Why would you choose a Prius over a Chevy Volt?

Starting in 2013, the Volt's EPA battery range is 38 miles when the battery went from 16 kWh to 16.5. Since then they have increased the battery capacity again to 17.1 kWh in the presently selling 2015 model and also increased the usable percentage of the nominal battery capacity. But, they did not bother to update the window sticker. If they did, the EPA battery range of a 2015 Volt would probably be 41 miles or so. In nicer weather owners of 2015 Volts routinely get 45-50 miles and some get up to 55. In cold winter weather with heavy electric heater use you should expect as little as half the range of good weather driving.

Volt drivers (and Prius Plugin drivers) have the option of holding onto the battery charge level and forcing the car operate in hybrid gas burning mode. At temperatures under 15F (-9C) or so the Volt automatically cycles the gas engine on periodically to assist in cabin heating. The Prius Plugin has no electric cabin heating and always starts the engine when heating is requested.

The Volt's combined city/highway gas rating is 37 mpg but most gas engine use is on the highway on longer trips where the EPA rating is 40 mpg vs. 49 for the Prius Plugin.

Finally, the rear seats certainly do fold down to a near flat position. If they need to fold completely flat occasionally it is trivial to pull out and later replace the rear seat bottom cushions. Both the Volt and the Prius Plugin come without a spare tire but with electric tire inflation and leak goo kits. I used mine once and it worked.

The Volt requires very little maintenance. I've driven mine 103,000 miles (40,000 miles on the gas engine) in 4 years and only very recently got my second oil change. My original engine air filter is still clean and being used. A Prius Plugin wants to have its oil changed every 10,000 miles on the odometer so it would have had its tenth oil change by now.

That being said, the Prius Plugin (and other Prius models) are excellent cars with better hybrid mpg and better overall reliability records. According to multiple surveys by Consumer Reports, JD Power, and TrueDelta, the Volt has average overall reliability. The battery, gas engine, and transmission reliability is good but there were a few stumbles over the last 4 years with overly paranoid self-test checking and some problems with the electric heater modules in 2013 when they switched part suppliers. Most of those issues should be hashed out by now. My own car (one of the first cars off the assembly line) has had zero battery, engine or transmission problems and only a couple of generic trivial issues fixed under warranty soon after I got it.

The Volt outscores the Prius Plugin 85 to 69 on the Consumer Reports owner survey on the owner satisfaction rating -- basically "would you buy this car again?". The regular Prius scores 82. I interpret this as "driving electric is fun!" and Prius Plugin owners want more of it than they get. The Tesla Model S scores 98.

 

Sex is better in a Prius than a Volt. Yes, the Prius can get chicks.

 

I got my chick's attention with a sonic screwdriver... literally.

Our wedding date is set for next summer.

 

TMI.

 

now that's just burned into my brain.

 

Volt is a nice car, rough around the edges currently and a terrible business approach, but owners themselves have been quite happy with their lease/purchase.

Prius PHV owner satisfaction has been lower simply out of not having proper expectations. If you're hoping for an EV that switches over to gas after depletion, you will be disppointed. If you're hoping for an augmented Prius, delivering much higher MPG with EV driving at times, then you'll be quite pleased.

 

IF you get your hands on the VOLT brochure you find out that it is NOT all the the EPA claims it is. I attribute that to the desire to get GM working again so things were allowed in the numbers. In their own brochure beside one of the pictures it clearly states that the EV mode varies from 18 Miles- 25 miles on a charge ( on avg). It also states that the MPG on gas is 32.5MPG. The reason I know this is that "WE" very much wanted a Volt. We were looking at them as they recently opened a charging station near where my wife worked almost 40 miles away. She fell in love with the shape of the car and a couple of the colors, and well thought it would be neat to plug in and get "Free" transportation to work. We visited three different CHEVY dealers. The first one had a car- but no test drives as it "may be already reserved for a good customer of theirs"... MORONS- they left it where I could see it then implied I am NOT a good customer? The second one took us on a test drive, but he wanted NOTHING to do with going on the HWY with the volt he was riding beside me in. When he was asked, he told me their dealership did not allow it due to insurance concerns. HUH?... The third dealer we went to was the only one to have a brochure available, and he allowed us to take a ride by ourselves... it was OKAY... but a bit sluggish ( and my wife has a 2009 Prius we are used to). We went on the HWY with it... My wife looked through the brochure and caught the fine print on a page with a pretty Volt driving among the trees... LOL... SO apparently GM admits in their literature that the numbers are slightly off... but I do like the "Style and amenities" in the vehicle.... Not so fond of the price Tag on the ones we drove.

