Finest, greenest, & safest taxicab in the world. The story of cab 2545

Of course it does. When I stopped using my car for a taxi I would commute 25 miles each way, of which a good 20 miles was a continuous drive with no need to brake. So 40 miles a day where I barely touched the brake pedal.

Now I remember driving in the taxi job in a busy town with small, short UK streets where I'd be on and off and on and off the brakes all the time. That is nothing to do with not looking ahead. You've seen the pictures of UK streets above and even taking it easy you can't help people walking out in front of you or cars stopping suddenly. In one mile I could have used the brakes 30 or 40 times. Times that by 100-130 miles a day or more and I've used the brakes a lot. Compare that to the commute use I refered to earlier where I'd barely use them in 40 miles and you can see how I wore mine out in 30k miles. Simple. And the dealers weren't replacing them before they were due. I had them changed when they were down to 1mm which is a requirement of the taxi licence.

The Prius was better than other automatic cars used as a taxi in my town where you'd be lucky to get 15k miles out of a set of pads.

 

What surprises me (and makes me say that something doesn't add up) is your fuel consumption at 5.6 l.
I mean, you use up brake pads five times faster than me but your fuel consumption is only 25% higher!!!
I don't know!

I can comprehend that you were driving at very very low speeds where prius does not use regen to brake, so you have very
short pad life, but why isn't the fuel consumption at least double of what I do?

 

I did very low speeds. You've seen the sort of streets I drove on. My average speed after a 10 hour shift could be 12 mph. The engine would be off for a lot of that, crawling in very slow traffic. I'll find my old fuelly stats so you can see for sure.



Click the banner to see the stats over the 12 months (or so) from 2009 to 2010. I got bored of logging after one year.

34,000 hard miles (54,000 km) over a 12 month period when new.

Note: I don't care if you think something doesn't add up. I'm not going to show my invoices for brakes but you are more than welcome to search through my previous posts and threads showing when I got them fitted. Check other members on here who will verify my use patterns over the last 5 years.

 

Please, don't go to any trouble for me. The numbers you have already given are enough.

Do you know how the gen2 taxis hold in your area?

 

Thanks for your info and for great (and hilarious !) pics. They depict the reality of European driving which most of us don't have a grasp of unless we have had to drive over there.

Coming smack at that fire engine (?) must have been a "situation" !

 

Er the roads plus the way the Scots drive them would explain high brake wear. At least my experience was "Flying Scots" all over the Highlands, the Lowlands, and as far as I could tell the Midlands also! Those 1-lane , two way highways with the occasional "passing places" to avoid head-on collisions were very, very exciting in the worst possible way. The extra-grippy brakes on our rental car were much appreciated, but such brakes would certainly wear more quickly, especially when you panic stop from 200-kph like on the German Autobahnen.

 

229K of taxi miles is like a million consumer miles! And if you ever travel into the real mountains west of I70&C470 that will definitely kill it quicker.

They never fail when convenient lol. Any symptoms before hand? Decrease in mileage the past couple weeks or anything?

 

I have read reports of original Toyota 2Gen HV batteries been quoted 1700eur (2100USD), fitted by dealer, over the last 6 months.
May I ask, are you experiencing that fail sooner than other taxi Prii?

 

As a retired taxi cab owner, I know! No time is a good time. It will all work out! Good luck!

 

Looks like what the european taxi drivers were saying had some merit.

 

Nah, we were all making it up. Secret employees of GM just out to discredit the Prius

On our smaller, narrower and slower European roads, the HV battery gets deeper cycles and thus more likely to fail earlier - as reported previously by Euro cabbies. But I've learnt that you can't criticize the Prius on this forum.

My alarm bells were ringing back in 2009 when Toyota UK only offered the gen3 with a 60k miles HV battery warranty, reduced from 100k with the gen2. That has since changed, but the cost of the Prius has increased significantly and sales have bombed - projected at 2600 for all of 2014! Toyota now offer unlimited mileage, 11 year warranty* on the HV battery so long as you have the car serviced by Toyota.

* Extended in multiples of 10k miles/12 months.

 

Many inquired, me included, the reasons behind the first failures reported. Socrates was the "bull fighter" back then, getting some statistics on answer, but not to discredit. It was becoming evident that Greek Prii suffered earlier, and heat was pointed as possible cause.

 

Now you have me worried. I have just hit 200k kilometres, and, so far, no battery issues. I have noted that the battery appears to not be holding its charge as long as previously, but have not been able to really confirm this. I used to be able to run, on an early morning run to the airport, a section of the route entirely on battery. Only a couple of kms, run at 60 kmph. Lately, it seems that I am running out of battery charge about 75% of the distance, but there have been too many variables that have impacted on the situation - little things like more traffic, and getting more red lights that have forced me to then use the petrol engine to get back up to speed.

I am writing up my experiences to date and will be adding a new thread into the Gen III main forum shortly.

 

What do you mean EV stopped working? If you pressed the EV button it wouldn't go in to EV mode, no matter at what SOC or temperature of the battery?

Amazing that it lasted additional 50 miles, was it running in some sort of "battery protection mode".

 

Cab2545, at what point(s) did you have the battery reconditioned before the battery failed?