Prius towing capacity?

I see you have posted this a while ago...looking to purchase a 2011...I drive 35,000 miles a year...4,000 of that is towing my trailer and harley from MI to ID. Any more information would be appreciated....any issues with your transmission?

 

profit i guess

 

You should control the tongue weight be how you distribute the load on the trailer. You can easily go too heavy or too light on tongue weight

With a single axle trailer you should have about 10% - 15% of the trailers weight on the hitch. Check with Google for more the reasons why and more info.

 

I two my sailboat with my Prius - boat and trailer are about 750lbs. Longest trip was about 200 miles along Rt 95 in New England. Since the road goes along the cost there are no big changes in elevation so I can not speak to how the drive train or brakes perform in those situations but in my case the car towed great - even got high 30's for mpg.

 

Can anyone confirm whether or not Toyota offer a tow bar for the Prius Gen2 in the US, and if yes the part number and price thanks.

 

Most of us use a Curt hitch.

Tom

 

Saw this one at Lowe's today. Its owner must do some serious towing!!

 

That is the Prius version of truck nuts!

 

You're rolling an 07.
It's probably already out of warranty.
The Prius is rated to tow exactly 0 pounds.
Can you tow with one.
Probably.

Will I?
No.

Most Prius sized cars are rated to tow a 1,500# load.
I'm sure that there's the usual 500-percent SWAG factor built into this rating.
In addition to propulsion, there's also braking and suspension issues to consider, along with about a zillion other things when you assign a tow rating to a vehicle.

My guess is that the 0-pound tow rating is assigned to the G2/G3 due to a combination of possible stresses to the regenerative brakes, the CVT, and input from the sniveling, bed wetting staff attorneys.
YMMV.

I'm sure that there are folks out there that will claim to have towed a 32' trailer coast to coast without any kind of problems. I also know for a fact that you can haul things like bicycles, teardrop trailers, and some M/C's without any issue.
I have 2 cycles, and an 1100# lawn mower.
I'm sure that I could.....
But I'm sure that I won't.

 

I routinely tow a U-Haul 4x7 foot trailer for sod and Home D long materials. Thats a heavy trailer. You really feel it even empty. It tows it ok locally but I would not like to go any further than that as the brakes do not work real well. Scary.
The car just not have the power and brakes to tow out of town
imho. Can you do it? Sure but its going to be hard on the car's drivetrain. And its got a very expensive drivetrain.

But for around town its great. BTW, I keep very good condition cvt fluid and Inverter coolant. Thats important because the no matter how you calculate it the car was not designed to tow a heavy load
and towing is hard on the trans. I change my fluid every 30K miles.

 

bat4255,
Prius doesn't offer a hitch. Someone else makes that one and calls it a Toyota Prius hitch.

I'm looking into a tiny camping trailer I want to tow. From the replies above it sounds like I need to know the hitch weight and the total weight before I decide. I'm looking at 2 options- one has a hitch weight of 24 lbs, the other weighs 800lbs, so I'll have to find out more, but this sounds possible. Are electric brakes on the trailer a major plus?

 

Well, I found out more since I first posted the info on top. One of the trailers weighs 800 lbs, has a tongue weight of 70 lbs and has no brakes. The other weighs 365 lbs, has a tongue weight of 24 lbs. and has the option of adding electric brakes. Too bad the first one is much cuter- cause it seems much better to get the second one ( also much cheaper). Does anyone here think I'd have any trouble towing the second one?

 

Aloha there is a Google search box in the upper right corner of PC try and search trailer towing or tear drop trailer. There are quite a few threads regarding trailer towing besides this one.

 

WAM2005... i don't think towing the 2nd one will be troublesome. i tow a 5x8 steal mesh trailer that "breaks" in the center to allow the bed to ramp down. it's probably a little heavier than that 2nd one.

if you head over to the yahoo forums (if i recall right, it's all updates by my email for the last couple years)... there is an outrageous (imo) conversation going on about some really heavy duty towing compared to what anyone over here on priuschat has ever towed. 2000lbs+ category.

i see a lot of people with the towing ball of the hitch at exhaust pipe level (for lack of better reference)... i find this kinda odd as most trailers will be leaning towards the car. this can make driving scary. if your trailer weight is perfectly centered and level, it tows amazingly. my hitch ball is about 6 inches higher than exhaust pipe level. maybe i'll snap a pic if anyone isn't sure about hitches. i eventually want a fully adjustable one. a good 12 inches tall or so.

my biggest problem is noise, bounce while the trailer is empty, and a slight wiggle since my hitch sucks (imo) so the actual ball/hitch piece wiggles around inside the hitch. i want to slide feeler gauges in to make it stop. tape method doesn't hold up because there really isn't enough room... it's crappy but not that crappy. (a lot of contractors use tape)

 

Starting with the 2016 Prius, YOU CAN NOW tow up to 1500 LBS with the TOYOTA towing setup...

 

A great article about towing now being approved by Toyota for the prius starting in 2016 year model Search for it at digitaltrends website.

 

I towed recently.
2013 prius
250lb aluminum 4x8 trailer loaded with 900 lbs and 400lbs cargo inside.
From Houston to austin, 60-65mph. 37mpg with a.c. on, 95 degrees out. Driving to Houston that morning with empty flat trailer I got 48mpg.
Aero drag was minimized as you can see in picture.
My thought is that if I'm still getting 37mpg and I accelerate slowly then the load on the drivetrain can't be that much worse than a speeding driver with no trailer going 80mph.

It outperformed my 4cyl Mazda pickup at towing.

Curt hitch installed myself.

I'm very happy with the car since getting it a few months ago during the corona-sale. In power mode it has plenty of power, I never even use it. Normally get about 55mpg average.

 

Even surprisingly small vehicles will pull even surprisingly large loads up to highway speed.

It's up to the driver to figure out how to get said load back to 0 mph while facing the original direction on the original side of the road and with the shiny side of the car facing up.

 

towed an electric harley on a 5x8 mesh type lowes trailer without any struggle.. on my prius c.
The C is nice because it has springs and not struts so you can ad a cheap air lift airbag kit.. which i haven't done yet..
i just towed home an empty 6x12 tilting trailer last night so my buddy can haul 2 motorcycles on it in his gen2..
I need to find a cheap harbor freight 4x8 for arround town towing because they are pretty light.

BTW it's a common problem that when you buy a new gen 2 hitch that the hitch will be bent in shipping and need to be bent back straight.. so before you install try to eyeball it and see if the ends are at 90 degree angles and if not try to bend them to be so first before trying to install.. Didn't have that problem on the 2 C hitches i installed that are designed different.

 

Didn’t know that but I see on other sites that you’re correct about shipping damage, it seems odd that so many are bent in shipping.