Toyota Prius c: 53 MPG city / 46 MPG Hwy; Under $19,000

^^ right. He also assumes similar vehicle longevity, long lasting battery, similar depreciation ...

A long list of nice person umptions.

 

Obviously not. The Prius will operate as a combined heat and power plant in the cold, the Volt will spend additional energy on cabin heating.

This has been explained to EV advocates so many times ofver the past 3 years, it really is past time to get it. That is, if you want to retain a semblance of having an informed discussion rather than throwing out BS for spin or entertainment.

 

Well, since adding PEV adds to the electricity use (particularly off-peak and part-peak) it depends a great deal on the baseline. The baseline varies significantly with location.

EDIT: however, offsetting any reduction in charging cost using TOU is an increase in cost of peak electricity and possibly increased metering costs.

 

Already reached the point of personal attack? Unlike you, I am proud to say I am passionate about the synergy drive in my Prius. Any reason why you aren't driving a Volt? :cheer2:

Let's wait for the real-world data. Electricity consumption (Wh/mile) for Prius PHV will be lower than Leaf or Volt. The reasons are simple. EV miles on Prius PHV will be 1) lower in speed 2) lower in power. :rockon:

It is acceptable for the Leaf because it is a pure EV without a gas engine. All I am saying is, the patent avoidance design of the Volt is sub-optimal. :focus:

If you think about it, hybrid synergy drive in the Prius c is magic. It saves gas without substituting it with external energy. It saves gas simply by being efficient.

 

They were not my assumptions, and gas was probably higher when the guy developed the sheet. Yes it has a lot of assumptions, but any TCO over 8 years does. My only contribution/here as posting an updated excel sheet with data for the Prius C -- download it and add your own assumptions for your case.

The milage is all EPA or published numbers. I get much better milage in my Volt than EPA.. but one has to use a common basis.

Yeah you folks in CA pay a lot more per kwh. I pay an average of .06/kwh to charge, about half. the 11 is I think the US average.

 

Yep let's wait on data. The second part is a useless statement. If tested at lower speeds they all get better energy consumption, it will need to be tested under the same conditions (speed/load/acceleration). I don't know if we'll see an official EPA Wh/mile for a prius as then it won't be a blended PHEV.

 

I rarely use heating beyond very efficient heated seats and I'm perfectly comfortable. Most of my driving is during the day in sunny skies and the dark interior surfaces of my Volt warm up nicely on their own. On the few occasions when I drive at night it's often when I'm still grid connected and can do a pre-heat cycle before driving. Other times, it's part of a trip that is beyond my battery range so I use the gas engine to warm the car in hybrid mode anyway. Your concerns are not much of a problem for me. Obviously, issues around heating are more important in other areas of the country during the winter -- I live in the SF Bay Area now but previously lived in Montana -- but there are tens of millions in the U.S. who live in mild climate areas.

Folks in colder areas have to determine for themselves whether EVs or plugin cars generally will work for them. If they have cheap hydro power or other cleaner electricity then it may be an easy choice in the affirmative. Others will be better off driving a Prius or Fusion hybrid. What matters is the total annual energy consumption and the associated cost and pollution so if efficiency of heating is marginal in the winter but otherwise things are a win during the rest of the year then that's okay too. And, of course, the usual imported oil vs. domestic energy consideration.

 

The cheerleader smiley says a lot, bless your heart. I appologize if I insulted you in the previous post, I meant to only insult your ideas Maybe if you get shocked you won't post anti plug in talk on so many threads. The reason I don't have a volt is that my gen III prius is only 2 years old. If it was older I might trade for a plug in, but really I don't go trade in for the next shiney toy that quickly when they are this expensive. I do regret buying insteaed of taking a 3 year lease. I am not a volt fanboi by any means.

Well yes let's do that, instead of assuming that the prius phv blows everything away by a big margin. But until the number comes out, I want you to consider that under the same conditions all plug-ins will have higher efficiency. When the prius phv switches to gas, these other plug-ins will be less efficient, but most of us that like plug-ins would rather burn electrons than gas. The prius phv shines when these other plug-ins run out of battery power

Don't think the prius c drive train is magic, but it is a bigger heavier drivetrain that lets the car get better mileage. I think in your terms it must be not optimal
2001 Toyota Prius - Road Test - Car Reviews - Car and Driver

The prius c really does much better than the classic prius did. The price disadvantage to similar cars has dropped, while diference in efficiency has improved.

