The Modern Family test drives a Prius+

A big thanks to the lovely folks over at Toyota for lending us a Prius+ for a week as part of their #toyotaschoolrun campaign.

We had a great time using the car to cart a gazillion girls around to football practice and various other school-related activities.

I've wanted to drive a Prius since the Hybrid car was all the rage in California for getting drivers a coveted "yellow pass" for carpool lanes!* I'm also interested in green issues, and electric/hybrid cars are the future.

So how did we get on?

The things we liked:

-The seven seats! With five of us in the modern family, we really need a 7-seater as we always have a grandparent, friend, or extra kids to cart around.

-The 3rd row of seats was very easy to use (Easier than our current car!). You basically just push them down and pull up.

-I felt very "in" driving the car and that I was doing my bit to help the environment. (Don't be alarmed, my daughter took this pic!)

-I LOVED the electric key system. While at Tesco, this allowed me to focus on handling the shopping cart, groceries and kids, and not have to search my bag for the keys. VERY convenient.

-There's a cool feature that shows you which seats have the seat belt fastened (or not). V. useful.

Things to get used to:

-The electric key system! It's not intuitive and it took Modern Dad (who has a PhD in Psychics) a little while to figure out and then explain to me. Once we got over that initial hurdle, the system was fast and easy.

-The silence and "cutting out" at low speeds. Below 28 mph the car automatically switches to electric mode. This may alarm you if you are not used to it! Once we got used to it, we found the low electric humming sound comforting and a reminder we were not using petrol!

The girls also had great fun on a photo shoot with the car – see the pics to the right.

I'd love to own a Prius+. And for those living in London, the T4 model qualifies for congestion charge exemption! Woop-woop!

*Yellow Clean Air Vehicle Stickers for hybrids are no longer valid in California- the program ended on 1 July 2011