Coming home the other day, I followed what appeared to be one of the test mules for the PiP. It was clearly a GenIII, had Prius Plug-in Hybrid graphics on the lower part of the doors, and had the plug-in port up by the drivers front fender. Is Toyota still conducting testing with these cars? Or were they sold to private parties after the test program ended? The license plate on the car was a standard one. Didn't say DLR or MFG on it. This was in the area of San Bruno & Pacifica in Northern California.
They're part of the Zipcar rental fleet in the Bay Area, I believe http://green.autoblog.com/2011/01/2...-prius-plug-in-hybrids-to-car-sharing-progra/
Ah, that would explain it. I didn't see the ZipCar graphic on the car, but it was dark out, etc... Thanks for the link.
Here in Portugal all test mules are still on the run, providing real data for Toyota and some other companies involved.
Since they have different batteries, software, electronics those demo cars aren't really testing anything for production phv anymore They probably make great test mules for some university though for other batteries. They are nice cars though, and it would be ashame if they crushed them like a lot of demonstration vehicles.
I'd heard talk from one of the bay area Toyota insiders that the companies leasing the test PiPs would be allowed to do buyouts, rather than just just returning them to Toyota. I really really wanted to get our business on that list of preferred companies. Never happened. Anyway, that buyout talk seems to have gone away. Too bad.
