Ok... so how many people carefully plan their EV/ICE mix in order to maximize their energy usage/MPG on a commute? And how many people have pulled into a coffee shop, turned the car off, gone inside (usually because the drive through line is a mile long), gotten back into your car and forgotten to switch it back to the desired mode only to realize that you've now shot your EV wad when you feel the tell-tale thunk of the ICE starting. Sigh...
Absolutely never. But then again I won’t have my new car for another week. You’ve given me something to watch for. Thanks, J
you'd be amazed how many clamored for ev only start up when toyota was designing the pip. customization of default would be nice though.
Not often. My daily drive is short enough and all on rural backroads, I don't worry about switching back and force between EV and HV. I just run EV until it runs out of juice, then ICE kicks in.
Yep, has happened twice. On a road trip where I wanted to save the EV portion for city driving at the other end. Pulled into a rest area to take care of "personal business" and then got back on the freeway. Miles down the road I noticed the low EV range remaining. Happened twice, at the SAME rest area
LOL Hmmm... might want to see your doctor about your urinary frequency. MIght have BPH, OAB or some other genitourinary disorder. )
Frequently- I live in an apartment so I cannot charge at home, so I have to ration my EV use to last between weekends when I change at my in-laws. EV is great for quick errands. But one trip in the highway and all the EV is gone the rest of the week. —>Toyota should allow a customized default in their info-tainment center. That’s the best use of that quagmire of a NAV screen
Simple - I drive all EV to work. Never - never had a cup of coffee, never stop on the way to work for anything anyway. If the car didn't default to EV, I would consider that a MAJOR defect because that would mean the engine would start and go through the warmup cycle before I had a chance to stop it. Since 99% of my in-city driving is all EV, that would be a major bummer.
The #1 benefit to the Prime defaulting to EV mode is to reduce emissions for short trips. Since one of Toyota's main goals with the Prius (as stated by Toyota themselves over the years) is to reduce emissions, it makes total sense for Toyota to make EV mode the default now that it finally has a model (the Prime) with the ability to offer the full driving experience (flooring the accelerator, high speeds, etc.) in EV. After all, the warm-up cycle is the most-polluting, least-efficient part of any modern gas engine's operation.
Sure, that makes sense for some of the drives, but when you have multi-hour commutes (into NYC from... well, basically anywhere), that cup of coffee sometimes sounds really good. In any case, things like this should simply be a configuration option. If a tesla had an engine, I would expect that THEY would have made it into a configuration option. Which brings up another sore point.. (not to hijack my own thread, but...). Why don't they make all those damn ODB configuration entries simply configurable via the GUI? they made them configurable in the first place but there should be no reason you need to go to a dealer to have them changed (and potentially changed back should you decide you liked the default better). Many car manufacturers haven't realized quite yet that they have "power users" who are more than happy to use their cars as much as toys as cars, and will happily pay for that ability.
That's a really good point. It's just a matter of programming, now that they have the touch screens. They could program all the user configuration options into the touch screen. But it might take the addition of a little more memory to the screen's hardware for those interfaces. A minor expense in the grand scheme of things.
