This one has got me scratching my head. As I haven't had my plug in long as I don't get much time to really drive it. Has any other plug in driver found out that there prius actually moves like a rocket. A few days ago I was put in a situation where I needed to overtake. So I switched off everything to do with economy and planted the accelerator. The over take was performed a lot quicker than I expected. I thought where did that come from. So I deceded to try a few things out the other evening. Firstly acceleraton. From standstill at the lights. Again off with everything and a 2 pedal launch. Floor both pedals and As green comes up flick off the brake and keep your foot planted into the floor. Errm 60mph comes up very quickly but it keeps pulling like a rocket. Then wham... 100mph. Before I take my foot off. I've had loads of cars even with 3 litres etc but this plugin is quicker. I try a 30mph rolling start. Floor it again and it pulls hard. You can really feel the electric motor adding loads more torque. Like a turbo. Again zips up to 90mph without any trouble. Finally a faster plant. This time from 50mph. The engine revs right up and you can again feel that surge of power from the motor. Suddenly 60. 70. 80. 90. 100.110 then I take my foot off. This prius actually is really fast. I haven't taken it up to top wack as I don't want to get nicked. Ok when I say fast. It's not a Nissan GTR but I'm talking of 3 litre performance as it's very quick. I've had 3 priuses and none of them move like this one. Two generation 2s and one generation 3. I know it does not handle very well as it corners like a boat but I plan to change that in the future. I don't know if the plug ins are giving a lot more electrical power than the normal 1.8s with the ordinary Nimh battery. I should book a rolling road dyno to see what's going on. As this is silly. Is mine a one off Monday car or is there others out there that fly?
The PIP's power specs are the same as for the normal Prius. And the Pwr/Eco button is supposed to only change the "law" of the accelerator (torque versus percentage depression curve), not the ability to reach the highest torque when floored. So maybe you DO have a "special" car, or some protective limitation is not working! The 0-60 time shouldn't be better than about 10 seconds. You say "very quickly", but get someone to time it with you.
I have done the time thingy and the 1st time was late 7 seconds. Then the second was mid 8 seconds. Difficult when your trying to drive and press the stopwatch. But the 0 to 100 mph was around 17seconds. But it does eat battery like a wolf with a steak. It drives and pulls like a normal prius with the City ev only switched on. It zips up to 60 like a little car with no engine. When fully charged it shows 11.2 miles but a few quick accelerations and it's gone within 5. It also eats battery when giving it welly with the engine combined. But press economy and it gets very lazy all the zip disappears. Whilst engaging warp drive the engine revs up like a hovercraft and the motor whistles. The back of the car sinks right down and it pulls like a train. Not round corners tho. It hates corners. It's handling is terrible. As the suspension is so soft. I have a friend who has a Subaru Impreza standard. Or stock as you say in the states. he has followed me and has had to give his welly to keep up. We've had a go from the lights and yes he beat me (as expected) but he didn't eat me for breakfast. I wasn't far behind. Only a few car lengths. I'm thinking now this is probably not normal then. Something's going on.
As pointed out by an earlier poster, the Eco/Normal/PWR settings have no effect on the amount of of power you get if you floor the throttle pedal. All those settings do is vary the "power requested vs. throttle displacement" curve, and all of the curves end up at the same point when the throttle is floored. The Eco setting also effects some climate control variables, but that is not relevant to one's acceleration when flooring the throttle. Note that the OP is in Europe (or the UK), since he mentions "City" mode. The PiP there has City mode rather than PWR mode. City mode aggressively suppresses starting the ICE unless you really floor it. This is to comply with zero-emission zones in many European cities. Along with City mode comes the apparent lack of what is called in the US a "boost" mode where both the electric motor and the ICE are providing power at the same time. The programming is different, so the OPs experience may not be consistent with what we see in the US.
When I stamp to the floor the car looses City and Evo modes and just goes well. How well I don't know as I am not too interested. as Rolls Royce used to say 'adequate'.
That's a nice explanation. Not being aware of Toyota delivering 2 different configurations of PiP has contributed to a variety of misunderstandings about what the system is actually capable of and intent of the first model. Flexibility has always been the key. In fact, that's why it was so easy to augment with increased battery-capacity. Those who wish to undermine twist that to appear to be a desperate attempt to redesign a system to do something it was never intended. We know that isn't the case. Toyota has carefully considered mainstream need and avoided succumbing to hype. Collecting extensive real-world data collection from Europe for CITY operation and from the United States for BOOST operation positions Toyota well for the next-gen model. That will go a long way toward the ultimate goal of delivering a profitable configuration for the masses.
let's put it this way, i just drove from florida to mass and never exceeded the speed limit. pulled 46 mpg in my wife's hycam.
IDK if it is for all european Prii, but the ones with km/h odometer have a big misread of the speed. 100 km/h indicated is only 94 km/h in real life. That is about one second of acceleration.
I have no idea about other countries but for ALL Toyotas in the UK the speedometer over-reads by exactly 10% but not the odometer which is accurate. (odometers read distance, speedometers read velocity.) I understand it is some legal thing to ensure that drivers don't accidentally speed, so the speedometer calibration may over-read but not under-read.
