5 ms·

The Prius is a conservative automobile

11 points by WheelsAtLarge 4y ago

SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
In London, a Toyota Prius is almost always a minicab - a taxi that is booked over the phone and not hailed on the street. There's nothing liberal, or Conservative about it, just commercial. And the driver is usually an immigrant, and I suspect, not the vehicle owner.
- leoedin 4y ago
  I wanted to buy a prius - great fuel economy, practical storage, reliable powertrain - but the prospect of drunk people trying to get into your car at every junction when you drive through the city at night put me right off.
  - entropicgravity 4y ago
    Bought a Prius five years and it's been a great buy as a transportation appliance. It can get up to 1200 km/42L tank if you're just cruising at 90kph. Nobody here in Western Canada either wants to climb in to it or thinks its a car that a conservative (in the MAGA sense) would want to be found dead in.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
    I think you're describing a tipping point - where the association is so strong that it inhibits other uses. The association in this case is "a Prius is a minicab" - which seems to be mostly true in London. I'm sure it's a practical vehicle, since the choice of minicab vehicle is necessarily a very practical one, driven by factors such as Return on Investment, carrying capacity, and finding a vehicle that one can comfortably spend double-digit hours per day inside. But now, we don't want one since it's going to be assumed to be a minicab.
    - shapefrog 4y ago
      Mercedes C class in black - 9/10 I see on the road have a taxi licence sticker in the window. Practical, cheap(ish) etc however, wouldnt want to be assumed to be an uber driver. Tesla Model 3, heading in the the same direction as well.
- cafard 4y ago
  There are a lot of Prius cabs in Washington, DC. There are also a fair number in private hands.
csb6 4y ago
The Prius is a reliable car that gets good gas mileage. Why can’t we just leave it at that? I’ve noticed that there is a part of the culture war where certain consumer goods are aesthetically “liberal” and others are aesthetically “conservative”, not based on the running of the companies that make them, but on some loose association or fad (e.g. Goya beans). They are just products - buying them or not buying them based on abstract political associations doesn’t do anything. It is a way to feel like you are taking political action when in reality you are just consuming things.
- benj111 4y ago
  Because cars are status symbols. The car you drive says something deep and meaningful about you. If you drive a BMW or Audi you are successful and everyone understands that. If you drive a Prius you're a tree hugger and if you drive anything cheap you're a failure in life that obviously can't afford anything better. (Sarcasm btw)
- Barrin92 4y ago
  >when in reality you are just consuming things. nope, in reality a lot of consumption is implicitly political or cultural, it's just that a lot of people aren't used to looking at things that way because you swim in it like a fish in water. Pay attention to how things are advertised. Autonomy for trucks, freedom for cigarettes (formerly, now nasty cancer images on the package), happy animals and low carbon footprints for vegan beans, clean air and environmental protection for electric cars, patriotism for the newest Top Gun movie, happy diverse people in the newest Millennial Netflix show, and so on. Short of toilet paper a lot of modern consumption is about symbolic exchange, what you signal by consuming. I recommend William Gibson's Blue Ant series, he had a good eye for this many years ago.
  - GuB-42 4y ago
    I think it is backwards. "Conservative" and "Liberal" are just labels, used in the context of traditional two party politics, and it is mostly a result of what happens naturally when you split the population into two similar sized groups based on their political ideas. One candidate will target "liberals", the other "conservatives". The definition isn't fixed, conservative ideas become liberal and vice versa all the time in order to maintain the roughly half/half two party system. There is no conspiracy here, it is emergent behavior that is seen in most democracies. There are similar phenomena in marketing, which is not surprising since politics and marketing are essentially the same thing, but it doesn't mean the categories are the same. The Prius is not a "conservative", "woman", "white", "middle-aged" or whatever automobile, though there may be some correlations. In reality it is an automobile for Prius customers, and what Prius marketing thinks their potential customers are.
Tildey 4y ago
The ability some people have to make everything political never ceases to amaze me. It's a conservative car because you can checks notes fit a wheelchair in the back? It's simply an appliance. It's no more political than a toaster. Maybe more liberals like toast, but that doesn't make the toaster liberal.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Choosing to not recognize that political labels, like all subcultures (punk, goth, cottagecore, vsco girl, suburban dad, tech bro, raver, lgbt), have “aesthetics” that affect huge cross-sections of people’s lives from fashion, interests, to purchases doesn’t make them go away, it only lowers your own predictive power.
  - dTal 4y ago
    It helps make them go away, over time, in the same way that refusing to use group statistics to make judgements about individuals (at a cost to your own predictive power) helps redress the inequalities that led to differences in groups in the first place.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      Ohh don't get me wrong, I strongly agree with this. But I think it's okay to take the blinders off to answer "why do these seemingly unrelated groups of people not buy hybrid cars?" I really think the distinction is whether you look at these labels in good faith, care, attention to their history, and always through the lens of intersectionalism.
- cafard 4y ago
  If there were no discernible conservative/liberal divide, what reason would the National Review (or The New Republic or The Nation or...) have for existing? And this sort of piece requires no research and fills space.
Smeevy 4y ago
I've been driving a Prius in one model or another since 2004. It's just a car and has no discernible opinions other than the mileage readout telling me that I'm hitting the gas pedal too much.

