A loyal reader down under spotted something amusing pulling into his service bay, a Prius wearing a "12 VOLT" license plate. Just as amusing is the owner's "other" car.
We received the following photos along with an e-mail from Aussie reader TheDanMan:
Hey Jalopniks,
Love your work and your recent articles on Prius, Personalised plates, and Australia have been, well, awesome.
Thought these photos of a customer’s car getting serviced at our dealership recently perfectly captured the zeitgeist. As a Toyota salesperson (I know, I know) we are used to having a wide variety of customers from every socio-economic background, but the Prius customers are really special.
This plate cost the customer $2395.00. Convert that to American!
His other vehicle is a 4.7v8 Land cruiser GXL.
Regards
We'd like to point out $2395.00 AUD converts to roughly $1540.84 USD at current exchange rates. Fuel prices down under at the moment are hovering around $1.10 AUD a liter (about $2.61 a gallon US), which means if this thrifty Prius owner had forgone the plate in favor of gas, he'd have gotten 590 gallons of gasoline and driven 26,550 miles.
Or maybe we're thinking about this the wrong way. Maybe the owner specifically went out and lightened his wallet so he couldn't drive all those miles, burning all that fuel, and emitting all that pollution. Ah, that sounds more like it, he's not facetious, he's green! Brush aside the fact that the only place 12 volts exists on the Prius is in the drivers mind (and the cigarette lighter). (Hat tip to TheDanMan!)