Elon Musk has paid someone to invent the Tesla Roadster 2. It goes from 0-62mph in less than one second. I saw a video of it driving up a ramp shaped like a crescent moon, with suction apparently; it fell off, flipped over, the (compressed air) thrusters kicked in, it steadied and landed. I think flying cars will kill a lot of swans, which I worry about, since they seem to be based on them, but they may never come. Tesla says the flying version isn’t going into production yet, though Musk fans on X are saying how great it would be if someone blew up a bridge while they were on it, which is true.
Toyota is so careful it even asked American focus groups whether the plural of Prius should be Prii or Priuses
Back in reality, this week I write about the Toyota Prius, because it is nothing like the Roadster 2, and because the Toyota Supra, a tiny sports car with a big heart, like a Jack Russell, is one of my greatest of all time, the kind of car you really want in a rainstorm on the M4 with a toddler. The Prius, a magnificent hybrid, is not mad and, with very few exceptions, I don’t want a mad car. I want a safe and enviable car.
The Prius is very reliable, and Japanese. It is built by robots for realists, neither of which make mistakes. Toyota is so careful it even asked American focus groups whether they thought the plural of Prius should be Prii or Priuses, Priora being already taken by a Lada; despite this courtesy, everyone calls them Priuses anyway.
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This is a car rarely given its due, and I identity with that. The Prius is so good that people see past it, like a woman of a certain age, or a mother of any age: you expect it to function and ignore it. It is known as the Uber car, as if that were a criticism. What do millions of taxi drivers know about travelling in comfort and safety with fuel economy? I will not take the road of the Marxist review of the Prius. I wouldn’t do that to you. But I could have.
I am used to SUV bubble cars, which people drive because, among other things, it makes them feel tall. I like SUVs for this reason, and because I can ask the question: is it a big small car or a small big car? The Prius feels vaguely revolutionary because you cannot ask this question: it’s a medium-sized, four-door salon with a medium (2.0 litre) engine, which transports me, emotionally at least, back to my childhood. All it lacks is people crying.
It looks slightly like the Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me, the one that Bond drove into the sea in Sardinia, which became a tiny submarine. Elon Musk bought this Esprit 13 years ago, though so far he has not managed to reproduce it. (Cars need holes. Submarines don’t. What to do?)
‘It was amazing as a little kid in South Africa to watch James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me drive his Lotus Esprit off a pier, press a button and have it transform into a submarine underwater,’ Musk said. ‘I was disappointed to learn that it can’t actually transform.’
It’s low and sleek, with a vast bonnet, and it is painted banana yellow. Usually the Prius is white: this one dares to scream banana and I love it for this: a wallflower that could. It is the first mass-produced hybrid, it is in its fifth iteration, and it is 30 next year.
I drive it from Exeter to Penzance and back in a serene reverie. It is such a responsive and intelligent car. It’s a truism that almost all cars are good these days – ‘all cars are the same’ my uncle, once a motorbike correspondent, told me when I began these dispatches, and not kindly – but this feels like a machine I barely need to drive. It keeps me to my lane; lights up for objects in the blind spot; beeps for hazards; sometimes it slows itself down. If this constitutes some kind of robot takeover of my driving autonomy, well, this is an age of decadence, and there are things far more decadent. The fuel economy is likewise insane, which might be a solution to America changing sides in the Russia-Ukraine war. It might. At one point I get 60 miles to the gallon.
Because it is banana yellow and brand new, people show a great deal of interest in it in west Cornwall: I am fairly certain I managed to sell a Prius to a rich retired couple – increasingly they replace the native Cornish – who felt too interesting for a VW (they weren’t) yet too timid for an Audi. Five stars, no notes for the Prius in banana, for its functionality and its flex. I might, given space, be an Uber driver yet.
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