11 points by WheelsAtLarge 4y ago

In London, a Toyota Prius is almost always a minicab - a taxi that is booked over the phone and not hailed on the street. There's nothing liberal, or Conservative about it, just commercial. And the driver is usually an immigrant, and I suspect, not the vehicle owner.

leoedin 4y ago
I wanted to buy a prius - great fuel economy, practical storage, reliable powertrain - but the prospect of drunk people trying to get into your car at every junction when you drive through the city at night put me right off.
- entropicgravity 4y ago
  Bought a Prius five years and it's been a great buy as a transportation appliance. It can get up to 1200 km/42L tank if you're just cruising at 90kph. Nobody here in Western Canada either wants to climb in to it or thinks its a car that a conservative (in the MAGA sense) would want to be found dead in.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
  I think you're describing a tipping point - where the association is so strong that it inhibits other uses. The association in this case is "a Prius is a minicab" - which seems to be mostly true in London. I'm sure it's a practical vehicle, since the choice of minicab vehicle is necessarily a very practical one, driven by factors such as Return on Investment, carrying capacity, and finding a vehicle that one can comfortably spend double-digit hours per day inside. But now, we don't want one since it's going to be assumed to be a minicab.
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    Mercedes C class in black - 9/10 I see on the road have a taxi licence sticker in the window. Practical, cheap(ish) etc however, wouldnt want to be assumed to be an uber driver. Tesla Model 3, heading in the the same direction as well.
cafard 4y ago
There are a lot of Prius cabs in Washington, DC. There are also a fair number in private hands.

csb6 4y ago

The Prius is a reliable car that gets good gas mileage. Why can’t we just leave it at that? I’ve noticed that there is a part of the culture war where certain consumer goods are aesthetically “liberal” and others are aesthetically “conservative”, not based on the running of the companies that make them, but on some loose association or fad (e.g. Goya beans). They are just products - buying them or not buying them based on abstract political associations doesn’t do anything. It is a way to feel like you are taking political action when in reality you are just consuming things.

benj111 4y ago
Because cars are status symbols. The car you drive says something deep and meaningful about you. If you drive a BMW or Audi you are successful and everyone understands that. If you drive a Prius you're a tree hugger and if you drive anything cheap you're a failure in life that obviously can't afford anything better. (Sarcasm btw)
Barrin92 4y ago
>when in reality you are just consuming things. nope, in reality a lot of consumption is implicitly political or cultural, it's just that a lot of people aren't used to looking at things that way because you swim in it like a fish in water. Pay attention to how things are advertised. Autonomy for trucks, freedom for cigarettes (formerly, now nasty cancer images on the package), happy animals and low carbon footprints for vegan beans, clean air and environmental protection for electric cars, patriotism for the newest Top Gun movie, happy diverse people in the newest Millennial Netflix show, and so on. Short of toilet paper a lot of modern consumption is about symbolic exchange, what you signal by consuming. I recommend William Gibson's Blue Ant series, he had a good eye for this many years ago.
- GuB-42 4y ago
  I think it is backwards. "Conservative" and "Liberal" are just labels, used in the context of traditional two party politics, and it is mostly a result of what happens naturally when you split the population into two similar sized groups based on their political ideas. One candidate will target "liberals", the other "conservatives". The definition isn't fixed, conservative ideas become liberal and vice versa all the time in order to maintain the roughly half/half two party system. There is no conspiracy here, it is emergent behavior that is seen in most democracies. There are similar phenomena in marketing, which is not surprising since politics and marketing are essentially the same thing, but it doesn't mean the categories are the same. The Prius is not a "conservative", "woman", "white", "middle-aged" or whatever automobile, though there may be some correlations. In reality it is an automobile for Prius customers, and what Prius marketing thinks their potential customers are.

Tildey 4y ago

The ability some people have to make everything political never ceases to amaze me. It's a conservative car because you can checks notes fit a wheelchair in the back? It's simply an appliance. It's no more political than a toaster. Maybe more liberals like toast, but that doesn't make the toaster liberal.

Spivak 4y ago
Choosing to not recognize that political labels, like all subcultures (punk, goth, cottagecore, vsco girl, suburban dad, tech bro, raver, lgbt), have “aesthetics” that affect huge cross-sections of people’s lives from fashion, interests, to purchases doesn’t make them go away, it only lowers your own predictive power.
- dTal 4y ago
  It helps make them go away, over time, in the same way that refusing to use group statistics to make judgements about individuals (at a cost to your own predictive power) helps redress the inequalities that led to differences in groups in the first place.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Ohh don't get me wrong, I strongly agree with this. But I think it's okay to take the blinders off to answer "why do these seemingly unrelated groups of people not buy hybrid cars?" I really think the distinction is whether you look at these labels in good faith, care, attention to their history, and always through the lens of intersectionalism.
cafard 4y ago
If there were no discernible conservative/liberal divide, what reason would the National Review (or The New Republic or The Nation or...) have for existing? And this sort of piece requires no research and fills space.

Smeevy 4y ago

I've been driving a Prius in one model or another since 2004. It's just a car and has no discernible opinions other than the mileage readout telling me that I'm hitting the gas pedal too much.