 

The point is, the conditions won't be the same. The gas engine filters out the unwanted miles in Prius PHV, leaving just the easy miles for EV. That's the ingenious part I was referring to.

 

I feel sorry for you. At least you are starting to come out of the closet. eep: :yo:

Prius c is highly tuned. Major components were redesigned and miniaturized just for it.

 

Conditions vary, especially when using both electricity and gasoline in a PHEV.

I live in California. Local regular gas is just under $3.70 a gallon. I use a Time-Of-Use billing rate and it's convenient for me to time most of my usage for off-peak consumption by charging the car at night, setting the delay timer on the dishwasher to clean off-peak, and doing laundry including using my electric dryer during off-peak daytime hours on the weekend. I just got my utility bill for last month. I paid the same amount for electricity 2 years ago before I got my Volt. This time around, I used an extra 100-150 kWh plus I was able to charge for free more often than usual because of the holiday driving pattern. I drove around 670 miles on battery/grid power and 230 on gas. Since the 100 kWh cost no more than 2 years ago it was effectively free to me. The 5.5 gallons of premium gas at $3.87 a gallon comes to $21.28 or a bit under $0.024 per mile of effective fuel cost. In California. The TOU rate schedule is different in the Summer but my overall effective cost of marginal electricity for charging my car works out on an annual basis to about $0.10 per kWh or $0.03 per mile for me.

Assuming no free public or work charging for the moment and the above costs for electricity and gasoline, it cost me $0.055 per mile in combined fuel costs since I started driving the Volt just over a year ago ($294 for electricity covering 9,800 miles and $597 for 6,477 miles on gas). At 46 mpg in my 2004 Prius would have been $0.08 per mile or at 50 mpg in a newer Prius it might be $0.073 per mile. In reality, I often find free charging now and may get free or cheap charging at work in the future. Also, I drove more expensive gasoline road trip miles this past year than I expect to in future years. I'll also be saving money on oil changes since I'll only be doing them at the recommended interval of once every 2 years for my driving pattern.

 

well we do not have off-peak, rate is the same $0.15.

With respect to charging public charging isn't going to be free forever. And when number of PHEV/EV increases you may find it non-available, as it takes hours to charge.

IMHO if you are using cost as listed above as Volt justification, you are missing the elephant in the room: depreciation. Which is ~$0.20 per mile. Add tires, insurance, maintenance and you see the cost of fueling disappear in background. Zuma or any inexpensive scooter/motorcycle would be alot cheaper good luck

 

There are large local and regional difference that someone should take into account to adjust any spread sheet like this.

I don't thnk any plug in will stand up to true tco scrutiny. That is unless you are in one of those places with large state or local subsidies. People are going to buy them because they want them. The lower fueling cost does make it partially the way to parity with a used econobox. A volt or leaf isn't even that huge of a step up from a used gen II prius But, I'll bet the owners like the new car better. Driving back from lunch, I was at a light with a tesla ("NO CO2" plates), a volt, and a gen II prius. I'll bet that gen II has the lowest TCO, and the tesla driver just don't care.

The prius c on the other hand, with its low fuel consumption often will work out to a lower tco, than a new econobox for many That zuma is still going to beat it though

 

Retiring the old inefficient coal plants and replacing them with the more efficient combined cycle plants would result in cleaner grid.

PHEV10 and PHEV20 are the power-split blended plugin hybrids but PHEV20 and PHEV30 are series plugin hybrids.

The HEV they used to compare is rated (2008 EPA adjusted) 45 MPG city and 39 MPG highway, well short of Prius 51/48 or Prius c 53/46.

Yes, it is a simulation with projected fuel mixes with assumptions. The report came out before the first Volt was sold. I think DOE would have the best data to come up with the most accurate assumptions.

Ok, so 35 minutes cruising at 65 MPH. 25 minutes at 75 MPH. 15 minutes at 85 MPH.

And... 10 hours to recharge. We wonder why Prius PHV, Ford Energi and Honda Accord PHV are not designed to go above 62 MPH with the battery.

