What I don't like about the Prius Prime

true, but think about how that compares to the cost of the volt 2 battery.

 

Conversely, I saw the Prime news initially, thought it was going to be an interesting competitor to the Volt, then test drove a Liftback, and am leaning towards the Liftback (although not because of the 4 seat issue - it's primarily availability of a plug that I'm worried about - but the battery in the hatch is a consideration).

 

Yes, but adding a traction pack that is roughly $3500 more than the one in the Prius isn't going to result in an equal price. Unless Toyota has pick up truck margins on the Prius to begin with.

In other words, they half assed it.

Stuffing everything into an existing platform seems to be the exact same thing they are doing with the Prime. Just putting the battery wherever it will fit in the hatch area, without taking the effort required to package it better. Increased cost for making changes to the platform are just BS excuses. GM has the Sonic sedan and hatchback, Trax, Encore, and Bolt all on the same platform. The Volt uses the same platform as the Cruze, which is available as a sedan, hatchback, and possible wagon in Europe. Platform sharing exists to reduce costs.

Comments from Toyota on the elimination of the fifth seat were for keeping weight down and efficiency up. The required structural and suspension changes for that fifth seat would be a small cost compared to the battery and charger.

The PiP was expensive because Toyota claimed the batteries were $1200 a kWh. Removing the spare tire and under floor storage tray cost them nothing. The plumbing was already there for cooling the hybrid battery pack; perhaps a more powerful fan was needed. Then it needed a charger. Goodies were added for the same reason they were added to the gen1 Volt.

Calling it a Prius likely will have the noobs thinking otherwise.

It should cost less than half, but Toyota's $1200kWh claim was higher than everybody else's back then.

Assuming $500kWh now, the Prime pack should be $4800 less than the Volt's. Subtract that from the MSRP of the Volt, and you get $29.2k, or around what the PiP started at.

Remember, Toyota used the term competitive when asked the price of the Prime. They also used phrases like upscale and luxurious when presenting the car. The high end offering of the Prius line up isn't going to be priced the same as the name sake.

 

Not liking Toyota's goal of delivering a design capable of competing directly with traditional vehicles once the tax-credits expire... which will be mid-cycle... is no excuse for not accepting it.

Volt already lost that battle. The 200-mile offerings eliminated range-anxiety. That market GM sought back in 2007 is quickly vanishing. Notice how so much attention has turned toward Bolt now instead?

Did you miss the post about safety?

NHTSA has been considering the introduction of rating measures to indicate the safety of rear occupants.

Squeezing 3 adults in back is far from just a rare event when it comes to services like UBER. Those passengers are touching hips & shoulders and have a good chance if smacking heads in the event of an accident. Who's liable then? Insurance companies want to know the level of exposure each vehicle poses.

This new topic of rear safety is something Toyota would already been well aware of and could very well be using Prime as the vehicle to test out consumer reaction to elimination of the sub-standard middle seating we've all become accustomed to.

Think about the cost of that safety. Is it really worth it in a non-fullsize vehicle?

 

Recent legislative update (CA HOV program):
Global Automakers Support California Assembly Bill 1964 | Global Automakers

Sounds like details of CA HOV extension still up in the air. I am thinking this gets resolved in the next month or so. Gov Brown would need to sign and make any final changes, assuming it works a little like Virginia's legislative process.

The one clear message from the auto makers- it's all about the bass (CA free HOV).

 

Simple, Prime is not for hybrid fans. The launch event was for hybrid fans. Misunderstanding market is easy when you don't take audience into account.

Expansion means reaching out to new buyers. The ordinary mainstream consumer hasn't said anything yet, since Prime isn't available. Their opinions won't emerge until after rollout. When pricing and test-drives are available, then their judgment will begin.

Repeating the same formula for Prime as Prius or any of the other hybrids won't result in growth. Being able to appeal to new customers requires trying something different. Remember, the ultimate goal is to replace traditional vehicles with clean, high-efficiency choices.

 

NHTSA will start putting two crash dummies in the rear seat. Having a middle seat or not isn't going to lead to many other changes in car safety design because of that.

One of the issues that has arisen is that front seats designed to give some to absorb crash energies can collapse.
"Safety advocates say the design changes to front seats has had an unintended consequence for those in the back: some have a tendency to collapse in even low-speed rear-end collisions, killing their occupants or the children seated behind them." - Crash-Test Dummies Get in Back Seat to Make Uber Riders Safer - Bloomberg
Without a front middle seat, this isn't a concern for children in the middle rear.

