There's a dark grey Prius wandering around the streets of New Orleans with the Mississippi license plate "TARDIS". If only it had been on that.

Ford asked us a couple decades ago whether the next Mustang should be front wheel drive. The answer to this question is the same as the answer we gave them for that.

All Toyota hybrids have a "B" mode on the "transmission" selector that puts the hybrid system into an "engine braking" mode, which increases the severity (there is a better word, but I'm far too hung over to think of it) of the regeneration and actually has the engine do a bit of work to slow it down, too.

I haven't driven the new Prius at all, but they're all the same in this way too: most of what happens when you push the brake pedal isn't really using the conventional brakes at all. They're only really ever actually used in hard braking or under 7 miles an hour, actually, so brake jobs even for aggressive drivers aren't often necessary for 100,000 miles or more (we're at 87k right now and they're still just fine). Combining those even on a pretty steep grade the brakes wouldn't heat up much at all, you'd just have a very full battery for a little while!

I mean... I guess. You're always going to do well on average MPG right after you fill up when the engine's already hot and you're driving in the vehicle's optimal conditions.

This happened to me a lot in the Prius. I'd fill the tank after driving a while, and if I stayed on surface streets my average for the rest of the drive was regularly above 60mpg, sometimes breaking 70. Any interstates and I was still averaging 55mpg or so, and that'd be like that until the engine cooled and had to warm itself up again. This is from a car that is rated on the adjusted EPA scale at 48 city, 45 highway.

...You know, I just realised I drove a silver Prius for just over five years and never once dressed it up like a shuttlecraft...

When I was a kid, I really wanted to get an Axiom in silver and dress it up like a Star Trek shuttlecraft. It about looks the part, you think?

Oh, a Reliant Scimitar! Princess Anne's got one of those, you know!

My current car was built in the Tsutsumi factory in Toyota City, Japan. The ride before that hails from Georgetown, Kentucky, and my next car (should only be a couple weeks now!) was built in Toluca, Mexico, with an engine from Michigan!

Funny you should say that. I can't vouch for this iteration completely, but on the NHW20 Prius (2004-2009) at least, the indoor reverse beeper can be defeated by the user, but it requires sort of an automotive equivalent to the cheat code which includes pushing the TRIP/ODO button a few times, cycling the car on then off then on, shifting into and out of reverse twice, and so on. It's hilarious to explain, and you may have experienced something similar with the sequence Ford trucks use to disable and enable the BeltMinder system.

The problem with that comparison is that the Yaris is a small, tinny, cheap econobox. The Prius, on the other hand, slots between the Corolla and the Camry in both interior volume, all the while blowing even the Yaris away on fuel economy.