 

2012 model is EPA rated 35 miles EV and 37MPG combined gas only. Compare Side-by-Side Not sure where that brochure got those low numbers, but I know that many people average 35-40 miles on EV in their Volts.

 

Well I hope people do well on it.... BUT it is a CHEVY brochure handed out by a CHEVY dealer.... I doubt they got the info from anyone but a CHEVY corporate rep... at least I hope they didn't ask the FORD dude.... Find the dealers brochure for a 2014 and look at it... WE found it strange too. Honestly we only know one person here in the Ft Myers FL area that has a volt... and they were not doing as well as the EPA said they would with their EV mode... but again we took that to be possibly because they were driving like a race car.

2012 EPA rated... is not necessarily indicative of what people actually get. I am wondering HOW MANY people you know that own Volts, and are getting close to the 40miles? I am more impressed by actual use that people are getting than Made up stuff by the EPA... didn't a company recently get caught by mileage estimates?... KIA maybe?

Again, I hope people get what they pay for...

 

The people who I've met who own Volts seem genuinely happy with their purchases. the family next door to us has a Ford Fusion Energi and a '12 Prius and seems equally happy with the cars. Honestly, a few MPG doesn't appear to be something that most make a big deal out of - all the cars do roughly what they were advertised to do, and it looks like most owners are satisfied with that.

 

To me Volt is fantastic car for a comfortable commuter wheels to work and of course much EV miles, but limited space behind front seat.
Once you start talking about sometimes 4 passengers and possible cargo (family type use) that's where Prius is probably the more practical car.
Prius Liftback as base case.

 

Prius wins over the Volt in interior space and versatility use. Gas mileage is also better with the Prius. Handling, seems a little better with the Volt, but not by much. Reliability is better with the Prius than the Volt. Test drove both, Prius beats out the Volt.

DBCassidy

 

I thought the OP was looking for a new car....

Here's an updated side-by-side comparison with 2015 versions of the Volt, C-MAX Energi and Prius Plugin tossed in:

Compare Side-by-Side

 

Well that's total nonsense. You would have trouble getting 18 miles of EV range in the coldest part of winter with the electric heater running full blast. Most of the year in the OP's Vancouver, BC or most other places including your state of Indiana you could easily expect to get 40 miles of EV range or better. Are you sure this wasn't at a Ford dealer when looking at a C-MAX Energi plugin that has an EPA estimated EV range of 19 miles?

I personally get 40+ miles EV almost always and I have a 2011 Volt with 103,000 miles on it and an EPA estimated 35 miles of range because mine has a smaller battery pack than the new ones. When I do my daily 45.5 mile drive to work I usually go 55mph and often encounter at least some slower congested traffic. I almost always get all the way there without burning gas. Today was especially slow and I probably averaged 30 mph. I got to work with 8 miles of estimated remaining range so I could have gone 53 miles on my overnight battery charge. Usually I have 2-3 miles remaining.

I would LOVE to see this brochure that you picked up. Do you still have it? If so, please take and post a picture of it!

How long ago was this? 2012? People note lazy and/or hostile Toyota dealers here when trying to buy a Prius Plugin. This is one key reason Tesla refuses to let traditional dealers sell their cars.