 

there is nothing luxurious about a prius, even fully loaded. and the only thing in the prime that will be different is the 'luxurious' back seats. no, theta's just marketing. the base prime is going to come in cheap, but many people will talk themselves into the $45,000. one. that's how toyota makes money.

 

Another issue that has arisen side collisions.

Just because front will likely get addressed first, doesn't mean the other won't afterward.

 

So the Prime will have a larger trim spread price than the Prius($24k to $30k)? I don't see Toyota making the base Prime a large enough loss leader that it has the starting price equal to the Prius. At $24k, Toyota would be losing money; deleting the fifth seat would not save that amount of cash. With the incentives, pricing the car below cost to build market simply isn't needed.

Any recent news about these side impact issues? I'm only stuff about the rear seat dummies for the front impact test, and concerns to have the front seatbacks address for child safety in rear impacts.

The side impact test already has a dummy in the left rear seat, and the proposed change won't add another for that test. If there were 4 dummies in the car for a side impact test, the results would also lead to changes for the front.

Without a fifth dummy in either test to provide evidence either way, these changes won't result in the fifth seat going away.

If four seats are being sold as a safety feature by Toyota, and they are getting ahead of the 2019MY rules, why put five seats in the Pruis?

 

Not sure how many times testing consumer response can be pointed out before it finally sinks in that Toyota sees a benefit in being proactive. Why not test the waters ahead of time? After all, we know safety requirements are increased on a regular basis. Decisions of change don't come about for a single reason anyway.

 

well, it's just a guess, like anyone else's. imagine not having to buy a volvo because prime was safer.

 

I may regret this, but if you are going to claim the Prime will be more appealing to conventional auto consumers than to today's B/PH/H-EV buyers (which is what you mean by "not for hybrid fans", right?), I'd really like to hear your reasoning. Compared to the Gen4 LB, the Prime absolutely delivers less of everything that today's conventional car buyers want in a car (passenger space, cargo space, likely affordability), and more of what today's "hybrid fans" crave (MPG, true AER, techno whizbangery). Absent some compelling argument that has so far eluded me, I have to consider your "appealing to the masses" theory as fanciful as the "priced barely more than the LB" theory we've heard knocked around here.

Speaking of price, as has been repeatedly observed in this thread and others, that is the big wild card here, which is probably why Toyota has been especially vague on the point. If I had to pick a price point at which my view of all this would begin to shift, I guess I'd say around $28k MSRP for a base model (that is, before our regressive incentives, which only higher-income consumers can fully access, and assuming base/advanced trims will be offered like PiP). Below that price, the Prime's trade-offs might make objective sense for a larger chunk of the market than I'm allowing. Much more than that, and the "sensible" niche starts shrinking very quickly, leaving only the status-symbol crowd that I really think the Prime targets.

I regard the probability of Toyota hitting that price point to be very near 0, but my speculation's no better than anyone else's, and I doubt even anyone in Toyota knows the final price to a dead certainty - it's the kind of thing that can and likely will be debated right up to the morning of the announcement. My assessment is that the Prime can't be priced all that close to the LB, since, unlike some, I believe a high percentage of Prius LB buyers (by no means all) would opt for an affordable plug-in if it were available. At a truly attractive price, Toyota would make much less money on Prime sales than LB sales - and why would any manufacturer choose to drive sales to a lower-margin vehicle, especially one based on the grid-powered tech that Toyota so clearly despises?

 

Simple, again. You're falling into the same trap countless other have done over the many years Prius has been available. You're assuming buyers are unwilling to accept any type of change whatsoever, that the word "compromise" means giving up something rather than seeking a balance.

There are quite a few consumers who expressed interest in a plug-in Prius, but didn't find the first offering compelling enough. They wanted more power and more capacity. That's it. There was no request for jaw-dropping acceleration or anything that could cover their entire daily driving needs under all conditions. They just wanted a souped-up Prius.

In other words, they weren't really a "hybrid fan", since the purchase step was never taken. They were interested. Not becoming an owner left them as a traditional supporter though. They chose to remain status quo until something better came along. Prime is that something better.

 

Yep, we'll never know their cost, but I believe it goes back to Toyota's apparent view on plug ins in general, or they are simply trying to cash in on the incentives.

