I sell Toyotas. I bought a Prime.

So, you're surprised the sales pitch actually turned out to be the truth?

 

Welcome to the site and to Prime ownership. If your commute is ~22 one way, charge at work and depending on speed and retraining your brain/foot, you could be essentially gas free. Be ware, EV driving is very addictive.

 

I'm just the opposite. I'm looking forward to seeing the redesigned 2020 Corolla, and might trade my Prius. Just make sure you add windshield repair/replacement to your Prime insurance policy.

How did you like your Corolla? Have you heard anything about Corolla windshields cracking? I hope Toyota doesn't screw up the redesign.

 

Addictive? ....yes it is. I feel like unless my car has sufficient electricity, ...egads, I have to drive using gas? Really? ... But I am thankful for the gas for it allows me to venture far far away, as a strict EV does not.

Welcome to the Toyota Prius/prime world...

 

Welcome. It is an amazing car and I think you would have enjoyed the Advanced. I can't imagine driving anything else now. PRIME ON !!!

 

congrats and welcome, all the best!

 

Welcome to the wonderful world of PHEVs. Given your 21.5-mile commute, it seems like the Prime was designed with you in mind.

However, you should try running in ECO and EV mode. You can charge the Prime easily overnight at home and if you can find a place to charge it somewhere near work, you'll be all set. (Based on another PriusChat discussion thread, I understand that Toyota dealerships generally have no place to charge a Prime. )

 

So now you can educate your fellow sales reps Based on experiences many people have had there seems to be a lack of knowledge about the Prime among Toyota salespeople nationwide, although I suppose it is improving. Understandable to some extent since the car is still relatively new, very different, and somewhat of a niche product at the moment. At a minimum maybe you can convince your co-workers to keep the Primes they have in stock charged up, which is another thing that people have run into either on the test drive or when they purchase their car.

 

$.0769 per kwh is cheap. Charge it at home, and charge it at work. With your 22 mile drive expect 4 to 5 hours to charge at 120 volts. If the dealership has a 240 volt charging point they'll let you use (as a great sales demonstration), the charge time will be less than half that. You'll never buy gas again! Well, maybe, if the winter is so cold that you need the engine for more heat than the heat pump provides.

Do run in EV mode. The car is so smart that it'll switch itself to HV when it needs to do it. Whether you use ECO or Normal or PWR accelerator sensitivity is up to your personal preference. If you have a hilly drive to work, try EV Auto mode; let us know the difference.

 

@ 7 cents per kW and 6.3 to 6.6 kWh to full charge from empty, that's about 44 cents, or a little above.

 

Welcome to the club! You will find that the awesome community here is another bonus to owning a Prius.

I have been on many auto forums in the past and this is one of the very best.

 

Just please do something for all of us here and future prospective EV, PHEV customers...

Please, please please try to convince dealerships and salespeople to consider stocking, learning and selling this car before Toyota becomes part of past that used to only sell the gassers and never really got on board with modern tech and transportation. The way Lexus/Toyota upper management has been talking FUD on EV's lately, it makes me 80% certain than my next car will not be, or never again be another Toyota or Lexus.

 

I've been thinking that, by now, Toyota must have a tremendous amount of "big data" about how the Primes are being driven and maintained. The Primes have been producing a constant flow of data upstream, some of which is used for customers' Entune reports and probably even more for Toyota's engineering and marketing teams. And this information can be integrated with dealership sales and service information to provide a robust portrait of those customers who have purchased Primes.

While Toyota may use this information to decide that there is no future for Toyota in the plug-in space, it's also possible that it will shape Toyota's product strategy for its entire product line.

Right now, everyone playing in the electric vehicle space is just feeling around trying to understand the market. The design and marketing of conventional gasoline vehicles is pretty well understood after more than a century of experience -- and the auto companies still launch their share of losers within their product lines. Getting comfortable with EVs is going to take a little time, especially as consumer desires and acceptance evolve, thus presenting a moving target.

 

first thing is to make sure you have a demo charged and ready. does your dealership have an L2 EVSE?