The MSRP of the Volt has gone down by $10,000 in inflation adjusted 2014 dollars since it first went on sale in 2010 (from around $43,970 (2010 dollars:$40,280) to $34,345 today then take off up to $7,500 in federal tax credit plus any state credits or refunds ($1,500 in California). Large volume dealers in Los Angeles were recently sellings new Volts off the lot for $31,000 and shipping some to customers in other states. That ends up being about as low as the MSRP of a conventional Prius ($24,200)

 

One thing worth mentioning in cold winter weather areas is that all Volts come with OnStar support that allows you to remotely heat up the car using an app on a smartphone so it is pre-warmed before you get in the car. The regular Prius Plugin can't do that but perhaps the considerably more expensive Advanced model can.

You can also do this with your key fob if you are within visual distance of the car.

Same thing for cooling down the car on a hot summer day although I find that much less useful.

 

Well, I don't like service writers, and I really hate to see service writers for unscheduled problems and repairs, since I don't like service writers, my choice would be a Prius or any Toyota Hybrid.

 

I read a lot of bickering about mpg vs. electricity for warm vs. cold weather. A lot of this tends to be nonsense over pennies if broken down by expected mileage in a comparison. For example, kWh/ 100 miles in a Volt goes from 30 normal to 50 in very cold situations, but that ends up equaling a gallon of gas + a quarter gallon worth of electricity on a 60 mile daily commute vs. a gallon and 1/4 of gas in a Prius...

I like the driving style of the Prius, but in my area the Volt worked better on hills. I basically tested every car I could straight uphill to see what was the least annoying. I probably would make a different choice on flat land.

Also, I think the PIP is underrated for multiple short trips with the occassional long trip. If you need a tiebreaker: work in town = PIP, commute = Volt.

 

yes, there are a few bickerer's here.

 

Simple answer for me. I'd choose the Prius because its a Toyota. The decision requires no further consideration.

 

Wow, there's a lot of misinformation posted regarding the Volt.

Many if not most folks are getting over 4mi/Kwh on electricity when temperatures are 50+ F. This results in 44 miles per charge on the ~11Kwh usable in the 2014, and slightly more on the 2015. This is better than the EPA figures in my climate for 7+ months per year. Temperatures have reached the high 30s and I'm still getting around 40 miles per charge.

Another thing many don't consider about driving any plugin is that the car can be charged multiple times per day. My normal use pattern results in around 2.5 charges per day, with one of those being at work (fortunately free). This allows for over 100 miles/day of driving electric only.

Gas is still there when needed, and yes the car only gets around 40MPG gas, but it matters very little if you don't need it often. How many times per month do you need to drive over 100 miles/day? If the answer is 4 or under, this car is a serious consideration regardless of distance traveled. I'm personally at 8000 miles, 99% electric, with no gas miles driven since I drove home from the dealership a couple of hours away at the end of June 2014.

The gas mileage argument about the Prius being head and shoulders better is a misconception in many cases. My G2 Prius averaged 46-50MPG for my 65 mile commute, while the Volt has not used gas thus far (>1600MPG lifetime currently) and requires around $1.10 per day in electricity. That lifetime MPG may (or may not) drop by 80% by the end of winter, but I'll still be way ahead of my Gen 2 Prius fuel cost.

Don't buy a Volt for backseat space, but usable cargo space isn't hugely different. Driving dynamics are head and shoulders above the Gen 2 Prius. A service liason is assigned to navigate through any maintenance issues, as GM Service shops and Technician training varies, and some issues need GM Engineering assistance to resolve. I have had no service needs in the short time I've had the car, but it helps to know that there's someone available to level the playing field between good and bad dealer shops if ever needed.

Dealers generally don't know much about the car, even 4 years after launch, which makes learning whether to choose a Volt frustrating. It's especially frustrating to test drive a fully discharged Volt, because you really can't experience the best of the car. I know in Ohio there are only a few volume dealers that "specialize" in the car and have a higher level of understanding. Pricing at those dealerships are competitive with the Big Two in CA, and Volts still appear to be selling for $4 to $5K under MSRP and have the tax credit on top of that. Deals under $23K net are commonly reported on Base models with a few options.

Perfect car? No, but certainly worth consideration depending on your values.