What is combined fuel economy of PHV Prius WITHOUT plugging-in at all?

Great point. The existing braking is ok but certainly it's easy to regularly hit friction brakes, which is wasted energy.

 

well yesterday i saw a charging station on the parking lot of a supermarket nearby here in graz/austria.
things are changing definetly

 

In the US most new government buildings must follow LEED guidelines. (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)

One possible LEED credit is charging stations.
LEED® Credit SS-4.3: Alternative Transportation ­ Alternative Fuel Vehicles

Expect to see more charging stations near new government buildings in the US.

As employers realize that employees with no charger at home, who are charging their electric car at work, can't go home until it is fully charged, expect employee parking lots to begin to have the wimpiest chargers ever made. [/evil HR Director]

 

"Using the on-board 3.3 kW charger and 7.5 m (25 ft) cable included by Nissan, the Leaf can be fully recharged from empty in under 20 hours from a standard household outlet (120 volt, 15 amp breaker, 12 amp maximum allowable draw, 1.4 kW)" - Nissan Leaf - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

All I am saying, do not expect the 220 v charging station to be installed at work, you could go home in 8 hours.

 

HAHAHA, that's great... and will totally happen (no joke).

 

Highway to me is 70+, how fast were you doing?

 

I imagine if anything that would be better for the battery because it would not be getting a highly charged state and also less watts going through it overall (since you're not using it as sole motivation for vehicle for first several miles). Seems a terrible waste of money, though to pay that and not bother plugging it in.

 

This is something that I've believed when I heard about the plug-in, that it would be more a hassle to most people. A lot of dealers and techno-philies I talk to compare it to plugging in a cel-phone "when you go to bed at night."

...but that's like plugging in a 3000 pound cel-phone that requires the juice of 4 refrigerators (or whichever). Most people are accustomed to just parking their car and being done with it.

 

Yeah. First, I plug my cell in every 2-3 days and second, it's after I'm already in the house and requires a couple of steps. It's not while carrying stuff out of the car over and over. I don't want to make it sound like plugging in a car is the greatest toil of one's life, though, but depending on where the plug is and how tight the garage is (ours is tight) it could be a little of a pain.

 

Let's say you drive 20 miles each way to work everyday. In a Volt you do the commute come home and MUST plug in if you want to run on electric the next day. In a PHEV Prius you do the commute and you use you 13-mile range plus some gas, you come home and MUST plug in if you want to use electric the next day.

I don't see how it is any more or less convenient...unless you travel somewhere in between 13 and 20 miles per day and you want to charge your Volt only on every other day, for example.

If you had a car with a real battery range of 100-200 miles then I could see how you might want to only charge it once every few days (assuming your daily commute was only 20 miles or so). But then, it seems to me that you really just have a battery that is too big, too costly and too heavy for your needs. If the battery was as small and light and cheap as a gas tank it wouldn't make much difference.

3PriusMike

 

Don't forget PHV Prius uses 40% less electricity per mile than the Volt.

 

I'm not wild about Toyota's approach to the PHV thing (too little, too expensive, too late) BUT, I think it's unfair to characterize it as plugging 4 refrigerators into your house. Yeah, it''s gonna draw more than a call phone, but not 4 refrigerators worth.
The 10 mile EV range would actually work well for me, especially since I have exterior power both at home and at work, and my drive to work is less than 10 miles. Unfortunately, the numbers I'm seeing suggest that the PHV upcharge (no pun intended) will not be economically viable, even for me. The fact that I use so little gas now, makes a regular Prius (Prius Classic?) more of an economic win.
Other than being able to tell your buddies that "I'm not only green, but I'm really, REALLY green!" It's just not a game-changer yet. Maybe somebody out there has a different take on the math, but that's where I'm at right now.....with gas @ $2.80 per.

If I buy a personal Prius, it's gonna have to be a G3-II......for now anyway.

 

You're right. Either Gas has to hit something like $10/gallon or Toyota has to shock us with a $900 cost for plug-in or something else "preposterous", otherwise it's just a gadget for gadget's sake; it's not fiscally sound.

 

That was always their reason for not rushing to PHEV, with the regular Prius being so efficient it doesn't make financial sense unless
gas gets crazy high or battery costs drop crazy low. Nevertheless, I'd still love to have a PHEV Prius.

 

Without the official price or the EPA numbers to compare, it would be anyone's guess right now. Remember, PHV Prius should qualify for $2,917 tax credit.

The federal tax credit goes by the size (capacity) of the battery, not the EV miles that displace gasoline miles. Therefore, there is no incentive to make a plugin car that is efficient on the battery. Let's take a look at the Volt for example, it uses 40% more electricity per mile than the PHV Prius.

The way I see it, PHV Prius will be the only plugin car that does not have compromises. Leaf has the range limitation but it should work for many people. Volt gave up one interior seat, half the cargo volume, 37 MPG without the plug, sub-standard emission and a very high price tag.

If you consider all the compromises (or the lack of), PHV Prius is the only real plausible solution for the next decade. One step at a time... we shall displace (gas with electricity) before we can replace it entirely. The battery cost needs to come down. Battery reliability needs to become a true automotive grade -- sorry, 8 years / 100k miles does not cut it.

It'll be interesting to see if the so called "game changer" will turn out to be a "lane changer" that leads to the rough road. If the realistic solution is too little, too expensive, too late, you must be living on the fast lane.

There is a reason Toyota is not "beta testing" PHV Prius in the public hand. They have the luxury to, since they don't need to play 13 years catchup. Toyota has been testing plugins for 4 years and there is one more year to go. They have gone through two generations of Prius prototypes using both NiMH and Lithium batteries.

They are trying to understand how we use the plug (when we do), what really makes sense in the real world and what gives the most bang to our buck. They make sure there is "value-add" to the end consumers while they have the business case. I trust Toyota to come up with the win-win-win situation for us, environment and themselves.

I think I am going to stop because I think I am starting to sound like a Toyota fanboy hahaha. If anybody wants to address my points, please do it constructively.

 

You could have made both of these trips without using any gas in a Leaf.