[bison3]

I love my Prius. What amazes me about the car is how “idiot-proof” or “smart” it is. I try my best to hypermile and squeeze out every last MPG, while my wife doesn’t make any effort to baby it—and yet, we both consistently get about 57 MPG combined. The car adapts to how you drive it, which is really impressive.

I think Toyota deserves as much credit as Apple for its “it just works” ethos. The way they design the technology to be seamless and work so well behind the scenes is remarkable. Additionally, many Toyota mechanics consider the Prius to be the most reliable car Toyota makes. This often surprises people because of the perceived complexity of hybrids, but in reality, they are elegantly engineered and surprisingly simple.

[j_bum]

I love to hypermile my accord hybrid, but when my wife pulls the exact same mileage without doing anything special, it makes me feel so goofy.

I’ll continue to hypermile for fun anyway lol

[therealdrag0]

I hypermile my gas SUV cuz I feel guilty about the inefficiency, but we just got an EV and Im driving like a maniac breaking it in for fun and cuz no more guilt.

[j_bum]

Sorry to ruin your guilt free parade, but don’t forget that your charging is still producing emissions - just from a distance.

Congrats on the EV though. I really want one, but it’s just not practical for the 400+ mile trips we regularly need to make throughout the year.

[therealdrag0]

Nonzero for sure. But regenerative breaking plus fairly green energy (lotta hydro) is a whole different ball game than 100% gas.

[quanto]

I would go even further and say comparing Apple to Toyota is a high praise for Apple. Toyota, one of the world's largest manufacturers of any product, created its own management and engineering style (e.g. TPS) that continue to edify engineers to this day. Toyota survived and thrived this long in a highly competitive field, especially on a global stage -- a rare instance for a Japanese company. Steve Jobs in his peak had great admiration for Japanese manufacturers like Toyota and wanted to emulate them.

[Clubber]

One of the reasons that Toyota was still pushing out cars during covid while nearly everyone else had a shortage was their mastery of the supply chain. They make sure that their critical suppliers are as redundant as possible and well taken care of. Not only did Toyota maintain a stockpile of critical parts, the distributors gave them preference because they paid on time.