I need to gloat, and it isn't nice to gloat to your friends. So what better place than at Prius Chat? A friend of mine recently bought an Audi A5. He takes frequent drives from San Jose to Los Angeles (about 300 miles) I've talked to him about electric cars and plug-in hybrids and the great mileage I get with the Prius Prime when driving to LA, but he's somewhat of a climate change denier, and, therefore (I'm not sure why this always follows) is very much against electric cars. I know I've mentioned to him in the past how adaptive cruise control makes the drive to LA more relaxing. He didn't get the basic A5, but only the highest end A5 has adaptive cruise control. I, on the other hand, have the basic model Prius Prime and I paid less than 1/2 what he paid for his car. Of course, to be nice, I have to remember never to mention adaptive cruise control again. Instead I come here to... GLOAT
If you include the fuel saving in the picture, it maybe 1/3? And further include the reliability of Prius for low maintenance cost, then it maybe 1/4??? GLOAT
A Model 3 LR will have similar or better performance than the A5 lol. Definitely better midrange (passing) response since it’s instant. Also, not all ACC (adaptive cruise control) are equal. Some are smoother at acceleration and braking then others. I found the Prime to work well (I’m coming from 10 years of ACC on the old Gen 3 Prius which relied only on radar and was jerky or aggressive at times).
This is one reason I don't use DRCC on the Prime. In my experience, the braking and acceleration is just too abrupt; like slamming on the brakes and 'flooring' when it slows down or catch up. Is there some setting that smoothens this out?
The only adjustable setting is the vehicle-to-vehicle distance (Owner’s Manual (PDF), page 411). The longest setting (the default) gives the control system the most time to respond, of course.
Also, some people said ECO mode tends to make the DRCC less aggressive than normal mode. I found the system on my Prime much smoother than the one in my 2010 Prius; the 2010 one worked the way you described with aggressive acceleration. I do drive in ECO mode in my Prime.
I'm usually the slowest vehicle out there (abiding by the speed limit), so rarely would need adaptive cruise. That said: adaptive cruise incorporates autonomous braking? That's a plus, and worth a 10% discount with ICBC* now. * The main provincial insurer, virtually monopoly. You must use them for the liability insurance; for collision you can use other insurers, but I think most stick to one-stop-shopping.
They're independent systems but they use the same radar unit (or laser if you have TSS-C like the Prius c or Yaris). DRCC is useful for certain situations like crawling across the bridges in traffic.
This is my first DRCC vehicle, so I have nothing with which to compare. But for me, even in ECO mode, it's too abrupt unless the traffic is in "stop and creep" mode. I still use it quite a bit, but often override it like when someone pulls in front of me and I can see that they're already pulling away but the car doesn't know it and wants to slam on the brakes.
Nice thread. Beyond loving it generally, I had two occasions to love it yesterday in Thankgiving traffic. First, it's just awesome in stop and go. It handles all the stopping and going, and pretty smoothly at low speeds in EV mode. Second, in a heavy rain it feels like an insurance policy against coming up on someone two fast. The radar has better visibility than me. Why not use it!
Not quite true, I think. I've had it on the shortest setting, and it will start braking far sooner than usual if traffic has abruptly slowed down way ahead of me. In the shortest follow mode, it usually doesn't start slowing down as quickly as the farthest follow mode, but they all still have access the same data. But overall, the furthest generally does end up being a smoother deceleration.
Well, it BETTER start braking far sooner on the shortest setting. There's less time to react. And it has to brake harder. Which means it can be more gentle on the longest setting. But even that is too abrupt for good economy. I was an industrial electrician for quite a while and we were always joking about coming up with an "anticipation circuit." This would be an ideal application for such a thing, but no one has invented anything better than the human brain.
Drop another $1k on Comma.ai and you can have it drive itself (better than any Audi feature) on highways and mildly curvy roads. You do lose the ability to set the distance if you let Comma.ai control the gas and brake, but it will handle stop and go traffic without you having to do anything, it'll even slow down for curves. If you just let it control the steering and use stock Toyota cruise control, you can maintain the distance setting feature, but if the car stops for longer than 3sec, you have to tell it to go again (stock).
