Re: Prius?
Do you own a Prius? I do... (it will be 4 years next month).
I can't speak to all of the carbon bollox, I really don't care about that. What I do care about is "does the Prius do what it says it will do"? My answer is: yes it does.
It gets 50+ MPG (that miles per gallon for you metric types).
re: reliabilty, so far, no problems (complexity not-withstanding).
re: only gets good mileage under 30 MPH (that's miles per hour for you metric types). that's complete bullshit. My daily commute is 32 miles ( 51.5 km) each way over rolling hills at 65 MPH almost the entire trip. I typically get 50.5 MPG (measured tank-to-tank fillup) for 9 months out of the year, the other 3 months I get less due the very cold temps during winter.
I once worked at a company (before I owned the Prius) that was working on extending the Prius' pure electric range and an engineer started complaining about how it doesn't really use the battery that much and I told him: "I really don't care how the Prius gets its mileage numbers - as long as it does. There could be a hamster in the engine compartment, for all I care".
FYI, the Prius' real-time fuel consumption display is overly optimistic by about 5%. To achieve a true 50 MPG, the gauge must be reading about 52.5 MPG (just in case you are ever riding in one and looking at it).
re: Diesel: I would love to have the high MPG diesels here, but at the time (2010), they didn't pass EPA tests and weren't allowed into the country - also the winter's here make that a little bit tougher to deal with. The Prius was a reasonable alternative. My next vehicle: maybe a nice diesel.