Official Toyota Prius PHEV thread

Driving 24 miles at 40 mph is probably not very common. I went from a 25 mile one way to commute to skmething about 4 miles. Havent charged my Leaf in 3 days and am at about a 40% charge. At this rate it will take forecer to get to 20000 miles. I have around 16500 now

DaveinOlyWA said:

Driving 24 miles at 40 mph is probably not very common. I went from a 25 mile one way to commute to skmething about 4 miles. Havent charged my Leaf in 3 days and am at about a 40% charge. At this rate it will take forecer to get to 20000 miles. I have around 16500 now

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How about a 15 mile 1 way commute at an average speed of 17MPH? Thats what I face almost every day, driving into downtown Boston, usually takes 50 minutes or more to go that 15 miles.

mitch672 said:

How about a 15 mile 1 way commute at an average speed of 17MPH? Thats what I face almost every day, driving into downtown Boston, usually takes 50 minutes or more to go that 15 miles.

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It has been years since I have been to Boston, but I seem to remember a Subway system that worked fairly well.

http://www.mbta.com/schedules_and_maps/subway/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

KJD said:

It has been years since I have been to Boston, but I seem to remember a Subway system that worked fairly

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No subway out in the suburbs, the commuter rail is a joke, it takes even longer by the time you park, wait for a train, squeeze yourself onto a train with no seats, and barley any standing room. I know, I did it or years.
Perhaps of should stick to commenting on things you have current knowledge about.

mitch672 said:

KJD said:

It has been years since I have been to Boston, but I seem to remember a Subway system that worked fairly

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No subway out in the suburbs, the commuter rail is a joke.
Perhaps of should stick to commenting on things you have current knowledge about.

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OK I will. Enjoy your drive tomorrow.

mitch672 said:

You have a good ole time with your Mormon buddies as well

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This one tops it all. You just made it onto my ignore list.

DrInnovation said:

The real problem with the PiP is that the battery is so small its only having a small impact. The PiPs on fuelly are averaging 69mpg overall, including the kWh.

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There are really only three plug-in choices in America: Leaf, Volt, and PiP. For me, the range of Leaf is unusable and I need to seat five, so PiP is the only plug-in I could purchase.

My commute is over 80 miles round trip, and my employer does not have charging facilities. There's no way I could commute in a Leaf. PiP mileage is highly variable, ranging from 50 MPG to ~200, depending on range, so it's difficult to put in a box. Many people get over 100 MPG with them.

The important thing is this: Every plug-in vehicle sold is moving the ball forward. With each sale, there's more justification for public charging and plug-ins gain more momentum. The auto industry is watching the numbers closely, the more that get sold, the better. We are all on the same team.

An average speed of 17MPH is very different than a constant speed of 40MPH, however. I get my worst mileage in the Leaf when I am forced to do stop and go at slow speeds...

mitch672 said:

DaveinOlyWA said:

Driving 24 miles at 40 mph is probably not very common. I went from a 25 mile one way to commute to skmething about 4 miles. Havent charged my Leaf in 3 days and am at about a 40% charge. At this rate it will take forecer to get to 20000 miles. I have around 16500 now

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How about a 15 mile 1 way commute at an average speed of 17MPH? Thats what I face almost every day, driving into downtown Boston, usually takes 50 minutes or more to go that 15 miles.

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Maybe it was a typo and he meant moron... :lol:

I AM going to see The Book of Mormon in a few weeks though...

Stoaty said:

mitch672 said:

You have a good ole time with your Mormon buddies as well

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This one tops it all. You just made it onto my ignore list.

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Generally mediocre review of the PiP by John Voelcker at Green Car Reports:

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1079832_2012-toyota-prius-plug-in-hybrid-is-it-an-electric-car-or-not" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

yeah, its definitely weaksauce as an 'electric' vehicle.

having said that i've got 88mpg lifetime. i think i've filled the tank 4 times since i took delivery of the car in late march. of course, i'm using it primarily for around-town; if i had to make long freeway trips i'm sure the average MPG would look a lot more like a regular prius. and as it turns out electricity costs so much here in northern cal that i'm not really saving any money. but together with the leaf we're almost completely off of gasoline and that's a great thing.

it *will* go up to 65mph on electric alone, but the point at which the gas motor kicks in is really dependent on how much torque you call for. around here there are some hills that i have to crawl up at 25mph to stay in electric mode

^^^
There are some pretty big incentives going on in some states for the PiP right now.

