A redesigned Toyota Prius is on its way to Toyota dealers in May.  With the recent debut of the Honda Insight and 2010 Ford Fusion hybrids, the Prius enters a more competitive hybrid market. It's also a shrinking market -- in the midst of a recession, hybrid sales have slowed significantly.  Can the new Prius help Toyota retain its dominance of the green market?  The automotive press has begun to test drive the vehicle, and the early reviews say it probably will.

Edmunds Inside Line reports, "Better mpg ratings alone would have been enough to keep the 2010 Toyota Prius at the top, but Toyota has also made its famous hybrid car safer and more pleasant to drive."  The next Prius "is more open to letting you have fun than any Prius before it."  The 2010 model has a larger engine than the outgoing version, bumping the total combined horsepower from the gasoline and electric motors up to 134, compared to 110 in the 2009 model.  The 2010 Prius, Edmunds writes, "Feels uncharacteristically stable and secure. Even better, the car's electric-assisted power steering (EPS) has a reassuring weightiness to its on-center response and reasonable precision when you steer into a corner."

Cars.com, meanwhile, was impressed with the passenger cabin of the latest Prius.  "Its upscale interior will surely impress everyone who takes a seat in it," they write.  "Automotive journalists often struggle to describe how one interior feels more upscale than another, or how one type of plastic can feel cheap and another won't - these things just are. With the Prius, Toyota made a number of good choices on both materials and eye-pleasing color combinations."  The most significant improvement, Cars.com writes, is the front seats.  "Even with the base model's fabric seats, there's plenty of cushioning on the bottom and plenty of support for the back. The leather seats in the top two trim levels are quite nice, and they definitely up the ante in terms of luxury."  The cabin is also roomier in every dimension, and "overall fit and finish were flawless."

Automobile Magazine tested out the car's EPA-certified 50mpg mileage rating.  With "the fuel economy indicator graphic in the driver information display...basically in meltdown mode during most of the drive, meaning that the car was being driven in a most eco-unfriendly manner," they "achieved fuel economy on par with a nonhybrid subcompact driven placidly on the freeway."  If a Prius driver were to follow the prompts on the indicator, thus driving more efficiently, Automobile writes, "the Prius should have little trouble meeting" the EPA figure. "That's despite weighing about 110 pounds more and having a gasoline engine that's 1.8 liters, up from 1.5 liters."

HybridCars.com, meanwhile, tried driving the Prius as efficiently as possible on a route travelling between 27 and 29 mph.  Their result?  Seventy-five-point-three mpg.  "Of course, this level of fuel economy should not be expected for typical owners of the 2010 Prius," they write.  But "the fact that it happened, and without applying any black magic or severe ‘hypermiling' techniques, is amazing."

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