I’ll tell you what. I’ll bring my Prius, you bring your Geo Metro, and we’ll see who gets better mileage on a commute into DC in the morning in Northern Virginia.
In optimal driving conditions, a small-engined car will generally be able to do as well as a Prius. After all, the Prius is essentially a gasoline-engine-powered car.
What all the extra stuff does for the Prius is make it run optimally even when the conditions are NOT optimal. If you are doing stop-and-go, it captures the energy rather than wasting it heating the brakes. If you stop, the engine stops. If you accelerate fast, instead of revving up the gas engine and putting it into a low-efficiency band of operation, it throws electricity into the electric motor instead, hoping to replenish it when you don’t need the power by operating the gas engine in a high-efficiency band.
In the end, the Prius is a mid-sized car, and it will take the energy required to move a mid-sized car from one place to another. It’s a little better aerodynamically, but other than that it’s all special tricks to optimize the energy usage.
I can drive 10 miles in an hour in stop-and-go traffic, and at the end of the hour my mileage will still be 40+mpg. Try that in a car that doesn’t shut off the engine when it stops, or have an electric motor for short starts/stops.
You need to do a little more research on the geo metro. On the highway, the geo metro will DEFINITELY utterly destroy your precious prius in mileage. I used to own one. Mine was the 3 door 3 cylinder 5 speed stick.
First of all, the geo metro is TINY. It is pushing half the volume of air that a prius does. Later on, the geo got a little bigger, taller, and larger wheels/tires. But the older ones had skinny little 12 inch rims and tires. They hugged the ground. Tires for the metro could be had for 20 bucks each back when I had one. If you didn’t mind if your new set of tires didn’t match, you could get them for as low as 9 bucks each, that’s right, less than a ten spot per tire. Mine did not have air conditioning or electric anything or even power steering. It may not have even had power brakes. I can’t remember for sure. It had a heater, AM/FM radio and windshield wipers...and that’s all folks. No air bags, no anti lock brakes, no surround sound or elecric seats or tilt steering...NOTHING. The motor was a 998cc single overhead cam 2 valve per cylinder 3 cylinder with I think 59 horsepower. This is all from memory so don’t hold me to it. By contrast, my motorcycle has 1450cc and 85 horsepower. I think the geo gas tank held 9 gallons, but again, from memory, don’t hold me to it.
I remember one time I got 48 MPG @ 90 MPH. It was rated for something like 58 MPG highway. Maybe more. I think the chevy sprint, which was the precuser to the metro, was rated for 60MPG, but my girlfriend had one at the time and claimed 65MPG highway.
The car weighed something like 1900 pounds. If you put four full sized males in one(180 to 220 pounds each), you would be dragging bumpers and muffler everywhere you went, and probably would have to downshift twice to climb a hill. Back in college, I had four large males in mine once. Along with two large computers in the back and two very large monitors(50 to 100lbs each) on the laps of the backseat passengers. I remember thinking the car was gonna fall apart. Sparks were flying everywhere.
In town, I’d say it would be a tossup between a prius and a geo metro equipped as mine was. But on the highway? NO CONTEST!