Question about PIP battery longevity

If there are any gentle hills on your commute the range can be extended. I have 23 miles twice. Also, my car is approaching 5000 miles and my initial charges were in the 12 mile range, but now I'm getting a lot in the 15 mile range. I think the memory in both portions of the battery are improving. As for your other questions, I am not a prognosticator, however, I say go for it, the PIP is great ! Just from a fun angle, there's nothing better.

 

Those are good questions, and ones that have been asked before. Unfortunately, nobody seems to know the answer. The battery pack is warrantied for 10 years or 150K miles in states that have adopted California's emissions standards. That means if the pack fails within that timeframe, Toyota has to replace it. What isn't spelled out in the warranty booklet is at which point does degradation of the pack qualify as a failure for purposes of a warranty replacement. If the pack can allow the car to operate as a normal hybrid, but not have useful EV range (2 or 3 miles at best), that might not be enough for them to want to replace it. It's a gamble as to what will happen 5 or 10 years down the road. Some of us here obviously have taken that gamble.

 

Thats a tough call. If you are a patient person by nature then wait a year or two till the technology advances a little. (although who knows how much) You could end up with something that is better and hopefully cheaper.

If your not a patient person, buy buy buy!

I just purchased my car a week ago and I LOVE IT!!! So far I have about 240 miles on it. My gauge tells me that I am using ev mode 58% of the time and hv mode 42%. I hope to increase the ev percentage. I am averaging 138 mpg on the current tank of gas and I am honestly not even trying. The only thing I try to do is to keep it in ev. I will accelerate as fast as I want to as long as I stay in ev. It is everything I hoped for and more.

 

I regularly see 14 to 15 miles per charge on EV, and even 16 miles a couple of times. This is all in-town driving on surface streets, mostly limited to 45 mph max with a few stretches of 50 mph limits, and some minor elevation changes. The car learns your type of driving, and estimates your EV range accordingly. Mine usually indicates range of 14+ miles, well in excess of the advertised 11 mile EV range. I have noticed that if I do a lot of freeway driving, the estimate of EV range is lower for a couple of days until I get some continuous EV driving in again. Good luck, whatever you decide.

 

It takes a little more than 3 kWh to charge (~3.2 kWh) and there is a charging efficiency of ~85%, so the actual amount of battery charge is ~2.7 kWh and the battery goes from ~85% to ~25%.

 

I do a lot of freeway driving and have a lot of hills to deal with. My normal EV range is around 10 miles. It started out as 13.2, and slowly dropped to 10.3. I modified my use of the EV button and got it backup to 10.8. Then I went to the dealer and had it serviced. It dropped to 9.3 miles. It's now back up to 10 miles. My car has 10,000 miles on it. I'm not too worried about the battery pack.

 

The actual EV range of the battery pack is from 23.1% to 85%. The HV range is from around 15% to 23.1%. We assume 15% is the lowest the battery pack can get, but I don't think anyone has actually seen how low it can go. I've never gotten below 4 battery bars in HV mode.

The car charges slightly more efficiently at 240V versus 120V. One of these days I'll have to break out the clamp-on meter and measure the actual usage at the panel versus what the car is reporting as going into the battery pack.

 

even tho you usually keep your cars a long time, the tech is changing so rapidly, you may want to consider leasing. it will be hard to own one of these and worrying about battery longevity when something comes along with more range and knowledge of battery chemistry improves.

 

No-one knows for sure on the battery. Without a warrany on range or capacity (like the Volt has), it would make me worry about it too.

You articulated why not the Volt.. but have you considered waiting just a bit or a C-Max Energi? It is reported to have a longer EV range, higher max EV speed but still expected to have better than Volt MPG in CS mode. (Nothing official yet).

 

The PiPs battery is also actively air cooled. I don't know if the Leafs is, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't also actively air cooled since its so easy to do.

 

There's been a debate on MNL on whether there's even a fan to cool its batteries. Seems the answer is no (My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - Optimal Portion of Battery to Use for Longest Battery Life? and a newer post that I can't find).

 

Autotrader has several Mitsubishi i's for ~$22k, and you can buy a good used prius for ~$10k I understand. The i will cover your commute no problem at all, and you'll actually end up using it a lot for local trips (really it becomes your "primary" car) and the prius has great highway mileage for when you want to do trips, or just need to do more than ~60 miles in a day/carry five people/carry something big and bulky.

With the DOD toyota are using ~5,000 cycles or more seems realistic. With two per working day that will give you ten years use(with some reduced capacity). I wouldn't sweat it too much, you seem level headed enough to understand than even if at ten years age the car requires (or you find the capacity loss unacceptable) a new battery, a $3k investment would be worth it if you're keeping the vehicle for another five years. That $3k is obviously a guess, but as of today you can buy lifepo4 cells for $450/kwh or less. I suspect that if the PIP is very popular then aftermarket upgrades will also exist, so maybe at ten years you'll buy a 10kwh pack for $5k instead and get about 40 miles EV range. Although personally I expect the plugin version of gen4 to be better designed, packaged, specced, cheaper, and massively more popular, so if i were going to develop aftermarket replacement packs I would be waiting for that.

 

This first plug-in Prius will become quite enticing for enhancement as the system, since the system was designed deliver EV anyway and already has a charger & port. Just think what people will do when battery cost is a fraction of what it is now.

While driving, the battery-pack will draw up to 38 kW, then the engine will join in to provide some thrust and additional electricity. A larger battery could provide that additional electricity, as well as additional capacity.

This could result in unusually high resale value, even with lots of miles. The gas-engine is babied, not ever having to work hard. And the brushless electric-motors can last a remarkably long time.

 

who knows? in 4 or 5 years, we might be able to swap for 20 mile range batteries!

 

I vote for 40-50 mile range.

 

i'm in!