Is the Prius Prime right for me?

all depends on local discounts.

 

Supposedly it's a $2,000 rebate, but hasn't been implemented yet. NYSERDA has until this April 15th to implement it.


Unsupervised!

 

I have a similar commute -- 90 miles.

In your case, the first 25 miles will be EV and the 75 miles remainder at ~ 55 mpg, or more if you drive under 70 mph. So the 100 miles will use 75/55 = 1.36 gallons. Compare that to the 4 gallons you consume today.

 

I save over $200 a month in gas now days vs my 19 mpg SUV. I don't miss my SUV too much. And I love the adaptive cruise control for my long trips.

 

FWIW, in our case, the difference in mileage against our current car, a Gen-2 Prius, while not insignificant, is not a big factor. We're getting a P.Prime due to a combination of factors, especially: My wife is working on getting her driver's license, so we need a second car ("new first" car actually), our Gen-2 is at over 126Kmiles, I'm now driving ~40 miles round-trip to work which will clobber the Gen-2's remain lifespan in no time, I like driving on electric a lot more than ICEs, and with the additional miles to/from work, the chances of me getting into a wreck go up, so I really want all these new safety features.


iPhone ? Pro

 

The thing you should ask is if you have (or will have) access to cheap power. If not, get the liftback because it will cost you more to plug in than to gas up because the Prius gets such good gas mileage. Seriously, do some analysis on your power bill and rate options. If you are on a tiered rate schedule, plugging in will probably put you into the next higher tier. For me, that was a brutal $.40/kwh. I then installed solar, but probably would have switched to an EV time of use schedule if I didn't, but that would have upped my power costs during the day but would have been better than the tiered schedule. Anyway, look for one or more threads on this. Also, with the Prime, you give up the 5th seating position, spare tire, rear wiper, and some luggage space over the liftback.

 

That's a very reasonable suggestion. In my case, even in the second tier, it's still slightly cheaper, but that's before Austin's $50/year charging program around town, after which it's … about half the cost of gas.

Truthfully though, I want to go EV as much as possible simply because I've rather gotten to dislike ICEs: they're heavy, complicated, noisy, high-maintenance...


iPhone ? Pro