Prius prime in Québec

Bonjour,

J'ai ma Prius Prime depuis 5 semaines maintenant. Il y aurait au moins 144 Prime au Québec tous vendues en juin sans compter juillet. Pour les rendez-vous électrique, peut-être contacter l'AVEQ et pourquoi pas à l'Orange Julep

 

congrats and welcome, all the best!

 

Leave in Beaconsfield Qc Got my Prime June 1 Already 2600 km Love it

 

With the cold weather in Montreal, in the winter, you guys will seriously get affected by lower EV range... plus I think the battery can only go down to -30C before it could be damaging...

 

Toyota a un centre d'expertise pour grand froid à Timmins en Ontario pour tester les voitures lors de grand froid.

 

You -must- post in French first, then, in smaller font, in English, when posting in "La Belle Province".

The Canadian Prime has the battery heater enabled to protect it, temp. controlled of course. But only when plugged in. I don't think it gets quite cold enough in the St. Lawrence valley area to endanger the battery. Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta not so much! But we can't buy a Prime just yet.

 

Soon may be.

 

all! Took delivery on Aug 30, 2017 of a Prius Prime Technology. Lots of things to learn! Liking it so far. Question: is it possible to have the nav system display the vehicle speed as calculated from GPS, so that I can see how accurate the regular speed display is?

 

Welcome. No, you would need to borrow a Garmin or other stand alone GPS device to compare to.

 

Thank you, Mark57! I'll do that.

For other Quebec owners: I went to use a public charge station a couple of days ago, and was shocked by what I found out. This particular station, by Circuit électrique, charges $2.50 a session. If I made a complete charge of a 0% battery, I would consume about 9.8 kWh, assuming a 90% charging efficiency. At home, that would cost CA$1.00, tax included (Hydro Québec's rate is $0.1026). So I would pay a premium of $1.50 to use the public charging station. If I did not get a full charge, which would be more typical, the difference would be even greater.

Now, what I find interesting is that a full charge would ideally get me 40 km of driving. At the advertised fuel consumption of the Prime (4.3 L/100km for combined city/hwy driving) that would take 1.72 L of gas. At today's gas price of $1.299 in Montreal, to go 40 km in hybrid mode would cost me $2.23, or $0.27 less than getting a full charge at the public station. My savings by burning gas instead of using those public chargers would be even larger in winter, when the EV range will be much shorter, or when the gas prices are lower (today's rate is high because of the long weekend and also refinery closures in Texas due to hurricane Harvey).

What I don't understand is why the public system was set up with a pricing structure that a) disadvantages cars with low charging rates (most plug-in hybrids have level 2 charging rates of 3.3 KW), and b) encourages fossil fuel consumption over electricity from hydro, for fuel efficient vehicles. Why not charge me for the amount of electricity used, instead of a fee for a charging session?

I am aware that the per-session fee is not the only type of fee used by Circuit électrique stations. Some charge $1 per hour, billed by the minute. Again, this penalizes drivers with low-charging-rate cars like plug-in hybrids.

I'd appreciate hearing from others on this issue, given that Circuit électrique appears to have a near-monopoly in Quebec, given to it by the provincial government. While I can understand Circuit's desire to maximize profits, at least the government should have structured things to accomplish its stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions!

 

You must not be driving a Prime because 9.8 KW is way too much. Besides that the battery is never 0%

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

"Empty" to "Full" on a Prime is around 6.2kwh. The charging system limits the minimum and maximum state of charge, to enhance the lifetime of the battery. "Empty" is around 20%, "Full" is around 85%.

It sounds like your charging network is really going after pure EV drivers, who don't have the option to use gasoline.

 

Possibly. I used the stated capacity of 8.8 kWh, and a charging efficiency of 90% (losses in the electronics, the cables, and the battery heating or cooling, maybe chemical inefficiencies). It's an estimate. Do you have data on actual energy usage for a charge cycle?

 

We face a similar problem with the BLINK network due in part to Alabama forbidding reselling of electricity. So instead, they charge a fixed rate, parking fee. Small charging cars get screwed while Tesla owners who can use every electron offered make out like bandits. Let me give an example from our downtown, 40 kW, fast DC charger:

• $0.25 for 30 minutes, 20 kWh at full charge
• 18 kWh BMW i3-REx at 6% SOC (nominal minimum) ~= $0.25 / (18 - 1) = $0.015 / kWh
• $0.10 / kWh (nominal rate) ~= $0.25 / 2.5 kWh :: ~86% SOC is break even, more discharged, it saves more
• NOTE: no parking fee outside of parking enforcement hours, 7AM - 5PM

So we have two, plug-in hybrids with different, maximum charge rates using built-in chargers:

• 3.3kW - Prius Prius
• 7.2kW - BMW i3-REx

A fixed, parking rate means the cost per kWh is 7.2 / 3.3 ~= 2.2 times more expensive per kWh with the Prius Prime over the BMW i3-REx. There are times and places where commercial charging rates make gasoline a better deal. My worst experience was taking a lunch break where the slow rate of Prius Prime charge meant I paid for taking the side-trip and got no highway miles to my destination.

Bob Wilson