See http://www.buyatoyota.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and try putting in 95136 or 10027 zip codes. For example, for the NYC area, I see 0% APR for 60 months WITH $3,500 bonus cash. For Nor Cal, I see 0% APR and $1500 bonus cash (CA CVRP is another $1500 and one can get the green HOV lane stickers).

Once you subtract out the Federal tax credit and any state incentives, it becomes not much more than a comparably equipped regular Prius which ineligible for Federal tax credit, CVRP and any CA HOV stickers.

astrorob said:

yeah, its definitely weaksauce as an 'electric' vehicle.

having said that i've got 88mpg lifetime. i think i've filled the tank 4 times since i took delivery of the car in late march. of course, i'm using it primarily for around-town; if i had to make long freeway trips i'm sure the average MPG would look a lot more like a regular prius. and as it turns out electricity costs so much here in northern cal that i'm not really saving any money. but together with the leaf we're almost completely off of gasoline and that's a great thing.

it *will* go up to 65mph on electric alone, but the point at which the gas motor kicks in is really dependent on how much torque you call for. around here there are some hills that i have to crawl up at 25mph to stay in electric mode

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I'm around 102MPG, but I plug in at home and at work, and 11 of the 15 mile 1 way commute is in EV.
I've filled up 10 times since mid April, 7424 miles total: http://www.fuelly.com/driver/mitch672/prius-plugin" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm waiting for the Model S, though it won't save much more than I already am with the PiP, just won't be burning any gas at all, but it's minimal at this point anyway.

A friend was going to buy a standard Prius package 3, with the $3500 Toyota incentive in MA, and beating the dealer up a bit (another $1,000 off), she bought it for about the same as a regular Prius, plus she'll get the $2,500 federal credit as well.

Not sure if this has been discussed as I don't follow this thread much, but it just occurred to me the other day that another reason why Toyota might've gone w/such a small battery size/short AER range is that the chances of someone driving and partly depleting or draining the li-ion battery (to the level that the car allows) is very high. So, it helps reduce the amount of time the car might sit in high temperatures w/high SoC, which is bad for the battery.

I'm not sure if the PiP will use any power by itself to run the AC to keep the battery temp down while parked. Can anyone w/a PiP chime in? Will it run the battery fans when not in READY mode? If there's no AC and it's just battery fans when off, then the battery temp can't get below ambient or cabin temps...

We just got a PiP as our second car, sending off our Honda Accord to our niece for a second life. It took me a bit to get the roof rack reconfigured and procure a compact spare but all is set now. We can go quite far in daily errands in all ev mode. We like it fine as our long distance car. Thanks very much to Paul Scott who walked with my spouse up the street from his Nissan dealership to Toyota dealership owned by same folks and smoothed the way with sales staff there. We called Paul to help us and he did!

Congratulations Kat !!
What an ideal situation - having a 50mpg (even in charge sustain mode) plug-in, and still being able to call it your "Gas Guzzler".

Cross-posted here and in the Volt thread.

Motor Trend does a comparison test of the 2012 Volt and PiP:

http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/alternative/1302_2012_chevrolet_volt_vs_toyota_prius_plug_in/viewall.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Summary: The Volt is for your right brain, the PiP for your left brain.

My housemate, who doesn't like to drive my Leaf at all but loves the Prius she has leased for three years, just put a deposit down on a 2013 PIP. Not because it's a plug-in, but because...it's currently cheaper to lease than the regular Prius II. We both have a commute that is about 21.5 miles each way; there are several possible routes to work, with me taking the medium to high speed route (also about a mile longer) and her taking a route that is 75% 30, 40 and 45MPH speed zones, with about 5 miles of highway driving at 60 as well. Her route runs through several small cities and ends up in a larger one, so she plans to use EV mode in the low speed zones, and Hybrid mode for the rest. It's going to be interesting seeing how well she does with MPG, because she's averaging 53MPG (year round average) with her Prius II now. I'm hoping for about 60MPG overall from the PIP. We will probably also share my EVSE, unless I can come up with a good, cheap outdoor L-1 unit for her. I think that Leafs and PIPs are like cats and dogs: as long as they reside in the same household, they can peacefully coexist. ;-)

I've mentioned in other threads how so few Leaf's are offered for sale in Canada.

Apparently it's even worse for the PiP.

There are no demo vehicles available and it can take six months for orders to be fulfilled.

After almost losing our chance at leasing a PIP due to a local dealership that took our deposit and promised a car, (knowing full well that they'd get none, I suspect, but wanting to lease or sell us a Prius II or III when the sale ended), we put another deposit on what may be the Last Green PHEV in the Northeast. We will hopefully be picking it up on Monday.