Premium vs Advanced

Blue Magnetism in Advanced checking in, and I don't regret mine. Your practical side will always be saying, "Yeah but it's more money and I could live without it plus I have to pay for warranties..." and then there's the reality when you decided to step down to a Premium when you kind of wish you had the Advanced for one reason or another. So, I agree, get the very best Prime that you can afford. What Advanced has over Premium, and what I think about it:

1. Integrated LED fog lights and LED accent lights: Pretty sweet.
2. Rain-sensing variable intermittent windshield wipers: Works fine, less annoying than manual intermittent.
3. JBL system: This thing is a beast! It's like hooking up your music to your own personal IMAX theatre. Calls come in crisp as well. Compared to premium audio (when I had my Prius c), I find more dynamic range and much smoother bass on this JBL.
4. Remote climate app on the phone: Must have, super handy and useful, for those hot or cold starts.
5. Heated steering wheel: Could be better, it works after a minute, but the top and bottom of the wheel stays chilly for a while.
6. Auto-dimming mirror: Convenient, no more "flipping the switch" - which I worry other drivers may see and misinterpret as a middle finger.
7. Cargo area heavy sliding tonneau cover: Nice, but it's extra weight and I remove it from the car.
8. HUD: This is probably my favorite. I wanted to take a higher-res pic, but this is all that my phone can do, search on YouTube for better quality:

9. Intelligent Clearance Sonar: Super useful, particularly when parking, pulling close to a vehicle, and backing close to the vehicle behind you. But doesn't help tell you if the front of your car is about to nick the curb or a bump. You still have to judge that.
10. Intelligent Parking Assist: At first I was like "Why bother...?" but in a parking lot, I've found that it does a better job of keeping the car midway between two adjacent cars and bisects their angle, so if one car is off, yours looks normally aligned. This minimizes the probably that someone will swing their door open and whomp/ding your car.
11. Blind Spot Monitor: Nice to have.
12. Rear Cross-Traffic Alert: Really nice to have, especially for diagonal parking spaces. In general, I wish it would tell me *which* corner traffic was coming from.

Note: When using a car wash, go to a touch-less car wash where you can park your car and let the machine go around your car. If you don't have that nearby and have to be on a track, then you need to turn off rain-sensing wipers and all of the sonar stuff or the car will alert you when the sprayer washes. By the way, I've already had the car through a touch-less car wash (park it) and the sensors all still work after it's over.

Also the Premium and Advanced have the auto-on/off super bright beams, which work 95% of the time and again no manual controls.

By the time it's all over with, you'll be glad to have spent the extra money on the auto conveniences and extra controls.

 

Go for the Advanced, yes you do deserve it.

The power seat makes adjustments just right.

Tried out the heated steering wheel the other day on a really cool morning, and now it’s my new must have. It’s instantaneous.

The “leather” seats aren’t really leather and don’t act like it. You don’t slip as much and they neither feel too hot or too cold.

The sonar parking sensors really helps you get comfortable with the car fast when I parked it for the first time in my garage.

The Safety Connect is really cool and lets you manage the car from just about anywhere with your cell phone. You can also send destinations to the Nav before you get in the car from your phone.

The HUD is a rather nice touch. Could I have lived without it? Yeah, but there are times when it helps keep your eyes on the road.

The automatic wipers are great and the auto dimming mirror is good, but I also use the Homelink built into the mirror to open the garage door which just puts icing on the cake. Almost can’t wait for the really cold weather to try out the Climate Prep while it’s still in the garage.

Have yet to try out the rear parking assist or the parallel parking assist. The car is seemingly infinitely configurable, I changed the open door lock from just the driver's side to all doors.

Unsupervised!

 

I was going to buy the Advanced but no dealership wanted to budge on the price, I was going to get the same discount buying the advanced as I would buying the premium. If I was able to get a $3,000 difference between the two trims, I would have bit the bullet.

