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It's not that there's anything wrong with the Prius's transmission, it's that with highly efficient vehicles, any losses are relatively much larger. Consider my Insight vs an F150 when turning on the A/C.
Insight - 100mpg @ 50mh
F150 - 20mpg @ 50mph
Convert that to L/100km:
Insight = 2.35L/100km
F150 = 11.75L/100km
Now, let's say running A/C uses about 0.8L/100KM in both vehicles (which is probably close and it's a nice round number).
Insight = 2.35 + 0.8 = 3.15L/100km = 75mpg
F150 = 11.75 + 0.8 = 12.55L/100km = 18.75mpg
So, the F150 loses 1.25mpg running A/C and the Insight loses 25mpg. Ultimately the "loss" and additional fuel cost is the same for both, but proportionally it's much larger in the more efficient car. The same applies to wet roads, headwinds and all sorts of other things that practically disappear into background noise in huge, inefficient vehicles, especially when using a poor metric like miles per gallon.
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