Any long distance commuters with a Prime?

My commute is 60 or so miles per day, 5 days a week and some weekend driving as well.

I now only put a full tank of gas every 20 days (use to be every 5-6 days). And a fillup is $30 as of today gas prices are going up (use to be $40-$45 for a tank).

I do wish the battery can last a little more but the hybrid makes up for it as it get avg 55mpg.

Also I dont baby my drive, I drive like everyone else on the road going 75-80mph on the fast lane.

Im saving hundreds of dollars compare to my previous car

 

My Commute is about 75 miles round trip, and only can charge once at home. I get up to 100MPG per day in summer, and in the 80sMPG in winter for my commute. (MPG is gas only and my electric is about half what gas costs.) How much you electric is probably makes a difference in you decision. Don't worry about the miles though, these are well built cars that go a lot of miles.

 

For carpool purpose, a Bolt/Model3 is better choices. They can remove plugin from the HOV list. But Prime is a very good hybrid car, reliable and gas sipping.

 

17k or so per year does not seem too much. Just a bit more than average. One thing to consider for carpool, Prime has only 4 seats. Then again, I don't think an adult can sit comfortably in a middle rear seat of regular Prius for a long commute.

 

How?

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Using my EV at lower speeds and HV at higher. It's really not hard with a Prime. In pure HV mode it gets better than 50MPG.

 

Ah ok, thanks for clarifying. I thought you meant 100 mpg in HV mode. Mpg vs mpge...

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I have a 110 mile round trip commute with just charging at home. I bought my Prime on 5/5 and it has 3,183 miles already. 1740 of those miles were from my trip home from the dealer. I'm enjoying 800 miles per tank compared to 400 with my other car. Using only 11 gallons compared to 27 gallons with my other car to go 800 miles. Below is what the MPGs look like with a long commute.

 

I used to commute 102 miles per day round trip into NYC. I would save EV for local roads and when I hit Jersey City. I averaged about 80MPG or so on that commute with an exhausted battery on arrival at home. I did not have access to a recharge station in the city (well, I did, but it would require walking back to the garage and moving the car after it was charged, and the chargers were at the most distant point of the garage so it simply wasn't worth it).

 

That must have been a long commute. How long did it take?

 

Can you charge at work or your commute is less than 60 miles? If so, check out the Clarity EV lease. It's $1500 down and $200/mo for 20,000 miles per year. You may be eligible for a state rebate of $2500 too.

 

My commute is almost exactly 70 miles as well, with home charging only. It's 95% highway, and I don't drive like a grandma. I've been trying different combinations -- HV on the hilliest bit, EV other times, etc., etc. By far the best solution has been EV Auto mode -- set it and forget it. My commute is weird -- it's a very hilly ride. My ride home has a large drop in elevation, but there are a couple of killer hills that devour a very high number of EV miles in pure EV mode. All my supposedly clever combinations got me as high as 65 or 70 mpg for the entire round-trip commute. EV Auto regularly delivers 80-90 mpg. Guess it's more clever than I am at knowing when to use the ICE.

The real bummer is that there is a charger at my workplace, sitting unused 99% of the time. The cost is roughly double that of gas. I'm currently lobbying for them to at least reduce the cost, because I'd use it 5 days a week, every week. As it is, I get about 900 miles per tank. With that, there's no telling how high it would go.

 

I'm sure you mean MPG, not MPH

What is the cost of your work charger? Are they charging by kWh (hopefully), or by hour (hopefully not!)?

 

AH, right! Thanks. Edited properly. The work charger is $1.50/hr. So figure about 2 hours, and that's $3 for 25-30 miles. Compare to gas at whatever it is per gallon now ($2.70?), and it's very roughly $3 for 55-60 miles. I'm all in favor of EV whenever possible, but I can't justify that expense every day.

 

At the very least, you should convince your company to convert their pricing from per-hour to per-kWh. At your current pricing, Teslas or Chevy Bolts would be paying $.19 per kWh, which is probably a little bit more than your company in Western MA pays for electricity.

Here are the reasons - you can go to your company with this reasoning (charge $.19 per kWh) and make it to be a win-win for everybody.:

1) Cars with faster chargers (like Nissan Leaf or Tesla) will use several times more electricity than our Prius Primes do. The Prius Prime uses only 3.3 kWh per hour of your company's electricity (similar to a Chevy Volt's 3.6), where all-electric vehicles use way more - like the Nissan Leaf (6.6 kWh per hour), the Chevy Bolt (7.2 kWh per hour), or Teslas (which will pull around 7.7 kWh from a standard work charger). See https://www.clippercreek.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/SMUD_Charge-Times-Chart-20171208_Final_Low-Res.pdf for an up to date, accurate list of charging rates per vehicle.

2) At a price of .19 per kWh, Teslas or Bolts would be paying your company just about the same as they paid before, whereas at .19 per kWh, you would be paying around $1.15 for 25-30 miles, which would cut your costs in half!

3) Your company would be able to more accurately ensure what their break-even point would be with kWh pricing


Good luck!

 

Thanks! Your reasoning is quite solid, however, in addition to such factors, I have a couple of other things working in my favor. One is that I work in Vermont, not Massachusetts, and as far as I understand, electricity is cheaper. Cheaper yet when you consider our new solar installation on campus. Secondly, it's a small campus, well off the beaten path -- everybody knows everybody, for the most part, and no one is coming to campus just to charge up. I can plead my case on a very personal basis. There is only one other EV driver (with a new Bolt) on campus. I intend to tell them, numbers like yours in hand, "Look, people -- you've got a potential user base of 2. You've priced 100% of your users out of the market. Why not make it free, since we're all about green everything, and we now have solar?"

 

I like your Shameless reasoning