thats all nice with the safety and techiness - but explain me something. I saw a lot of qingqi ricksha in Karachi when I was there - it was being used as a bus and the rearmost passengers legs were being employed as its crush zone in case of accidents, The traffic control and ministry of transport etc all are passing it for road worthiness, so how do you compare that.
I came to the conclusion that because traffic never exceeds an average of 15 km/h any crash that happens will actually never use such techno gizmos to save a person anyway - It maybe wrong.
now speaking of Prius, I have a weighted opinion against it, not in general but actually against it in Pakistan only. The problem is that firstly its not a regular car - its not a regular build. Its a pretty fancy unit and with a bunch of nuances thrown in to the mix. I have been contacted about 300 times till today just from Karachi for parts, support and also some tech assistance for Prius. 98% of them went into mental shock after knowing what it would cost. A number of them were asking for the headlamps that were stolen from their cars, a few asked for the inverter itself as they bought it with non-maintained coolant and promptly filled it with well water and corroded the pump and cooling jackets.
Then there were the questions of "zipping" sound from the gearbox and also burnt out ATF and sudden drive failure, All which point to a universal repair of "breaking down the trans and repairing it" - there is ONE huge problem with that, Toyota does not sell parts for it, they sell the whole trans assembled as a unit for replacement.
The owners got a real choking feeling of having to survive on eggs n roti for the next month - as they now have to "import" a fully functional and tested transmission.
Forget the battery packs - the car will run with them fully flat too, the engine will keep on running the car, Im just mentioning the tip of the iceberg.
Another bunch of calls was for interior parts and assemblies after the cars had been half submerged in rain water in Karachi, the shifter, the pedal sensor, the dash cluster, the battery bank, the inverter wiring, the engine wiring, the key unit and the powered windows were all crusted and corroded to scrap. The car was reduced to rubble as the repair costs in total was reaching 1 million PKR. - Poor owners only drove it for a mere 10,000~12,000 kms in a year.
Now coming to body parts - just like it was mentioned you cannot buy the little finishing items (bumper clips, wiring clips, push plugs, rubber seals, new locks) brand new from Toyota - you are left to rummage for parts in the scrap, its not entertaining unless you have a dedicated day in your week schedule to visit scrapyards and buy spare parts for future use.
All of the above is primary - the secondary problems are then "tech support" or mechanics who are following "book" repairs. Not meray ustaad ka andaaza with worn out sloppy tools made of chinesium metal.