Prime "Auto-Blending" Mode could yield > 22 miles EV

yes. do you mean total ev miles, in a drive that also uses the engine?

 

then it would all depend on what kind of a drive you do, unless it starts in hv warm up mode.

 

I can net 26-28 miles regular driving in mild weather and hypermile 31 EV miles in my Energi with a smaller 7.6kw battery so I think Prime should be able to get 30-35 miles under the right conditions.

 

agreed. under the 'right conditions', i can get 16.

 

Just to get a couple points from the OP addressed first.

Hyundai already has a 5 seater Sonata PHEV out with around 27 miles EV range. The planned Ioniq PHEV should have at least that range, possibly just over 30 miles. It will be cheaper than the Sonata PHEV, but will be smaller. Arriving after the BEV and hybrid models, we'll have some wait before we get all the details.

The EPA test cycles have not changed; they changed and clarified some rules. These rules covered things like the condition of the test car, like how much wear can the tires have, and which results can be used for determining the average number for the window sticker, and which could be thrown out. The one having the most impact in making 2016 results lower than previous years is upping the coast down speed from 50mph to 70mph. The results of the coast down test determine the load resistance for dynanometer during the actual tests.

For the OPs main subject, if the Prime is driven in EV Auto in such a manner as to not have the ICE engage at all, I agree that it should exceed the official 22 mile range. It will not go farther than driving the car the exact same way while it is in EV mode. EV Auto is the blended mode. The thresholds at which the ICE comes one will be higher than the PiPs; likely close to those of the Energi's. When driven without hypermiling, it will allow the grid charge to cover more miles than the pure EV mode by sparing battery depletion from heavy acceleration and high speeds with ICE use. It doesn't have more grid charge in EV auto mode than in EV mode though. So the car has the same amount of energy for EV miles when driven at speeds and accelerations to keep the ICE off.

Another way to look at it is that EV Auto will yield more miles covered by the grid charge, but so will manually switching between EV and hybrid modes for high speeds and times of high load.

 

Yes. I think the only time HV mode will be of gain is on trips that exceed EV Auto's "EV" range, and you want to save grid charge for lower speed roads near the end of it. It also comes down to when the EV Auto uses the ICE, and we have to wait for those details.

I'm guessing it will behave around the same as the Energis because of the similar pack sizes, but Toyota might decide to be more conservative, and have the ICE thresholds closer to the PiP. With the reviewers not being allowed to try EV auto recently, I don't think these settings have been fixed yet. Market specific like the PiP is also possible.

 

might be better for the 'common man' that toyota is targeting, who just wants to get in and drive.

 

For determining when Prime's ICE will fire up in EV Auto, we know the battery is now capable of producing 68 kW of power but the Prime MG2 was downsized to 53 kW. Based on a trip using blended mode on a 65 mph freeway going home yesterday, the PiP battery showed an average use of 48.4 amps at the average battery voltage of 202 volts. So the PiP was using about 9.8 kW of battery that is rated at 38 kW. Using the same 26% for the Prime battery output of 68 kW we get about 17.5 kW before the ICE kicks on. Probably have to narrow that down a bit by the 12% lower power difference in Prime's MG2 we still get over 15 kW of power being used before the ICE kicks on. But since it takes quite a bit more power at higher speeds even though the Prime has about 5 kW more to use, I'll offer a WAG that the speed cutoff is gonna be in the 70 mph +/- 2 mph range using EV Auto.

 

that was too much milk.

 

And here I thought I was making it easier by rounding....a lot.

 

I'd bet you were real good at statistics in college!

 

I would really really hope that in less than ten years that Toyota could have a PHEV that does much more than that! If not, then that would be pathetic.

Actually, I suspect that in 6 months we'll have a thread title of "Who got more than 50 miles pure EV out of their Prime." Proper mode selection for flats, hills, speed, etc. might become the new hypermiler challenge for this model.

 

As usual, Toyota will be surprised on how much PriusChatters push the envelope of the Prime. And they will adjust their engineering based on what we on PriusChat have discovered, utilize on a daily basis, and what parts get more heavily used than others. For instance, although they thought they made the current PiP battery tough, Toyota didn't realize we would plug it in so much and (some of us) go incredible distances on EV, so they made the Prime battery tougher. They also made the battery tougher without the expense of liquid cooling.

This will be quite the challenge. Look at all the variables we get to utilize: with or without using the heat pump, preconditioning, EV Auto vs EV, etc.. Oh yeah I can hardly wait.


Unsupervised!

 

I suspect the old Prius PHEV's 95 MPGe number is dinged by the gas engine starting up during the EV range testing. If the engine hadn't started the MPGe number would have been much higher -- maybe 105-115. So, the new Prime won't be hugely more EV efficient.

Since EPA is actually 22 I assume you mean with careful driving in good conditions.

My guess is around 10 miles. The gas engine is used but only 0.022 gallons of gas were burned.

The Volt is EPA 53 miles and in good conditions drivers are getting over 60 with careful driving. A few have reported getting over 70 on occasion. Basically, an EV can often be reasonably hyper miled an extra 30% beyond the EPA range. Careful drivers on next year's Honda 40+ mile EPA Clarity PHEV will probably get over 50-55 miles.

That's not a relevant spec because the Prime has dual motor mode due to its added one-way clutch. It can also use the 23 kW MG1 during EV driving so combining the motors allows it to max-out the peak battery output of 68 kW for a short burst.