My Concerns with the New Prius

Yeah, if the money is no object, Mach-E is my dream car for now. I can dream about it all day, but at the end of the day, it makes no sense to spend north of $50K on a car I can only drive around town. Or worse, I would be afraid to drive around town because it is so expensive and beautiful. For a daily driver, I would have to find a car more practical and affordable. New Prius Prime may be pretty, but I don't think it will be practical, and it certainly won't be as affordable as the current PP I own.

 

It has a lot of improvement in all aspects against the outgoing model.

 

Only if it is priced right, it will be worth upgrading. You already know if I had a choice, I would have saved money and got the LE model instead of Limited. The improvements I found in the current model of PP Limited over LE are not $6K worth to me.

 

I don't think it would cost you $6k. I would think you would actually earn $6k by trading in your Limited for an SE. Don't forget that in a couple of years, the used cars will depreciate a lot when the chip-supply crisis is over, and you could wish you had traded in when your car was worth $35,000 instead of $20,000.

 

I use a lot of gas in a Gen 1 Volt and definitely choose the cheapest 88 octane fuel and rarely premium.

it is a gigantic price add (and below was the cheapest premium offering, sometimes it’s close to $2 a gallon more)

 

This is not the case in California. There is only about 20¢ out of $6 a gallon difference between 87 octane and 91 octane.

 

The price of my PP is already starting to decline. I was offered only $28,500 from a dealer last week. I checked online and I can get only ~$30K from online used car buyers like Carvana or Driveway. Your figure is somewhat inflated for where you live. For me selling my current PP is either now or never. If I don't find an opportunity to trade it in before the end of the year, I will just keep driving it until the battery dies. If I am going to sell it, I will get another PHEV. But for now, Ford Escape PHEV is the only one I am considering. The hardest part is finding a trim that is priced right with only the options I am willing to pay extra. Unless the law changes, Toyota will not have any tax credits. Without it, any of today's cars, Toyota or otherwise are too expensive, regardless of what my current car sells for.

 

How is Ford going to save you money while your gas mileage is reduced by half?

The Gen 5 Prius Prime won't be available until late next year. I won't be surprised if they skip the 2023 model year and debut it with the 2024 model year.

 

OK, I just checked, and the difference between 87 octane and 91 octane seems to be 40¢.

 

I have to plug numbers to be sure but with 38 miles of EV range for the Escape, I am likely to save total fuel cost at today's gas price by driving more on the EV. But even if there is no saving, whatever the cost difference in operating the car would be a very small part of the total car cost for me. I only drive 8K miles/yr now. The saving comes from the $6K profit I pocket from selling PP and the $7K tax credit I get from purchasing a new PHEV assembled in NA.

 

The base MSRP is $41k + dealer markup + tax. That would cost you more even with the full federal tax credit than a Prius Prime SE.

 

That's only if I can find any 2022 Prius Prime on the dealer lot. There aren't any. Besides, trading in PP for a PP will not change the cargo space. The main reason I want to switch to Escape is because of the larger cargo space. I'd much rather buy Rav4 Prime AWD, but that is now totally out of reach. Nothing is available, and even if there is one it is now too expensive without the tax credit. The idea is to get an SUV PHEV and replace both our current Pathfinder Hybrid SUV and PP. We really don't need two cars now. The Escape (or RAV4) is a bit too small for what we use our current SUV for, but we are downsizing. Besides, there is no mid-size SUV PHEV on the market. The only option I considered was the Pacifica Plug-in minivan. But that is also very hard to find and it got too expensive even with the tax credit. I think we can make it work with a single compact SUV PHEV for us. At least Escape has a small capacity to tow a trailer. I may go for that route.

Oh, yes, one more reason I like Escape over the current PP Limited. It has better ergonomics for the HVAC and other controls for me anyway. Real physical buttons, and a small display.

 

I meant that it would cost you more than trading in for a Prius Prime SE.

 

Where do I find one? How do you know what the price will be? I said, if I can't trade in my PP by the end of this year, then it will be never.

 

Why? Depreciation?

It should be priced only slightly higher than the LE. It should be available in late 2023.

 

Because in anticipation to purchase a BEV this year, I put all of my tax-deferred retirement funds into post-tax ROTH. Yep, I am going to have larger than normal tax liability this year and if I can't claim the tax credit, uncle sam is going to take it away.

I hope you are right. If it doesn't start below $30K, then I won't even look at it when it comes. Well, maybe I will still go look at it and admire it. But won't be able to buy it. By my book, the final price for a car has to be below $30K to be considered to be affordable. This threshold was $25K until this year, then before that was $20K.

 

I wouldn't trust a Ford. Their cars are too regularly recalled.

Yeah, with Carvana's stock value tanking I hope they will still be offering the same amount of money when it comes time to buy. They were offering $20k for my 2017 Two Eco last I checked. About $7k depreciation for owning the car 5.5 years? Hell yeah!

 

No beige.

Seats:
Prius HEV: black and light gray
Prius Prime PHEV: charcoal/black with red accents on the front seats

Base trim levels(LE & SE) get fabric, upper trim levels(XLE/XSE & Limited/XSE Premium) get SofTex.

Looks like the rest of the interior is the same on all three options. Light gray from the bottom of the windows and up(headliner, upper trim pieces), black on the bottom(dash, door cards, lower trim pieces, carpet, floor mats, cargo area). Only exception seems to be the accent stripe on the dash. Prius HEV gets a silver plastic stripe and blue/green LED accent light strip, Prius Prime PHEV gets a rust/copper plastic stripe and red LED accent strip.

 

Ugh horrible

 

Here was the difference during the price peak, a few stations had $5.99 premium while RUG was lower $4.XX