Featured Next Prius Prime

So .... with the demise of smaller cars in the USA, now we finally get the Prius with the amount of miles you can get in any used gen II Chevy VOLT. I'm sure it will do well sales wise anyways if they can get production beyond what they're doing with the regular prius. Otherwise customers may just move on.
Hoping to God it's not going to charge at a paltry 3kw. Pre warming a frozen plug-in can easily take 2X that much power ... so you could actually deeply your pack while charging if the car has to heat up the battery.
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Production for Japan is going to be 450 a month. I hope for those waiting it is a number for the first year ramp up.

According to a German review, the charger is a little faster; IIRC 3.5kW.

 

sales remain to be seen. first prime didn't sell well, and it wasn't due to lack of range. toyota is betting the ranch on looks and performance. idk, i don't see people who want those qualities switching to prius

 

This is a tired argument that doesn't hold weight. Obviously, if the Volt was so amazing, it would still be around. It isn't.

It's not difficult to stuff lots of battery into a vehicle (a PHEV in this case). But it's difficult to do that while keeping the price down, keeping the vehicle light and nimble, keeping an airy cabin and offering a respectable amount of cargo space. Good engineering accounts for all of those variables.

Not to say Volt wasn't a good vehicle as well. But I suspect it would have done better if they had reduced the battery capacity by 20% and offered less congested cabin, better-handling and a lower price.

 

Th Volt was collateral damage. GM didn't cancel it. They shut down the entire factory it was made at as they were cancelling the Impala, Lesabre, and CT6. Perhaps the Volt would have been cancelled even if it was made at a factory that wasn't closing. GM didn't feel the cost of moving production was worth it after all.

The gen2 was a major improvement in performance, range, packaging, and cost. The MSRP was cut by at least $6000. The gen1 wasn't even a bad attempt for a first try. It lost a rear middle seat to the battery, but at least that packaging didn't feel like an aftermarket installation.

 

I feel sorry for Bob. Just because he couldn't figure out how to get the most out of his Prius Prime, he's deluded himself into thinking that the car was at fault, and that using a different socket would change anything.

To paraphrase Bob, some people are just not fit to understand the good design.

 

'amazing' is a sketchy benchmark for whether a car continues production. The Prius v & C could be labeled amazing .... yet they too are no longer products for the Amaricas.
The USA is shying away, unfortunately, from smaller cars. Yet other markets for smaller cars still exist.

Buick's version of the Volt will live on in China, along with the LaCrosse

Being over 6' tall as well as older/less flexible - I hope the lowering of the roof line on the new Prius & Prime doesn't take away from market share .... but like with the Chevy Volt - it makes for a really cool looking style.

is it a "tired argument" that some say the Lexus LFA was "amazing"? yet after losing tons of money on R&D & manufacturing - production was stopped altogether / everywhere ... world wide - at around 500 units. Irrelevant? or are there competing interests when cars are shelved.
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First, it was a concept car prototype, full of promises, but not a working model.

There was also no mention of the combustion-based range extender that was briefly talked about last year. But still, all that RAM disclosed was that the concept truck could be really neat. Just like the BatMobile, cybertruck and the flying car.

It looks like GM has realized that a serial gas-electric truck will not win many awards when well designed PHEVs are available to compare to. Maybe that's why the cybertruck is now 3 years behind schedule. Too many compromises needed to make it work as well as a 1970s Ford F150.

 

It remains to be seen if the new Prius prime has accomplished the following qualities and benefits:
Price: looks expensive

weight and handling? It’s a Prius

airy cabin and cargo space? Looks smaller than first prime

 

The best selling Toyota in north America is the Rav4, I belive those wanting a taller phev from toyota will prefer the rav4 prime to the prius prime ;-) The question really is production and costs. If they developed a dedicated phev platform instead of sharing with the hybrids, I would expect 3 models - one like the prius prime, one more like a crossover tall prime wagon, and a more dedicated rav4 prime with equipment from others but the dedicated drive train. That crossover would likely be the best seller in phev land, but we will wait and see how many of the prius primes and rav4 primes toyota actually makes. Both seem like fine vehicles and differentiated from each other and the hybrid only versions.