 

I assume all these cars can recharge at 240V at 15-16A as well as the Volt and LEAF. The Ford will also charge at 240V at 30-32A. Even at 120V at 12A many people could get enough charge during 8 hours at work to drive home gas-free on the highway for 20-30 minutes given a large enough battery.

Given the sustained power output capabilities of typical Lithium automotive batteries, lifetime cycling stresses, and the total usable storage capacities of these cars it makes perfectly good sense to have them operate with a clutch-free power-split design and the 60-something EV speed limitations.

Once the battery capacity gets up to 16 kWh or so like the Volt and power output at 1-2C matches the continuous kW needed for highway driving it starts making sense to lift some of those limitations so cold starting the gas engine can be avoided and gas consumption eliminated for routine daily commutes. Larger battery capacities also eliminate the need for daytime charging for many commuters.

 

i had nice conversation with austin on Prius c... i dont know what PHEVs and EVs have been doing in this thready for past 50 posts.. i am sure there are more suitable threads for that.

 

I think it started because people were talking about the C being a big threat to the Volt sales an spiraled out of control from there.

Reporting back on that topic, I though people here might find it interesting my Volt just help sell a C. I'm known on campus because of the Volt and I just sold a fellow faculty member on the Prius C. She approached me about the volt, we got to talking about her needs (they walk to work and the car is for weekend trips to Denver, Boulder and lots of long-trips in the summer. I showed her the numbers from the sheet I posted in this thread (adapted to her numbers of course), talked about why the Volt is great for me but not for her. They are not in a rush, but with their car pushing 140K miles have started thinking. I showed her that the regular prius might be better MPG for their family (as they do way more long-distance HWY miles which is why the Volt did not work for them). She liked the looks of the C much more than the regular prius. At the price point and after our discussion she was sold on the C.

But realistically a volt or PiP was probably a bit of a stretch (too expensive) for them anyhow. She wanted to be green but knew a BEV would not make it. From my long discussion with her I think the most important aspect of the C will be the reduced cost and improved styling allowing people that want to go green get there easier ($$) and younger folks that like how it looks.

 

Indeed... 40k car cant be compared to 19k car. I dont think anyone in their right mind might even cross-shop the two...Leaf and Prius PHEV yes... Prius c no.

Also, Volt sales are so tiny in the general landscape, even among hybrids they are tiny.

 

Some just can't help beating their drums.

Since I may be guilty of it too, here is my view on the c.
I was hoping a city rating near the gen2's old EPA number of 60mpg. I think I may have been happy with 55 city. I could probably best my gen2 numbers with c, but it comes down how much the greater aero drag of the c plays out on the highway portion of my commute. Of course, if the c can best the gen2's seat comfort, a higher fuel consumption can be tolerated.

It may of been unintential, but Toyota did give the impression of greater fuel economy. If lower price point was the main goal, they didn't need to talk about fuel economy. People would have still have gotten excited. The fuel economy talk was just to add gas to the fire, and the lower than expected numbers is a let down.

Technically it did improve. At Prius levels, 2mpg isn't much. It's only 3.9%. In the city. Just has people don't drive 100% on the highway, they don't drive city 100% of the time either. Combined has been stressed here as the real metric, and the c doesn't deliver in that regard.

With a step back, the c isn't going to be the final nail in the Insight2 coffin. For the typical driver, the Insight returns better than EPA and the Prius less than (who engineered for the test here?). Fuelly users report a little over 45 mpg to the Insight's 41 combined. The gen3 is a little over 47 to its 50 rating.

Likewise the Prius c will likely return less than combined ratings for the typical driver. After the initial craze, c and Insight sales would ordinarily be split. At the same price point, the gen3 offers more than the Civic hybrid. The c just doesn't appear to have as wide a gap over the Insight. We are still waiting on the final pricing and specs, but I think the two will cost the same. Which means the c will face more competion from the gen3.

If the Insight dies, it will be because of Honda's bungling of customer support over their battery problems, and the company's recent direction, not the Prius c or Toyota.

 

Also, you are disappointed on Prius c specs, but then expect it to sell same as Insight which gets 12 MPG less in the city?

that makes sense... somewhere, somehow.