Brand new Prime. Range shows 22 miles after fully charged

For me it's still going up, 36.7 this morning when I left for work, 37.1 after charging at work... loving it

 

still kinda cold here (48 F) so here's hoping to see what happens when it's 70, 80, 90?

 

Today April 22, 2017 EV: 32.5. Went to another dealership to get estimate on damaged taillight went 27.5 miles round trip with 4.1 miles left. Yesterday.

 

You're doing great! Welcome to a whole new world. Sounds like you're surface street driving and/or driving on congested freeways; those are the places I get my best mileage. If you use A/C, your mileage will probably drop down a little over 4%. Congratulations and enjoy!

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

Wow, that cold weather/defroster combo really hits you poor guys hard. I didn't realize how bad it is. I'm just a spoiled Socal brat who's lived out here for over 60 years. We really don't fully appreciate how nice we have it!

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

after having my Prime now for 3.5 weeks, and a steadily increasing EV range, came to 40.0 EV range this morning, very happy with that, and yes, I'm one of the spoiled SoCal brats

 

Jealous here on the East coast.

 

Distance 26 miles To: 133mpg Uphill / From: 188 mpg Downhill
Mode: Blended. Started each trip in HV mode

 

Hey man, your blood sugar must be very low, har, har! And no A/C for you!

.

 

I drive a Chevy Volt now, but before you pelt me with tomatoes, we also experience similar things here, and folks at the gm-volt forums and the chevy volt owners page often also ask us "why am I getting less EV range than the EPA estimate?"

We jokingly refer to the EV range estimator as a "guess-o-meter", because it changes drastically, based on your past driving.

Not sure if Toyota released a "how to maximize EV range" video yet, but there's three main things to factor in. GM calls them the 3 T's, Terrain, Temperature, Technique:

Terrain: A hilly commute will sap more range than one on flatter roads. Depending on where you live and work, there may not be much you can do about this, but if you can find a flatter route, that can help even if the drive is longer overall, provided the flatter route isn't a high speed limit area like a freeway.

Temperature: Not sure how the Prius Prime handles it, but in the Volt, cold temps kill EV range. The first reason is that batteries are just less efficient in the cold, just like gas engines are.

The second is that in the Volt at least, the heater draws a lot of power, so it'll quickly drain the battery on a long enough drive.

We just accept that we'll have less range, though some will go to extremes by not using the heater, and instead rely on heated seats along with bundling up. I don't advocate that though, as it sucks to drive while cold.

Hot temps can also reduce range, but the a/c uses less power than the heater does, so it's not as big of a hit as cold temps.

Technique: This is basically how you drive. If you're a lead foot, do jackrabbit starts, and stop at the last possible moment before reaching a stop sign/light, then you'll get much less range than if you drove conservatively.

Higher speeds require more energy, so the faster you're going, the more energy you'll need first get up to that speed, but then to also maintain it. That's one big reason why hybrids and EV's have less range on the freeway vs doing slower city driving.

Ideally you'll want to go the speed limit, and if there's no one immediately behind you, a little under the limit. You'll also want to utilize "pulse & glide" or P&G, which means you go up to a certain speed, then let off on the gas, and then press it gently to prevent regen, so that the car can coast on its momentum for a while. Once you drop 5-10 mph, then speed up again, and repeat.

P&G takes a little practice, but once you've mastered it, you'll notice a significant boost in efficiency. But at the same time, try not to do this if there's cars behind you. You'll infuriate them to no ends by constantly speeding up and slowing down this way. So I only recommend doing this if there's no one right behind you.

So, with those lessons out of the way, basically the further you can go using less kWh, the bigger the range estimate will be. I'm sure the Prime works the same way as the Volt in that it takes your last few driving sessions, and then calculates it to give you an estimate of how far you could go on EV. So long as you're not driving drastically different each time, it should be pretty accurate.

And with the Prime having a much higher MPGe than the Volt (133 vs 106), you should definitely be able to get a lot out of the battery if you can maximize driving it efficiently.

 

Prius Prime has a winter advantage over Volt with it's more efficient heater. In fact, the vapor-injected heat-pump Toyota provides is currently the industry leading tech for dealing EV range reduction due to cabin warming. Another handy cold-temp feature Toyota has delivered is the ability to direct air-flow. If there are not passengers in back, it doesn't blow warmed air back there.

Prius Prime also comes with standard heated-seats and the ability to program the timer to pre-condition the cabin prior to driving. Getting warmth directly from electricity while plugging in is a handy feature all the automakers offers. It's really nice. I believe many offer battery-warming too, as Toyota now does. Using a warmed battery overcomes the added electrical resistance lithium-based batteries have to deal with when temperatures are below freezing.

Lastly, there's the heated steering-wheel in the advanced model. That certainly isn't necessary, but it sure is nice. Another advanced feature is being able to control the heater, front-defroster, and rear-defroster remotely (from your phone) while still plugged in.

In addition to all that, though it hasn't been cold enough for me to try it yet, is the possibility of taking advantage of added engine load from charge-mode to provide engine-generated heat more efficiently. It will obviously take some work to determine if the resulting EV from the higher RPM is truly a better use of gas. But one certainty is that will provide engine-generated heat faster, since Toyota provided that with the first generation plug-in using defrost-mode.

I haven't seen any data suggested that applies to the newer generation of Toyota hybrid system. Basically, the upgraded software does that for you automatically with no detectable driving impact.

 

The estimate for mine has been rising...



That's after 3 weeks of ownership and 2 road trips. Spring temperatures have been climbing too.

 

nice. mines at 12.9

 

Your temperature?!

.

 

I'm noticing a little over 4% hit for A/C.
When you get ready to leave on your first outing, with a full charge, write that number down. Turn on the A/C, and you should see a new, smaller EV range, which will be a little over 4% lower than the original range. So if original range was 35 EV, with A/C on, it will drop to about 33.6 EV.

.

 

So the fact that I live in the NW and temps have been hovering in the 50's and I drive up and down hils mine has dropped to around 19.2EV.
Is that normal and can I expect it to start to increase when the weather warms up?

 

Yeah, you've got two things hitting you at the same time: cold temperature and hills. Also to get the ridiculous EV-only mileage I get of approximately 36 miles, I drive like a snail on crutches!

.

 

Mine shows 26 as of today and this is after 3 days of driving it with a round trip commute between SD and LA (approx 260 miles total).

 

That's about right. How fast are you driving on the freeway? Are you running A/C?
When you're able to put a lot of relatively slow (40mph) surface-street miles on your car, you should see a significant increase in EV only range.

.

 

Yes to AC and I average between 65-70 on the freeway I'd say. I haven't put much on surface streets but my commute home is typically in stop and go traffic on the 405 so I expect to kill it there.

 

Yeah I get great mileage during SMOOTH slow stop & go on the 405 & 5 fwys.
The 65-70mph & A/C will unfortunately hurt your average. I've noticed that A/C cuts you a little bit over 4%, but the whole idea is to be comfortable while we're stuck driving all those miles. Are you enjoying your HOV stickers, to dodge the peasants?


.