This is a less expensive and lighter weight way to build a phev truck or suv, but we see on stalantis's phev wrangler 4xe, gas mileage once that battery is done is pretty poor. PHEV pick up trucks and SUVs make a lot of sense, but you want to have at least a single speed direct transmission that can be clutched in to make it more efficient. I think honda did this with the clarity phev one was parked outside my house on Monday, don't know why but first time I saw one in person.

I'd love to see a pickup tundra with a modified rav4 prime drive train. They would likely need a bigger battery than the rav4, but these are heavy anyway.

 

A quick check of specs is the gen 2 prius had the biggest passenger volume, but this one has more cargo volume than gen 1 and 2, but will have significantly less cargo volume than gen 3 and on. It is longer and wider but shorter, so how that cargo is stored and how much the battery in the prime takes up from the non plug in prius we don't know. Headroom in the new one is less, but leg room is improved.

2023 Toyota Prius Specs: Better in Some Ways, Worse in Others

 

Hell with the Tesla socket. We like standard sockets.

This is the US standard Level 2/DC combo socket.



Jus like Apple finally starting to switch to USB-C, Tesla will eventually have to replace their sockets with standard sockets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charging_station

Those ranges and gas mileage are for Japanese test methods, which are like 30-mph uniform speed or something like that. EPA ranges will be around 36 miles for 17" wheels and 44 miles for 19" wheels.

 

Really? Series hybrids, which are the hybrids for the poor man or the hybrids designed by the engineers without knowledge and skill, are a good thing after all?

 

If you saw the picture of the Gen 5 charger posted by Toyota, it is huge, more than twice the size of the Gen 4 charger. It seems to be a two-hour charger if not faster.

 

The 4xe system is a parallel hybrid.
Being what it is, I don't think the engineers were trying for better fuel efficiency; it is even poor in EV mode. The engine appears to be the same as the base option. In hybrid mode, the PHEV has worse combined mpg than the standard Wrangler. I suspect the added weight of the battery is pushing the engine into higher boost from the turbo.

The Clarity PHEV uses the same hybrid system as the Accord. Which is similar to HSD. Having the engine directly drive the wheels will help with efficiency, but if the transmission puts limits on truck things(towing and hauling) that can be done, it will hurt sales.

A power split should mean better efficiency, but Toyota already makes a parallel hybrid for the Tundra. A PHEV should be able to 'downsize' the turbo V6 to something that trades power for efficiency.

Time and again, we see power-split hybrids are derated in terms of work performance in comparison to ICE siblings. The Rav4 with the highest tow rating is not the Prime. This is why Ford uses a parallel hybrid in the F150, and why Toyota followed them with the Tundra hybrid. Parallel hybrids need a standard transmission type that when combined with RWD(preferable for towing and hauling) takes up space in the place that is best for the battery.

A single speed electric drive is very robust in terms of delivering torque to the wheels when moving heavy loads. Locomotives have been using them since the 1960's. Series hybrids become less efficient at higher speeds than the other types, but you don't have to worry the engine and its transmission when designing the truck for its job. They are also a lot cheaper to add to a BEV.

The 6.6kW charger for the Rav4 Prime doesn't look much bigger than the 3.3kW one.
Can 3.3kw charger be upgraded to 6.6kw on RAV4 Prime? | Page 2 | Toyota RAV4 Forums
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Maybe the new PP's charger assembly includes something else? The inverter?

 

Of course it does not include the inverter. That goes directly on the motor–generators.

 

Interesting because the user manual someone shared in another thread says it's still a 3.3kw charger like in the 2017-22 Prime. If it's not getting a higher charge rate or DC fast charging I wonder why they needed a larger charger. Just because the battery has more or larger cells?

 

Yes, the charger power in kW is equal to the battery capacity in kWh divided by charge time in h.