I have owned Hondas all my life, and I always find it easier to negotiate the price down on the high end trim vs the entry and mid because most people wouldn't pay luxury price for a Honda. I find the $4,000 increase between the mid and top trim to be too big of a jump compared to what I am used to. I feel like Toyota should have included a fourth trim that has all the convenience/comfort options of the advanced like remote climate, auto-dimming, JBL sound system, rain sensing wipers, and heated steering wheel.

I settled with a premium, and I feel confident that I can live without the extra $4,000 options that the advanced trim has to offer. I traded in my 2016 Accord V6 Touring because it made financial sense with all the rebates, credits, and gas saving the Prius had to offer. By buying a higher end trim, it would take longer to get a return on my trade.

Two features that I will miss from my accord would be memory seats and lane keeping assist (lane centering). My wife and I can both use the accord without having the readjust the seats every time we get in and the lane keeping assist helps a lot with fatigue when driving long distance. I'm surprised that these features are not offered for the Prius Prime, and if it was then the $4000 jump would have been easier to swallow.

 

That is a reasonable, and indeed the steering-wheel buttons do help for audio. In a different conversation here, somebody pointed out pressing and holding the Mode button to pause. As I mentioned there, I do a lot of audio quiz exercises, so that helps a lot!

I did the voice-command calibration a while back, but haven’t done much with audio commands yet, or not on our P.Prime anyway. For a short time on our older 2009 regular Prius, I used them, but didn’t really find them ... “addictively useful,” for lack of a better phrase. From what I’ve seen of it here:

and from my 2009, the commands are pretty cumbersome, multi-step processes. I’m presume, however that we can learn really-specific command grammars to make the process much quicker.

I was going to ask if anybody knew of a short list of short voice commands we cans do on the P.Prime (i.e., single command grammars that do the whole job rather than multiple prompts to accomplish a single action). However, I just now found this:

I googled that a while back, but only got a boatload of generic Prius and Toyota aspecific marketing hooey... From what I can see, there aren’t so many single-step commands that can be immediately acted upon, but the above might at least be a start.


iPhone ? Pro

 

As I drove the Prime Plus around town, putting it through my normal daily routine and such, I found myself screaming at the Voice Command "You're completely USELESS!" I hope when I get my own, I'll teach it how to respond to my commands. If not, I hope I can find The Prius Whisperer...

 

The voice commands work best in a quiet environment, make sure your windows are closed and the air conditioning fan is not very loud. As you get used to it, you'll be able to figure out which of these things affect the voice command the most, and make some compromise. It's just when you first start, you want to be in the optimum setting. Remember, yelling doesn't help at all. Speak in a clear, calm, well-paced voice. I assume that you have "trained" the system properly per the instructions, prior to beginning all this!
To call somebody, just say "call Bob Smith, cell. To tune radio, say tune 1070 a.m. it's pretty straightforward!
I believe you can set the temperature in the car by just saying "set temperature to 73°." Occasionally I have found that the system can screw up, you just exit the system completely and start again. This happens very rarely; it may have happened to me maybe twice in 6 months. Good luck! FYI, my Prime is an Advanced.

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I kept saying "navigate" and the voice kept replying something like "the USB is in use" or "there is no home destination"
I enjoyed using it for the most part, and I only yelled at her when she told me for the 6th time that she couldn't navigate.
I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. Just working on the dealerships now to get a price I like.
Thank you for your input. It's nice to feel so welcome in this community

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

The short "trigger" commands are not readily found. I don't use the navigation; my Garmin Voice Command Nuvii 3490 LMT(newer model has superseded this) is totally superior to the much more expensive built in GPS systems.
Study the command screen and submenus after triggering with the steering wheel "Talk" button. I got it to work a couple of times but it was tedious and slow. Go Garmin Voice Command; you'll thank me the longest day you live!!. It fits perfectly on the lower left corner of your windshield!!

