is? Is that they recovered them. Yes. Not stop them from getting stolen. That's right. So they're all going to have damaged door handles, damaged body things. People are halfway through claims buying new cars and then they're gonna have to undo that. And all they've done is pissed off every criminal in Ghana. So like yeah yeah. What have you guys really done? All right you get in here and drive. I think I'm done. Hey. Hey. Hey what the heck? Why is the steering wheel blocking my gauge cluster? Yeah I found that pretty annoying but I got used to it to the point that I sat myself in this car thinking of someone who didn't care about life and just goes through life coasting and just cares about money and fuel economy. And I was totally okay with that. I positioned the steering wheel so that I can see everything on the gauge cluster which is not connected to it. And I think I saw like an old like race car video. It's like how to sit in the car properly. You want it like at your chin height and like your wrist on the steering wheel. So this is actually the perfect race car position. I thought that you needed some kind of you needed like a bend in your hands because I think you're too far. Maybe I'm thinking NASCAR. Yeah I don't know. Anyways. Launch this thing. How many pedals did you hit there? One. Three times. It's really quick. It is surprisingly quick. Yeah. This thing's not slow. And you floor it when you're going and it's good like traction or something. ABS bro that was ABS. Yeah. Driving it is nice. Okay so floor it now that you're driving already. The CVT works very well like all together. Yo I kind of hate the sound of CVTs. I know. I'm in the Sienna right now. Yeah. Hybrid and like flooring it is just so much CVT. I get it. It makes sense. It's just the sound because I also had the Honda Odyssey with VTEC right before. Oh yeah. And it was like you got spoiled. But you know what? I drive so much more fuel efficiently when I'm in a CVT slash eCVT kind of car. Because you don't want to floor it. Because it doesn't sound good. Yeah. So that's good for fuel economy. Yes. Because if this had VTEC. Yes or a turbo or something. Yeah. With a blow-off valve like a GR Corolla. Should I do a handle? Yeah do it. It's all-wheel drive bro. A little understeery but not bad. That is very composed. It's really good. I know I said I didn't want to handle through here. It's just I don't feel like it today but it is really good. This is an exceptionally handling vehicle for what this is. Through the bump it was like a nice one bump and softness and damped it nicely. The damping is really good. This thing is really comfortable. Compliance. Yes. I have enjoyed my week driving this thing as just like like an NPC. Just whatever. Okay. Inside. It's nice. There's a lot of open space. I can see through the windows. We got that nice big gap in front of the mirrors which I love. I think usually Subarus have that. Yeah. You like these materials. Okay. So we got what is what would you call this material in here? From here I would I would call this silver chair carbon fiber. Okay. You use that microscope lens close up and it's like little dots and stuff like that is crazy what stuff looks like close up. I had no idea that the graphic designer had to like design little dots. Yeah yeah well because it's like it's like little ink things. Yeah. And then you know what else looks really weird with that lens? What? Stitching. We have white stitching. I think it looks kind of cool. It looks like DNA or something like a DNA strand. Yeah. Everything looks really crazy microscopic. Yeah. I have a lot of fun with it. Yes. But the rest of the stuff looking at it again from my eyes a lot of plastic and stuff but it doesn't really feel it doesn't give me the sense of cheapness. Yeah. It's just like it's kind of nice. This one material thing is like enough to make it not economy car. That's right. And I like this one little streak of ambient lighting in the dash and it's been kind of flashing at me and I haven't really figured out why. It might be when vehicles drive away from me or something. Oh yeah. It's like a reminder to like. It just like gives a little flash but I haven't figured out when or why. Should I get a close-up of it with another macro lens? I don't know. I think it's really going to look cool. Maybe you can see the spots in there. Maybe. I don't know man. I like my cameras. And then these seats are really really comfortable. Yeah yeah. These are very comfortable. Headrest a little hard but like I'm not going to really complain. Only forward back lumbar on my side. I assume you don't have any on your side. You would be I got your purses over here. Correct. And then no seat presets but it looks like the top trim might have. Yeah yeah. Okay we got heated steering wheel. Heated seats. That's cool. Looks like someone's got ventilated seats but not us. We don't have a wireless charger but we have a hidden compartment and then we do have a wired or wireless apple carplay on a relatively small screen but it fits the size of the vehicle. You know the thing I don't like? What's the only thing I don't like? Okay we got is the newer infotainment? Yes. We got only the volume knob. That's right. So what's cool is that Sienna I've got right now has the older infotainment with all the hard buttons on the side and a volume and a tuning knob. Yeah okay. Yo that was pretty good. We still do have hard buttons for climate as well. That's very important and I'm very happy about that. Yeah because the newer ones put it into the infotainment. Does this have the update yet where if you're in apple carplay the bar stays on the left? It does not. I feel like we have to wait two years for that actually. Okay yo I'm gonna cliche corner. Am I in sport mode? That damping is really good. Yeah you're in sport mode. Good power. Yo this would be fun to do on like an endurance race. Yo this thing is ripping. You need to you need to go back and rip through here before I move you. I don't need to. No you do. No no no. What? I was not gonna wreck there. No no that's great. I had full confidence in this all-wheel drive system. This is yeah this is good. And then uh rear seats are good for yourself but I hit myself in the head at six foot one and a half. My legs are okay. Five foot eight so much room. This would be a great taxi. No sunroof though. No. Makes sense. That's right. Weight savings and fuel economy. I get this for fuel economy and stuff. Yes. What the heck? Oh here we go Erie. I had to do it. You're right. Oh this thing absolutely rips through cliche corner. It's fun how it comes back around. Although I do have traction off I'm fully floored. I can feel it cutting power. Yeah what do you expect? Honestly this is fantastic for the way it handles. You know what? What's that? If I was ripping through in my Mazda with my Cross Contact LX25 summer tires that I just put back on I think I'd be ripping a little harder though. And I just put on my summer tires on my E55 AMG wagon the Extreme Contact Sport 02. I would absolutely destroy cliche corner. So if you're thinking about switching from your winters to your summers or your all seasons now would be the time. Seven degrees celsius is the time that you want to do that. We did a little bit early but the weather's looking beautiful. Do it before everyone else does it and there's a lineup again. That's right. By the time you guys see this video it'll definitely be that temperature. What about the cup holders Erie? It fits perfectly fine. And we got some gloss black down here which kind of sucks but whatever. Visors. Three, two, one. Fail and extension. Toyota do better. Eh. Fuel economy bro. Heck yes. I don't know. Probably more plastic though. All right is that everything? How about towing? No no towing for this. Unless you're in Quebec. Just kidding. Okay let's get to the price. This XLE is $37,650. Canadian. Very reasonable especially if you're trying to save money. Yeah I mean there probably is a waiting list for this. By now probably not. The interest rates are so damn high. Check Facebook if you know you know. Oh boy. Yeah for those that don't know it's stolen cars. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. People are just openly advertising stolen cars these days. On Facebook it's pretty funny. It's kind of crazy. So I hope you guys enjoyed Toyota month. Yes we did have a lot of new Toyotas this month but this is another one but this one's coming out later but we filmed it earlier. I would take this in yellow. Oh yeah they had that crazy yellow. I'd be very happy with this car. Yeah it's a great car. I've lived with it. I have no real deal breakers or anything like that. The brakes are good. Everything about this is pretty damn good. Oh yeah no weird brakes. Exactly. Probably because it's not a plug-in. Yes maybe. Thanks for watching. Thanks for subscribing. Thanks for watching even if you don't subscribing. You can leave me in comments on this one. Yeah yeah. About us or the car. Be a total dick.