[tai]

First off, I have a 95 Prius and we love it, 85,000 miles. The car does fine on grades, but the engine is a small 4 cylinder supplimented by the electric motor, so on the steeper grades there is a fair amount of engine noise. Suggest you try to rent one for a day and drive it around. That's what we did and it sold us on the car. Enterprise here rents them (Austin, Tx) for about $25 per day. Good luck!