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Toyota Prius Renderings Show Hybrid Gone Bad After Losing Eco Mantle to Tesla

For two years now, the Toyota Prius is legally allowed to drink alcohol. That's right, the Japanese model responsible for launching the hybrid craze is turning 23 this year, and if that doesn't make you feel old, we don't know what is.
Toyota Prius rendering 12 photos
Photo: Basil Masri via Instagram
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It feels like it was just yesterday that we were first hearing about this Toyota model that used an electric motor and batteries to reduce fuel consumption and provide more torque to the somewhat feeble naturally aspirated four-cylinder 1.5-liter engine powering the sedan.

It had a slow start but that was to be expected considering it was new technology. The Prius spent its first three years in the relative comfort of its domestic market, but starting with 2000, it became a global model as it was imported in the U.S. as well as Europe.

The growing environmentalist movement was in search of a symbol, and since Greta Thunberg wasn't even born yet, it settled on the Japanese hybrid. Driving a Prius became a statement, and so the model suddenly received a lot of attention from the public as well as the media. Who can forget the South Park episode "Smug Alert"?

It took just one year for the U.S. to overtake Japan as the main market for the Prius, but this newly found fame meant that the hybrid was making just as many enemies as it was finding buyers. Since every movement also has a countermovement, the Prius-driving environmentalists were often met with clouds of black diesel smoke coming from pickup trucks, and there were plenty of vandalism cases as well.

The years went by, and the Prius grew stronger. Until one day, Elon Musk launched Tesla, and suddenly the gasoline engine in the Prius made the hybrid just as bad as the rest of the ICE vehicles, as they came to be known. But driving a Prius was still a statement: it said you either had no idea there were EVs about now; or were too poor to afford one.

Tesla quickly became the symbol of the eco-movement, sending the Prius into a cone of shadow. It was a completely new situation for the once poster boy of the eco-warriors, one that could potentially change its destiny forever.

Well, let's imagine for a second the Prius was actually a person and that it really couldn't cope with its fall from grace. What could it do? Suicide? It thought about it, but it didn't want to give Tesla the satisfaction. Fight to get back its place? As long as it kept that gasoline engine, it stood no chance.

The only thing it could do was to take up drugs and start hanging out with the wrong cars - the kind that spend most of their time at the drag strip or doing mindless drifts. So, this is what the Prius looks like nowadays after embracing its gas-burning side: a widebody freak clad in carbon fiber with a huge rear-mounted engine and a matching pair of equally huge blowers ready to inject some NOS into its veins.

And its mother only blames Tesla.
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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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