My Prius Experience

In 2005, I started to research cars for my granddaughter and was looking for a car for someone who had no money. I had a friend who bought a Prius in 2000 and he confirmed its 60 mpg abilities. I read about the Prius 2005 redesign and decided to test drive one. It was a roomy 4 door, 4 seater with a lot of pep.

The gasoline engine would shut off when you took your foot off the gas and that was perfect for in-town, stop and start driving. It was perfect for large, gridlocked metro areas like Atlanta. It was an electric car you never had to plug in to charge. I bought 2 of them.

We traded our Cadillacs in on 2 of these 2005 Prius cars and never looked back. In 2005, our dumb government offered a $2000 tax break on each Prius.  I paid about $25,000 for each Prius and that included their 100,000 mile warranty to cover the possible $3500 battery replacement cost. Gasoline costs were in the $3.00 per gallon range and I was about to triple my MPGs from the 20 mpg I got with the Cadillacs to 60 mpg, so for me, gasoline cost was going to $1.00 per gallon. I figured the Prius cars would pay for themselves in saved gasoline costs and they did. Each year I would spend about $3000 for gasoline for each car and I cut that cost to $1000. The $2000 I saved on gasoline would allow me to save $25,000 over 12.5 years. We still have one of the 2005 Prius cars and it has 160,000 miles on the odometer with no sign of slowing down and we’ve had that car for 13 years. We bought a new Prius in 2012 and I will keep the 2005 Prius until it dies just to see how many miles it can go. It might pass 300,000 like many of the Japanese cars and vans do.

In my work, I’ve spent a lot of time with design engineers and I know the kind of hours they put in and how they go about solving problems.  I believe the Japanese engineers are among the best, because I appreciate what they accomplished with the Prius. I also believe the Chinese engineers we have working in the US are also exceptional and have seen them working 12 hour days to incorporate improvements to existing designs. I also believe that US engineers are exceptional, especially in defense electronics. They are all doing what they love to do and are good at it. The proof is always in the finished product.  US engineers created the smart phone and designed the automated tests for this high volume product.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader