After 3 months of Prius ownership, I got my first where do you plug it in question this morning. It actually caught me a little off guard. Most everyone who has stopped to talk to me about the car up till now has been a little knowledgeable about it. Most comments I get are along the lines of "I bet you're not really getting the EPA rated gas mileage." And I can happily answer yep I am or pretty close to it most of the time.
I got my first "It's ugly!" response, which I was expecting for some time actually. Not because I think it is ugly, but it certainly has a unique style that usually means people will love it or hate it. That being said, after showing the person the car and all it can do, they went from "It's ugly, I'd never drive it" to "I WANT YOUR CAR!!!" in about 3 minutes. -m.
I got the "plug" question for the first time the other night leaving a movie theater. I sensed that he was poking fun at the Jetsonmobile, so I said "yeah, I have to hurry home with the headlights off to get enough charge by morning".
I told a co-worker the day after I got on the list. That was February, I think. The first thing she asked was "do you have to plug it in." Fortunately, she's intelligent and open to new ideas so I was able to provide her with the documentation to teach her about it. But, like George Castanza, I usually think of the really good come-backs after the fact. I thought I'd never get to use it until... In a meeting, a Manager from another department saw my HSD keyring. He asked (mockingly in front of the people he was trying to impress) about plugging it in, having to charge the battery, not being able to drive more then 50 miles from home, blah, blah, blah. I said, very knowledgable like, "actually, the battery is recharged while you drive it. You see, there are solar cells implanted in the headlight housing so it can draw electricity straight from the brightness of the lights - which is why they recommend that you drive it alot at night. You know, to recharge the batteries." You know, when you have Managers in an engineering company who are not Engineers, they don't always know when their employees are making fun of them. :mrgreen:
