a-a-a-and, home, about 20mins ago. 400-something miles in the Prius. Kept up with traffic fine, other than a couple times I decided to hang behind a truck rather than force it to accelerate up a hill. First half to two-thirds, the computer was showing ~50mpg; then I locked on the cruise to "going with the traffic, don't want to get a ticket in the dark" speeds, and it lowered to ~47mpg.
Took the long way in order to play around a little bit in some of the twisty's between Dusterdb13's and 81, hung out with a Prius C for a bit through that, and missed a turn. Some interesting things to learn/experiment about 'D' and 'B' mode, w.r.t. "spirited driving".
Also, I've got some figuring out to do with the suspension. Dusterdb13 mentioned the spacers on it made the steering a bit more 'lively'. What I found was that under some road imperfections the back end would... 'wiggle' through an oscillation and a half. I also had a few times where it felt like the front-end was tram-lining a bit, and then another few times where it seemed there was some bumpsteer going on. It's not 'bad', although I think I'd like it to be a little more consistent... assuming there are things I can tweak to get that. I also noticed there were some times when the struts would take more period than I expected to settle down... which is kinda a bummer, since (afaik) there's not really "other struts/shocks" with higher damping without going to coilovers. Which, isn't in the cards right now.
The steering is... interesting. At speed, I perceived deflections for lane changes and sweepers to be about what I expected. But, tighter radius mean you'll be using ~90deg of wheel deflection, where most other cars are probably 45 or 60deg (this was something I was aware of before purchasing). At speed, I felt like the steering loaded up nicely, although there's not much of a centering force... when combined with a little bit of dead-space in the middle probably accounts for some of the comments about the Prius' steering lacking 'feel'.
Overall, I'm quite pleased with the little thing. No, it's not as fast as the TL; and it's not as big/authoratative as the MDX... but it does what you tell it, and if you plan ahead (or have patience when 'calling for more power' isn't a good option), it will ably keep up with (imho) one of the more demanding highway environments. Also, it's a lot of fun to be able to use regen to 'keep position' in a pack of cars and watch the consumption display push power into the battery, instead of it getting turned into brake heat or engine noise.
Alright. Time for bed.
