Too well done for me to believe it's real.

I'm willing to count that as a bus.

I have actually seen one IRL. There was a local shop that worked exclusively on Prius' and they had made a stretch Prius similar to the picture.

It looks like a Gen 2 Prius, quite accurate for my untrained eye. Maybe AI is already advanced enough to get a specific model right, I don't follow that trend to know that well enough. Could also be a simple Photoshop or a funny Panorama shot coincidence.

This is getting almost as annoying as the slop

Pretty sure this is photoshopped. There isn’t a Prius that has an uneven window like that middle one.

Stretched limousines exist by this very method. I'm Australian but the concept wasn't started here. https://www.belle.net.au/building-a-stretch-limousine/

Edit:

We do know of limousines that have been shipped back to the USA for failing to meet Australian standards.

I'd say it's easier in many American states.

No, it's almost certainly not legal. However it's plausible that he just registers it as one of the 2 destroyed cars. It's still "a prius" and could probably slide under the radar.

There are companies that do this legally for limmos. I don't know how easy it is for "some guy with some tools" to do it legally.

It's up to the states to regulate, and states don't usually bother. It's ended in tragedy before, I can't find a follow-up story so I guess nothing was actually done in response to the tragedy in the article? Seems like a very American response.