Hot rod Prius at the push of a button?

If Prius is indeed to become its own brand under the Toyota umbrella like Lexus and Scion, with a whole line up of hybrid cars, then for sure we will see a performance version. Think something like a hybrid MR2... or Supra! I hope by the time my current Toyota Prius is paid off I'll be able to buy a Prius brand sports car, by that time we should be relying much less on the ICE or hopefully even have eliminated it altogether. Gimme an affordable sports car EV! The Tesla is nice, but its cost is prohibitive right now, hopefully Toyota, er... Prius can fix that!

Prius, Toyota's next brand?

 

Now - if you want to put in a tow without fear of voiding drivetrain warranty button, I'm all for it.

 

This should be a clear yes-no two option poll instead of three options--one yes, two no. No point in that except to split the no vote.

 

I think the car is not engineered to be able to do what you want. The traction battery is probably too small to get enough oomph for very long. The electric motors might overheat if too much juice were sent to them at once. I agree with Bill... lemme turn off the pseudo tranny drag... the regen from that does not help soc in city driving anyway.

 

I do not want a button to push, I want the car to do it automatically when I dump the pedal to the metal. I have been on the road when things have gone wrong and had to jump out of the way and I want all the power that a car can deliver in an emergency situation. If the car says no to that and I die then in my opinion the car is wrong and some one deserves to go to prison for a faulty design. Dumb traction control.

 

I think I wrote somewhere else here my other car is a Porsche Boxster. And in regular driving around town, the Prius is every bit as quick! That's below 3K rpm, where the Boxster is really a conventional performer. The Prius, on the other hand, has close to 300 ft-lbs of torque at the low end. That gets you going from the getgo like a V6.
It's really surprising, and when you add that gearless, nonshifting tranny, you don't have much to hold you back. Shifting gears can be tedious and time-consuming around town.
One can see super-fast, shiftless race and sports cars down the road with more powerful batteries. I read there's a motorcyle with the new Li-ion battery that can go from 0-60 in less than 1 second.

 

Most drivers equate "performance" with higher power, but I consider a car with low fuel consumption to be a performance car, just of a different sort. Yes I would like a button, but one that allows me to switch between the normal programming and one that enhances the fuel economy even more. There are many times that I have green bars and a down-hill slope coming up. I hate it when I'm at a stoplight with all the battery bars lit and the engine has to spin just to discharge some of that excess power. I would prefer that the car use more of the battery than it already does when it gets up in the green.

(Oh, and I will consider the plug-in option if I don't need a separate loan for the batteries)

 

+1

 

Yes, I would like the OPTION of running in performance mode vs. efficiency mode.

This OPTION would ideally be instantly switchable. A password or hardware key would allow enabling or allow maximum power level to be dialed in. This would be a fancy version of the "Daddy Switch" on the old ZR-1s (?) that reduced HP from 450 to 225 for when Junior borrows the car.

If enabled, a WOT (Wide Open Throttle) switch would activate performance mode. Mash the pedal, get the "Virtual Turbo Boost".

IMO, nothing wrong with that. I think it could be an environmental boost, as those who feel they require more power than a fuel efficient car can give, will consider these cars.

When you don't mash the pedal, fuel efficiency is identical. Why not ?

Where hardware changes must be made, split the Prius off into a performance model, and a lower pollutant economy model.

And how about some options for favoring emissions or fuel efficiency. If as free beings we decide that fuel efficiency is more important than emissions, they why not ? Every day people make such choices with their choices of vehicles to buy or drive.


Make the ICE smaller and more efficient.

Make the MGs more powerful, and consider 1 MG at each wheel for all wheel drive, and all sorts of wonderful things such as self-spinning cars.

Make the battery pack more powerful, more efficient, more cost efficient, and modular. Why couldn't I add or remove 1 battery at a time as my finances and commuting needs require ?

Battery technologies will advance. Give me a modular system where I can add my new battery controllers in future.

License the source code for all the computers under the GNU GPL (General Public License). Allow me to do anything I want with the computers at my own risk. Go ahead and implement a system where we must get a special "computer modification key" from Toyota which requires us to sign a waiver.

Open source has, IMO, done wonders in the software world. I use open source GPL Linux for virtually all my computing. My day job is as an embedded Linux network security appliance designer/developer. My companies products depend on the robustness of open source software.

This could open a cottage industry of aftermarket computer upgrades.

Yes, I'd like to see the full power of the ICE and the MGs combined for 140+ HP in bursts.

Yes, I'd like to see custom software to remove creep when foot is off brake.

Yes, I'd like to see custom software to drive the car more fuel efficiently than I might ever learn to. I gave up the manual tranny on my last car for the probably more efficient auto tranny on the Prius. I'd also be happy to have the car do Pulse and Glide etc. automatically, with only a set of parameters to set things up.

Car should also have fully configurable, wife/valet mode where everything is as normal and as mundane as appropriate.

Lastly, I want a car that can drive itself completely autonomously, but still allows me to take full control over every parameter I wish whenever I want. (No "Don't do that Dave"

 

do you realize you just put your wife and a valet into the same category...

 

Sure. I presume both of them would best be served with "normal car mode". Same for everyone else but myself and perhaps selected fellow Prius enthusiasts.