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The voice prompt system is too structured and unnatural to me. I just use the buttons

 

Based upon my admittedly-brief experience with Prius voice commands (I diddled with it a little more yesterday), it does a fair job of recognizing the words I speak, at least once trained, but it has a pretty limited palette of things it can do with those words. That is, its natural-speech recognition capability is weak.

If it were Siri (or Tesla), you could improvise something like, “take me to <contact>’s house.” Instead, with the Prius, you have to use certain very specific, precisely-preprogrammed command keywords.

You can’t say, “take me to,” but you have to specifically say, “drive to” (speaking hypothetically; I don’t remember what exact it’s limited palette of commands are off the top of my head).

Or you have to engage in a conversation:

“Choose a category of commands.”
“Audio.”
“Choose ‘change source,’ ‘tune to,’ ‘play play list’...
“Play playlist.”
“Choose playlist.”
...
(Again, that’s a semi-hypothetical illustration; I don’t remember the specific command breakdowns it uses.)

Relatedly, yesterday, I tried “play playlist <playlist name>” and it responded, “your playlists are being prepared for voice commands; please try again later” or something close to that.


iPhone ? Pro

 

I have somewhat better pics, to show the HUD in color. Took in the dark to show the color, but these are difficult to capture even with a DSLR due to the 1/6th second exposure. (Note: I took these pictures in a well controlled setting and with no traffic.)

Green for acceleration is below, red if you go to PWR:




Blue for regen. braking... as I took the exposure, the EV range changed from 35.8 to 35.9:

 

Oh yeah! Advanced is the way to go. Thank you all for your nudges to remind me that I do deserve the Advanced. I haven't even had it 48 hours and already I am in love with this car.
I'm also glad I had the opportunity to rent the Plus for a few days. I have no regrets in getting the Advanced.
This is my first Prius, and my first car since my 2007 Outback that was just your basic car that got me from A to B.
I didn't think I'd like nor need the HUD, but my 15 mile commute to work has 12 speed limit changes and that display is awesome! Heated steering wheel is really nice to have.
I figured out why she didn't like my request to "navigate" - I need to say "navigation" (SMH...)
The ONLY thing I don't love about this car is how far I have to reach to turn the seat warmer off and on.
I got Blue Magnetism and I can't stop looking at it, it's so gorgeous.

 

Glad the extra perspective helped.

 

Yes, thank you! The extra perspective from Prius Chat definitely helped. I can't wait to go for a drive again and explore more features.
I don't love driving, like some folks do, which is part of the reason why it was a tough choice. If I could, I would live without a car entirely, which I have done for periods in my life. While I could take public transit to work, it takes almost 2 hours each way to go 12 miles, versus 30 minutes driving, parking is free, and we have free charging stations and a plethora of outlets if the Chargepoint spots are taken. So I drive in style and comfort, and it costs me 12 cents to get to work and back (I calculated my home electricity costs) (and my home electricity is entirely from wind, an option we have in my area).
Life is good.

 

Congrats and welcome aboard.

 

We test drove an Advanced for a while yesterday.
We are contemplating advanced vs premium. Even with local discounts, price difference is $3800.

For us, having the larger screen, navigation, heated seats, is what are must haves.

I am disappointed there is no rear AC vents

Still debating if Advanced has anything we can't live without.

We didn't look at the Premium at dealer, we should go back back and spend time withe one.

 

I really like the automatic wipers and especially the intelligent collision sonar and rear cross-traffic alert. The latter two have caught things that I myself did not see. Granted, it’s possible that I might have caught them a second or two later than it caught them, but then again, maybe not!


iPhone ? Pro

 

Thank you kindly.

The wiper isn't an issue for me. My other vehicles have them, and it never rains here.

I do like blind spot monitoring and HUD.

 

Oh yeah, I forgot that Premium doesn’t have the HUD!

Definitely! I use it *all* *the* *time*!

If or when I “graduate” to a Tesla Model 3, I will miss the HUD. Then again, as Elon Musk pointed out, who needs a HUD when the car is driving itself (or at least allegedly eagle-eyeing the speed limit)?


iPad ? Pro