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

In EV mode I'd agree, but not in EV Auto mode. I'd bet they use the single motor for EV Auto. This would be dependent upon how far you pressed the gas pedal. And I'll bet that's why they wouldn't let anybody drive in EV Auto mode. They haven't figured out where the cutoff is according to horsepower usage or it doesn't have the performance they were looking for because they use only MG2. If somebody pressed the gas pedal enough to engage the ICE why would you even begin to engage the clutch for the dual motor?


Unsupervised!

 

You may well be right that in EV Auto mode they won't ever draw more than 53 kW from the battery but it won't be due to MG2's 53 kW power limitation.

 

Yes!! This is exactly what I came here to ask/suggest.

One of my observations of driving a Volt Gen 1 was that is always drained the battery first before going to the gas motor. That's fine for short drives but if you know you're going to exceed the range of the battery, a blended mode must be more efficient. As you suggested, with nav in the car, it should be possible to estimate an ideal way to use the battery & EV mode over the course of that trip (and update the plan on the fly as it keeps track of how much battery is left vs the original estimate). Definitely some patents involved in those calculations!

Even without that, having the ability to manually switch between EV and Hybrid modes is enough to satisfy the pure hypermilers. They'll probably use that method over an automated nav based method.

 

Blended mode with navigation input can be very good, but then again I won't bother with navigation for known trips.

I wonder how they will calculate power threshold for blended (EV Auto) mode without navigation, will it draw the battery after 30, 40 or 60 miles? If one would drive at 80 mph will draw the battery at all?

Many questions to solve.

 

The Prime is not 20% more efficient than the PiP when running on electricity but rather ~3% more efficient.
EPA estimate of 120 MPGe translates to 0.28 kWh per mile on the EPA cycle while the current model achieves 0.29 kWh/mile (which btw translates to 116 MPGe).
The (low) 95 MPGe stated by EPA is in fact 'blended mode' efficiency as the ICE starts (and runs the warm-up cycle) after 6 miles on the EPA track.

 

I was just curious. What are your your thoughts on the the Prime?

 

^Looks to me as the best Prius ever built. Looks better than the gen4. 4 seats is not an issue for us.
With our current driving habits (retired couple) I may assume 85-90% EV lifetime, so in fact an EV without the range anxiety.
With current PiP we are 65% EV lifetime over 40000 km.
Electricity cost here is currently 1/4 of gasoline price per km as gasoline is heavily taxed.
So, if the importer here will not make a stupid decision like dropping the TSS (as he did with the gen4) I believe we will purchase one.

 

We agree completely. My wife and I got an opportunity to take a short drive in one a few weeks ago.

Prime drive coming - Portland, OR (Impressions inside) | PriusChat