Prius acceleration characteristics off the line compared to conventional engines and transmissions

Yup, it feels like driving a turbo car with massive turbo lag. I just don't understand why the rest of the people praise the instand torque. Because I have a PiP, it doesn't affect me much. Most of my stop and go driving is in EV mode.

 

Your Prius has a problem then. Mine at 114,000 miles in PWR mode will snap your head back from a dead stop. No hesitation, shutter, or jerking. My fiancee's 2010 with 100K+ miles performs just as good. We recently took her's on a 3000 miles, which included large cities such as Chicago, Albany NY and Springfield MA. There were plenty of mashing the gas, then the accelerator due to the traffic. In heavy traffic I did turn off ECO Mode, but I didn't feel the need to use PWR mode to keep up with "big boys", lol. We were also heavily loaded down with 5 of us in the car and enough luggage for all of us for the 9 day trip we were on. Only twice on the trip did I feel the need to completely floor it in order to blend in with oncoming traffic.
Once additional note, for a portion of the trip we needed enough space for 8 people so we rented a 2014 from a Toyota dealer. I drove the rental and my fiancee drove her car. The new 2014 drove very similar to our 2010s. I did like the backup camera and satellite radio though....

 

I try to alleviate it by starting off slowly in EV to give the ICE time to start up while I'm already rolling. I call it "hybrid push-starting". Same idea as rolling down a hill and popping the clutch on a manual transmission vehicle to crank it.

 

Hard for me to complain. Yeah, speeding up at interstate speeds seems problematic if you don't "floor it" (seems you really need max output from the ICE to handle it as the Prius is always trying to conserve fuel consumption). However, the car is quite "perky" when speeding up from lower speeds...often surprising to me.

Of course, my old daily driver was a Mazda B3000 pickup. Lacked any real acceleration (unless you floored it in lower gears), but it could tow like a champ. It just wasn't set up for acceleration.

 

No, there really aren't.

speed = distance / time.
acceleration = change in speed (velocity actually) / time.

Nothing subjective about it.

 

The subjectivity is in the frame of reference. 0-100 mph on a cafe bike vs. 0-100 mph in a commercial jet going down the runway is a huge difference. Math isn't subjective, everything else is.

 

Huh? That makes no sense. 1) We are talking about mathematical concepts. 2) How does the 'frame of reference' change when we are talking about directly comparing two cars? Should we ask if one car is fast compared to a bike, and the other slow compared to a plane? What would that get us?

 

Well for a car that is effectively always in "top gear" i think the acceleration off the line is quite good. Try putting your normal step transmission ICE car in 5th gear and trying to launch from a stop, maybe not so much faster now.

 

Stratman is a salesperson by his prior posts. He might use terms and ideas from science but his meaning is at best fuzzy and has little in common with science.

When he says 'frame of reference' he probably means expectations.

 

Not a salesperson at all. My degrees are in electronics and management. I have worked with enough engineers to know that the eductional paradigm they are stuck in doesn't warrant much in the way of imagination or thinking out of a very "strict box".

As far as "frame of reference" goes, I would be dumping in my pants going 120 mph on a motorcycle but sleeping on a plane doing 600 mph.

 

Truly the only thing I don't like in our Honda Fit is the jerky 1st, and to a degree 2nd gear. I love eCVT
So I disagree with the OPs opinion too, but I hesitate to say that his car needs repair. Part of the impression is related to how a person drives. I start off slow and then press the fuel pedal gradually. I won't be surprised to read that OP floors the pedal from stop.

Allow me to guess -- a 2 yr degree from a community college in electronics ?

I have heard that before -- usually from people unable to think logically and with rigor.

I have also heard somewhat similar things from physicists, but you do NOT want to know what they think of managerial types.

Ah, so you direct engineers by company fiat, and then feel superior because in your experience they are linear.

And your scientific acumen is commensurate with ending scientific education at a CC. This does not make you stupid, but it does limit your understanding of the physical world. And as I said earlier, it explains why you use scientific terms ... loosely.

Don't take my comments personally -- as I proved in another thread that touched on thermodynamics, I am pretty ignorant myself.

 

Oh my.... college and degrees of any sort gets your foot in the door. The "real" learning begins when you get a job and start a family. To say. "limit your understanding of the physical world." by not going to the "right school" or have the "right degree" is an arrogant comment which shows how narrow minded you are with an exaggerated sense of ones own opinion/importance to go along with your egotistical superiority complex. Go back to your frat house and drink it up, because it's you that doesn't have a clue about the real world and what it takes to get real things done.
If this results in this being my last post ever on Prius Chat, so be it. But I will not allow a statement so arrogant to go without a proper right back at you!

 

I'm done here. I have requested my account be cancelled. Good luck to those who deserve it. Get a life to those who think they are somehow superior.

 

Oh my, the drama.

 

"How can I always maintain my belief that I am right, if people insist that things have exact meanings, and there is no room for wiggling into something I can claim is subjective?"

Being wrong, (and I am, frequently) is the ONLY way to get smarter. We have a saying in my house, "Cherish your mistake." Pull it toward you, and hug it. Extract all the information, and embarrassment from it that you can, so that you are able and motivated to not repeat it. This morning my first job is to figure out why the boards I cut last night are 1/2" or so too short. Then I need to find the process error that allowed that to happen. Then I need to fix both.

 

As someone who has driven diesels most of his life and now an hybrid for the first time, I must say I am very impressed with acceleration. I rarely use it, but using power mode you can easily keep up with a 3 liter TDI for a few seconds. The car is not made for it, there are much better cars made for that, but it's nice to know you have that power when you need it. My only wish for future hybrids would be a much better electromotor so you can take off using only the electromotor. I tried using hybrid eco mode from standstill, but it's impossible without being a dick holding up traffic. Still, very impressive that a hybrid can keep up with big diesels from standstill.
I am disappointed though that the ICE rpm / power output ratio seems to be a bit off. If you floor it when you're at highway speeds, to pass a car for example, the engine revs loudly put the power output seems minimal. If you accelerate normally, the gas pedal about halfway, you get much more power with lower ICE rpm. I can't figure out what's going on there. I was under the impression the engine gave max power at higher rpms when you floor it.