Welcome back to the official “family friendly car review” by Nick Shell, the daddy blogger of Parents.com’s The Dadabase. On the side, I review cars.

This week’s featured vehicle is the 2014 Toyota Prius.

Let me go ahead and address the elephant in the car showroom:

Yes, I am a vegan and I am married to someone from California. By default, I realize that pretty much automatically means I have to like a Prius.

But… the thing is, how can anyone not love a car that averages 50 miles a gallon!

That’s right: 51 highway, 48 city, and 50 combined. (The tank holds 11.9 gallons of fuel.)

We drove the Prius from Nashville to Atlanta and back on the same tank of gas. That made the road trip so much more enjoyable for a dad who is super “budget conscious.”

Just for the record, I am super serious when it comes to saving money.  In our household, we have no smart phones, no cable or satellite TV, and our electronics are so old they are laughable.

So for me, one of the most important things about a vehicle is how much I save on gas.

As I’ve been doing these reviews since September, something I have observed is that, loosely, for every mile per a gallon better one vehicle gets, it saves about $200 per year in fuel costs.

In theory, if your vehicle gets 20 mpg, compared to your friend’s vehicle that gets 21, your friend would spend $200 more in gas in the year 2014.

So imagine a car that gets 50 mpg! That’s a lot of money saved. In a year’s time, that’s $1,100 compared to the average new vehicle.

As for my 3 and a half year-old son’s favorite part of the 2014 Toyota Prius, he proclaimed: “Daddy, the thing I like about this car the most that I can see out the windows!”

(It’s interesting that I never prompt him to give his opinion; he just automatically gives me his imput within the first 5 minutes of the drive!)

In closing, I personally am a huge fan of the Prius. But then again, as a vegan married to a California girl, I’m supposed to think that, right?

Decide for yourself. Here are the fuel facts, courtesy of fueleconomy.gov: