Zipcar in SF has a few 2012 PHEV prii. So I thought I would try one out. I reserved the car for 6am, hoping the car would be charged up overnight. Nobody had reserved it since at least 8 hour prior. I also called Zipcar to verify it would be charged up, and the CS lady assured me over and over it was. It wasn't. Zilch on the battery. It wasn't even plugged in. Ugh. Maybe next time. Nothing to report, except the ride seemed much harsher than with a normal prius. Probably from the extra weight. I suspect they'll tune the suspension up before this thing ships. Anyway, here are some pics. I pulled the battery cover off hoping to see something interesting, but as you can see, all that is visible is a metal box...
bummer. what did they say when you told them it wasn't charged? why is the weight different than having two people in a regular prius?
I saw one here at the auto show a couple of weeks ago. I did notice the whole cargo area was covered over and that you could not access underneath the floor for storage or the spare tire any longer. The question I should have asked while there is are there still provisions for a spare tire or is the PHEV equipped with run flats? Did you notice a spare tire anywhere? Aloha, ED
Bummer. Hope you can get a charged up one next time or maybe get Zipcar to give you a bit of a break on the rental fee.
I have absolutely no idea. I didn't drive too far. maybe about a 2 miles in the city then 3 or 4 on the highway.
the cargo floor cover over the battery was not meant to be lifted up, as opposed to cars with spare tires. I managed to get it open anyway - it has the typical plastic fastener things you see holding inside door panels on - I pried those out. You can see one sticking down at the top of the battery pic There was no other place a spare could have been hiding. Didn't look at the tires to see if they were runflats. But that would explain the rough ride.
No spare on the test/demo PHEVs, nor run flats, you get a can of Fixaflat. Haven't seen any word on how production PHEV Prii might be set up.
I just wanted to point out that the Zipcar rates are inclusive of gas... You use a special gas credit card to fill up the thank when the gauge reaches 1/4 tank full. So the fact that the Prius was not charged at the time of the rental does not effect you financially -- the additional gas paid for is reimbursed.
Prius now likes to ru nabout two bars shy of full charge generally. Will the PHV recalibrate that? I see in your picture only one bar. I rarely get to two bars low on battery--it's tough. Will PHV users generally see the battery charge much lower after they've exhausted EV range?
The current (pre-production) versions of the PHEV show a sort of misrepresentation of the SoC. When the car is fully charged via plug-in, all bars are shown. As the plug-in SoC decreases, the bars go down. After a while, the SoC indicator drops down to 2 bars and the plug-in SoC is exhausted. No matter how much charge is in the standard hybrid pack, the bars will never get back above 2 bars until you plug the car in again. This means that after the plug-in SoC is depleted you never really know the SoC of the standard hybrid battery. Every experienced Prius driver who has driven the PHEV for an extended period of time has noticed this and provided feedback to Toyota. Hopefully, they will come up with a better display before they go to production.
