Prius? Accord hybrid? Other hybrid? Conventional motor?

We have a 2011 Prius and a 2012 Prius C (smaller version). I love the regular Prius, and it has been largely (but not entirely) trouble-free.

For whatever reason, it goes through tires faster than any car I’ve ever had, and also headlamps. (That last is a defect that actually prompted a recall a few months ago. I can’t wait to see whether the problem actually goes away. Before this car, I had never replaced a headlight bulb in my life, and I’ve had to replace bulbs 8-9 times in 8 years.) The key batteries are also somewhat short-lived, and you can’t replace them yourself.

At ~96,000 miles, it is losing efficiency. With winter gas and city driving, I am barely getting 40 mpg, and maybe 44-45 mpg with consistent highway driving at 65-70 mph. A few mpg better in the summer. But for the first 85,000 miles or so it was regularly getting over 50 mpg during the summer and 45-47 mpg during the winter.

And, yes, coming off of a dead stop, it has all the pickup of a mule team. If that really bothered me, I would briefly switch it to “power” mode at red lights. That would handle the problem – but it really isn’t much of a problem.

The C gets better gas mileage – mid-50s even in the city in the winter – but I find it really cramped and less well designed. It’s much noisier. It has needed practically no maintenance in 6-1/2 years. It still has less than 60,000 miles on it, though.