I rented a Prius a couple of years ago when i was visiting Seattle. I couldn’t believe the acceleration that thing had. It reminded me of watching youtube videos of the guy that drag raced a little Russian economy car body from like the 60’s with a super high torque electric motor. He would beat some pretty monster gas powered cars with that little thing. It was comical. Of course, it only got about one quarter mile per charge. :-)
Yes, it's not as bad as some people believe. And, there are performance hybrids that will blow your socks off.
It's due to an interesting "phenomena": electric motors develop maximum torque at 0 RPM.
If you plot the power curves so the electric is mostly used at the lowest speeds and the engine picks up the slack as its RPM gets climbs into its maximum torque range, you end up with a combined system that is greater than the sum of its parts.