What I don't like about the Prius Prime

Sure, 37 miles a day is just a simple mean average not based on any available evidence of driving habits, anecdotal or otherwise.

Although there may be no precise survey data, the conclusion in post #397 can be reached and is supported by surrogate data and observations. One doesn’t even need to look at the life experiences of our own friends and family and neighbors to know this (which has been my lifetime anecdotal experience, though hardly random guessing).

For example, we know that most people work and commute Mon-Fri, but also know shopping more commonly occurs on a given weekend day than weekday. There is hard data for this. Households often go to personal, family, or professional sporting and other entertainment events on weekends when they are off work. Naturally, some of this happens on commuting days too.

We also know that the temporal limitations of long distance commuting is poorly compatible with commuting on the same day to work. No study data is needed for this as someone driving a roadtrip is going to be rather disinclined to work the same day - often it is impossible. Sure there are some people who do this, but it’s not common.

The 20 mile average commute only includes days that a driver commutes and is not effected by days of car nonuse. However, for the mean average 37 miles per day, any days of non-use are counted.

Completely agree. Hopefully customers do a good job researching and keep an open mind.

Yes, and price them competitively to sell!

 

toyota has already announced 50 states.

 

Don't overlook the fact that EV will be used when it's most efficient. That will skew anticipated results.

For example, a commuter will save electricity to the slowdown caused by the intersection of major highways or at a river crossing. Far more gas would have been used in that congestion than out on the open road.

In other words, resulting efficiency would be much higher than a simply subtracting EV distance.

 

They sound more serious this time, and have repeated it in many places, but didn't they initially say the PiP would eventually role out to all states?

 

or a railroad.

idk, maybe? are you thinking gm? toyota doesn't usually make statements about the future. unless it's hydrogen.

 

Maybe that is part of the meaning of the term "Prime". Hopefully they mean not just for a few states and enthusiasts like us, but Prime for the nation and masses.

Just statements that in multiple places by Toyota that it will be available in all 50 states like you said, Bisco.

 

Toyota stated the PiP would first roll out to California, then Nationwide a few months later.
When a few months came and went, they said by the end of the year.
When the end of the year came and went, they stopped saying much.

 

They said that was the expectation, but no actual plan was ever made. They waited to see how the market played out for GM and Ford. When they saw the trouble Volt was having, rollout expansion thoughts were dropped and gen-2 plans were made.

 

i'll defer to john on this controversy.

 

I've been looking for this, as I would love to verify it.
Weekends are the busiest retail days, I have no issue with that assumption. However, is more shopping done on the two day weekend, or the 5 day work week?

The question is, what is the ratio? Even if families travel one day on the weekend, what about the other? If they don't travel one day every two weeks, it skews the weekday travel in the opposite direction your 'long distance vacations' hypothesis does.

I'm not sure what you are saying here, or what the point is? People don't travel on vacations the days they commute to work?? If so, sure, I would agree with that, but I don't see what point that makes?

Very true, and if there are days the car is not used, or goes less than 37 miles, it means the days the car is used it is driven more than 37 miles. Meaning a longer range PHEV may fit better for those individuals.

I don't know that ANY of the hypothesis I am suggesting are accurate on average. I do know that they are accurate in my case, and in many of my friends and family (not all obviously).

If you have any sources for this I would love to see them as I haven't been able to find much.


Edit--- This is really off topic, could a Mod move it to a thread I started on this subject at Just how far and when do Americans drive? | PriusChat

 

Because John has always been so objective??

Toyota did not give a specific date, but they did say 2013.

From Report: Toyota to make plug-in technology standard in Prius - egmCarTech

Now, this isn't a condemnation of Toyota.
They decided to back out of their statements. It is business and it happens.
Goals are missed, something doesn't happen as expected, so things change.

All I am saying, is that in 2011/2012, Toyota was expecting PiP to go nationwide as well.
It didn't.

I am hoping this time their roll out goes as predicted as I think the Prime will do better than the PiP did.

 

It should have been obvious, but clearly wasn't, that Toyota's effort to make the best use of plug-supplied electricity exceeded consumer understanding. Expectations were stuck on keeping the engine off as long as possible... even if it meant sacrificing efficiency.

So, Toyota made the choice to delay. Notice what that gets us? Besides the obvious larger capacity due to continued cost reductions with lithium battery technology, we also get an electric heating system much more efficient than the gen-1 plug-in offerings. Combine that with the added power from the bigger battery (there's enough power to accelerate to 84 mph using only electricity), you've got a system much easier to sell to those consumers.

