Leonardo DiCaprio Buys Blake Lively a Prius

by China DeSpain August 22, 2011
Categories: Lifestyle, Transport
Tags: blake lively, leonardo dicaprio.

It may not be the Heart of the Ocean, but it gets better gas mileage.

Leonardo DiCaprio is well-known for his environmentalism, and now he’s getting girlfriend Blake Lively on board. The Daily Mail reports that the actor was none too happy that Lively was driving around L.A. in an eco-unfriendly Range Rover, so he bought her a brand new Toyota Prius.

DiCaprio has been a fan of the Prius for years, and was one of the first celebrities to drive one. He once described the car as, “a gasoline-electric midsize car that gets about 50 miles per gallon. We have the technology to make every car produced in America today just as clean, cheap and efficient.”

The Gossip Girl star’s new hybrid is a black model that retails for $40,000, and the 50 mpg fuel efficiency is a distinct improvement over the Range Rover’s gas-guzzling 20 mpgs.

Of course, Lively’s not the only one getting a new ride. Although DiCaprio’s been driving a Prius for years, he recently decided it was time for an upgrade. As we told you last week, DiCaprio is the first celeb to get his hands on the new Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid sports car, which if you’re interested, will run you about $100K. That is one hot, green couple!

About China DeSpain

China DeSpain is a San Antonio-based writer and blogger. She loves pop culture, animal rights, health and fitness, international travel, books and wigs. Follow China on Twitter: @ChinaDeSpain

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Bob

Well, she already has a Lexus SC430–not a Prius, but not a gas guzzler either. He should have told her to just drive the Lexus, and leave it at that.

And, for the record, the Prius actually gets around 65 MPG in mixed suburban driving–the type of driving that Blake and Leo are used to–according to the Jan 2010 issue of Road and Track, which did its own tests. So, the Prius gets close to 3X the MPG of your average midsize sedan.

I’m tired of all the bad press the Prius has been getting. It pretty much proved that a battery-electric could succeed in the marketplace, that customers by the millions would actually extra for a car that helped cut carbon emission. In order to prove this, Toyota had to take a loss on every vehicle for the first 5 or 6 years of production. In so doing, though, it launched a whole new industry, which is creating business for everyone, from Ford to GM to Nissan. Yet everyone still trashes the Prius. It would be like trashing the Model T, which was not the first car but pretty much singlehandedly launched the auto industry as we know it.

We should honor the Prius for being the car that started the eco-car industry as we know it. And we should thank Toyota for going out on a limb, losing money on a car they believed would never become more than a cult-hit.