The iQ EV was cancelled before going on retail sale in the US, because of its short range and high cost. A complaint about the PiP was that Toyota had the means to subsidize it internally to support it until battery prices dropped as predicted. Instead, it appears they chose to charge the customer the full retail price for the battery. The $1200 kWh is in comparison to $900 to $1000 per kWh quotes from others at the time.

Yes, which puts it as just another excuse for Toyota's apparent lack of investment into the Prime.

 

It's really sad that efforts to reach the masses are spun as lacking.

Unless large risk is taken, it's just dismissed as not trying... even if the risk delivering only a token rollout... especially with heavy dependence on tax-credits and HOV incentives.

You personally should know better. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that offering a robust hybrid variant with a plug has the potential to reach far more people affordably.

Look around. Notice the state the EV market is in? Notice how well traditional vehicles are still selling?

 

but john works for toyota, are you saying he can't speak for them?

 

My dismissiveness of the Prime isn't because Toyota isn't taking a large risk, it is because it appears to be a half hearted after thought. The nest gen Prius and its plug in were delayed by a year. Even with the extra time, Toyota couldn't find a better solution to placing the traction pack than throwing it in the back like a DIY conversion. I wasn't expecting a miracle, it does have a larger battery than the PiP after all.

Whatever the reason for only having two seats in the back, it is the route Toyota decided to take. So why not take advantage of that lost space for the battery? None of the Toyota's explanations or fanboy theories for the two rear seats answers that question. There are multiple pluses for even placing part of the battery there; it preserves cargo space, perhaps even keeps the spare, the battery weight is shifted down and forward of the rear axle, improving the driving dynamics, and the introduction of a battery tunnel could stiffen the frame further.

The entire point of developing TNGV was to reduce development costs, and on the first car to use it, Toyota decides to skip on taking advantage of that to develop a floor pan with battery tunnel, because...cost? The Prime is a second generation PHEV. Its development could have benefitted from things learned from the PiP and competitors' offerings. Instead of getting a well thought out and balanced PHEV that could have a wide appeal, we get the something that was given as much resources to develop, possibly less, as the PiP. A Prius with a bigger battery tossed in the back. Instead of customer field testing, we get different sheet metal.

Talk about incentives, the PiP never went beyond its initial CARB states. I would have thought rolling the PiP out nationwide would have helped prep the dealers and public for the next model, but whatev. What was the reason for not selling it in Florida or Texas? Would the cost of doing so really have been that restrictive? Or is it because they weren't CARB, and PiP sales there would not have counted towards Toyota's required ZEV credits?

As for the plug in market, it is doing better in 2016 than any other year, despite the low gas prices.

Tesla dropped off in April. This might be when they are shipping out exports.
Older models, the Energis are still selling high compared to the hybrids. The last two months for the Fusion have been better by at least 20% compared to any in the past year.
The Volt is at levels of the end of last year when there were deals for moving the gen1 off the lots. This should at least hold steady as the 2017 gets to dealerships.
The i3 appears over its beginning of the year slump. The new X5 PHEV seems to be fully rolled out. Hopefully it will continue to grow.
The Leaf is down, but this is the last year of the current design. The next model should be unveiled soon.

In addition to a new Leaf and Prime, we'll have the Ioniq PHEV and BEV, and Bolt to help grow the market in 2017.
Monthly Plug-In Sales Scorecard

 

Well, no, it's not simple at all really. So aside from your repetition of how simple this all is (and so by implication how simpleminded everyone who fails to see it), you've basically got nothing new to add to an argument that I find unconvincing. I still don't see why somebody with no interest in hybrids would want a more expensive hybrid, or why somebody who wants something with more AER etc. than a PiP would settle for a Prime over a Gen2 Volt, which for some reason you consider irrelevant because of the Bolt? To me that sounds a lot like "A>B and B>C, so C>A" and doesn't add up at all, though it apparently does for you.

I'm willing to wait to see how it all plays out at this point - we're not going to convince each other based on this exchange of views. Thanks for the reply, though.

A consequence of my being a more recent member is lack of familiarity w/the OG and their backgrounds. Whatever John's past contributions, his current position on the Prime (see above) seems a complete muddle, yet supremely self-confident, which would seem consistent with the mindset that birthed the Prime. That was originally a critique of the argument, not the author, but if that argument is consistent with Toyota groupthink, that doesn't bode well for Toyota's prospects going forward. Seen in that light and coming on the heels of the embarrassing Mirai/H2FC silliness, the Prime seems less a misstep and more a sign of serious trouble in Toyota's alt-fuel strategic thinking.