Waiting for something better frustrated some. Others felt let down. There were even a few who believed the idea of plugging in had been abandoned entirely. At least we all know why that there was good reason. Reaching out to consumers beyond just enthusiasts was turning out to be much more difficult than anyone had anticipated... for any vehicle with a plug.

 

i would have to see a direct quote from a toyota official. you know, a bob klutz type.

 

Zythryn, I think we’re a bit out of sync regarding what is being asserted.

If we go pack to post #397 the main point was to show that the unqualified “37 miles a day” average was not the case, something easier to do than specifically proving another specific scenario. In this case it was that the average driver does not drive "37 miles a day".

That is important because from that we can say that a manufacturer targeting an EV range of 37 miles is not necessarily making a vehicle that will be most efficient for the “average” person’s driving habits or even necessarily allowing one to significantly increase one’s all EV driving miles.

As you mentioned, there are days we never drive our vehicles. Many, days people just drive to work and that’s all the vehicle does that particular day.

People run errands and do shopping. People drive thousands of miles a year for leisure. Any time they do this on a non-commuting day, this makes it much more likely their daily driving miles are bimodal or higher order multimodal.

So it’s actually easy to prove that 37 miles daily isn’t “average” at all, but an anomaly, and we don’t need any hard data to get there.

Now, the reason this is important is that a vehicle that allows a person to go to work and back all EV, regardless of ability to charge at work, then get a quick charge at home if needed, eat dinner, run a couple errands all EV again if needed, then have the most efficient ICE for long road trips - that’s a pretty cool technical and efficiency feat. That’s the Prime for a whole lot of people if Toyota can explain and sell it to the masses. Though not talking about the Volt here, if that vehicle makes a best personal fit here, great!

If driving were indeed a unimodal, 37 solid miles a day, that would make the Prime less attractive, but it is not a realistic driving pattern for most Americans. The point of post #397 was that “it is not typical to see commuters driving 17 additional miles on the days they work.”

Here are a couple links about long range and leisure travel, although, as mentioned, they do not break out days of the week:

Long- distance vacation trips by car (includes trips to visit family, friends, and for rest and relaxation) are much longer than trips for other purposes, an average of 314 miles one-way compared to 212 for all other long-distance vehicles trips. ​

http://nhts.ornl.gov/briefs/Vacation%20Travel.pdf

And a lot of travel data here:
http://nhts.ornl.gov/2009/pub/stt.pdf

Since weekends are the busiest retail days, we know that’s a big chunk of this segment of driving, so any time spent shopping then subtracts out of the 17 mile overhead above commuting with a mean unimodal 37 mile daily drive average.

Same with family travel, it breaks up the unimodal distribution assumed of a 37 mile daily “average”. Long road trips further disprove that model and show that there is no daily driving "average" and patterns fit a multimodal model.

 

And you're going to continue "just saying" it for years to come... That's really unfortunate. The rest of the story is quite telling.

For those who don't know, Toyota rolled out 3 new models of Prius within just a few months of each other. Prius v in December 2011. Prius c in January 2012. Prius PHV in February 2012. That was a major undertaking in a very difficult market. It was a diversification effort in 3 different categories, all at the same time.

Toyota carefully watched the market. The 2 new hybrids did really well. The plug-in struggled with the rest of the battery-centric offerings. Deciding to invest more in the rollout of v and c made much more sense. Let the automakers with the big batteries figure out how to penetrate such a stubborn market. In the meantime, continue to invest in research & development of the technology.

That worked out well too. Toyota has lots of tax-credits available to help promote rollout of their latest tech (Prius Prime) and the newest hybrid (RAV4) is proving to be popular.

 

I wouldn't say the PHV struggled, people would buy them when they had inventory. I'd say Toyota, not the consumers, pulled the plug on it.
See the Monthly Plug-In Score Card Monthly Plug-In Sales Scorecard

 

Please see
Just how far and when do Americans drive? | PriusChat

 

They did, and even had a June date on the PiP site as to when the nationwide rollout would happen.

Plans can change, but it felt more like Toyota didn't want to sell the PiP than people weren't buying it. Texas and Florida are two big markets for plug ins; pleasant climate and extra state incentives. The PiP was never offered in either of those states. It did beat the Volt sales some months when just in 14 states.

 

They had a next-gen design in the works, so of course that feeling would be conveyed... but it was for good reason, not the greenwashing spin we had to deal with.

 

I don't understand what you are wanting to say - can you explain it further?