The generation 3 Toyota Prius hybrids were chosen by ebode to reflect their sustainable brand and help mitigate the rising cost of fuel for their sales agents and project managers.
“We looked into a number of options before settling on the Prius hybrids,” says ebode director Niel de Jong. “There is a lot of publicity at the moment around small fuel efficient diesel cars but their emissions ratings are nowhere near as low as those of the Toyota Prius. Also, diesel vehicles are not really helping us to move away from fossil fuel dependency, whereas Toyota’s hybrid system is clearly a step in the advancement of electric vehicle technologies. So, by supporting Toyota, we feel that ebode is, in a small way, helping with the research and development of full electric vehicles.”
ebode Managing Director Jette de Jong has also found that using the Toyota Prius cars has had a significant positive impact on their bottom line.
“Because we are the only housing company in New Zealand offering truly sustainable homes, we find that our team is covering a lot of the country – particularly in the south island where distances can be quite significant. As a company concerned with the entire life cycle of everything we do, we needed to look at our travel costs both environmentally and in terms of fuel consumption,” she says.
She continues, “I personally have also been pleasantly surprised at the performance of my Prius hybrid on the open road – it has plenty of power to climb hills and overtake, and we recently travelled from Auckland to Wellington in it on well under one tank of gas.”
Nelson ebode agent Val Swatridge agrees.
“I picked up my Gen 3 Toyota Prius from Christchurch and made the trip back to Nelson via the Lewis pass. After some of the lukewarm reviews I had read on the internet, I was expecting to find the performance a little sluggish, but boy are they wrong – my Prius just flew over the mountain pass. In fact, I had to keep an eye on my speed because the car is so quiet it was easy to creep up over the speed limit without even realizing – and all for under half the petrol cost too.”
The biggest challenge ebode faced in adopting the Toyota Prius hybrid electrics has been getting enough white ones.
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“It seems that a certain taxi company has been buying them all up and painting them green,” says Niel de Jong. “but I’m happy to see hybrid car technologies being adopted by more and more people here in New Zealand. In fact, other Prius drivers often wave at us when we are out on the road – we are rapt with our Toyota hybrid cars and feel they help reflect our commitment to a sustainable oil-less future.”
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