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My wife and I spent a lot of time deliberating between getting a Prius Prime (plug-in hybrid) and a Model 3. We have an 09 Camry Hybrid. FWIW, our Camry Hybrid is nice, but the battery halves trunk space, and the accel is sloooow compared to a normal Camry (which we owned before that). Fully loaded, the Prime is ~35k, and theoretically has more or at least equivalent features, can travel about 25 miles on EV alone, with smooth switching between EV and ICE modes. However, it feels like they threw all these systems in as feature creep. There's a HUD that's really hard to see or get used to, a lot of your EV info is on top of the middle of the dash in a very cluttered manner, the NAV system / phone system is tough to use - you end up trying to go thru a phone tree to make a simple call, and the phone sync is so bad that the sales guy who tried to demo it with my wife's iphone 8 spent 15 minutes and couldn't get it to work. The same holds true for almost every feature on it - the autopilot was hard to get to engage because there was also the standard cruise control features, and so on. The Model 3 is amazing for its elegant simplicity. The early iPhone metaphor is remarkably apt here - there are things that could be better, it could be cheaper, and little idiosyncrasies like the door handles are there - but in the end it's a night and day difference, like you're getting Something New, and not just next year's model. There's a list of hard factual reasons I could go into that played into the decision, but I'll try to cut the gushing fanboi talk short. In the end we dropped the extra 30k on our Model 3 and are ecstatic with it. I think we'll find there's a lot of early Prius owners, even up to '10 or '13, who have enjoyed their car, bought it partly for green reasons, and when looking for a replacement will choose to bump up to the Model 3. |
Performance has consistently increased. My 2016 will beat a 2017 Altima up a steep hill. I test drove both up a hill that's between the Toyota and Nissan dealerships. Hybrid torque is noticable.
No HUD, and sadly no self-parking. The infotainment system feels a little simple and aged, but everything works. No Android Auto or iDrive(?) but Bluetooth works well. Only adaptive cruise, no normal cruise (or I forgot where is that button), and the follow distance is on a button on the steering wheel - so you can cycle between 160 ft, 130 ft, & 100 ft whenever you want.
It's like a 2007 Lexus, with fresh batteries and engine. The dash has 2 actual dials, and a programmable phone-sized screen. Climate controls are just 2 dials and a few buttons. The steering wheel is almost a video game controller - it has 2 D-pads and other buttons to control most things - audio controls, phone controls, menus, adaptive cruise, etc. And most of these have another control that the passenger can use too.
Grabbing the door handle, with the key in your pocket, unlocks the door - every Tesla is more complicated to enter.