How to tackle long, high-speed hills?

{/facepalm}

I.e. hobble the horse, then complain that it can't gallop very well.

Go ahead, push the pedal all the way down. Then tell us which hills it can't climb fast enough.

 

I had been hesitant to wide open the throttle on the prius because 1) its brand new, we just bought it this week and 2) its my wifes car and she loves it, (so i shouldn't immediately break it) 3) and i had to change the oil as it hadn't been changed by the previous owner recently.
I dont like to floor it too much, but i also know that engines like temporarily being run hard as it cleans em out.

so today i took it up the same hill at WOT. Pedal to the floor, i was able to achieve a sustained 92 km/h up that hill.

I mean its all relative and i can see people here getting a bit defensive so i am not going to comment further on it. Its ideal use is gas savings and city driving. Not highway through the mountains. A friend who routinely drove the coquihalla with his prius c also said he had lots of problems keeping up, especially in the snow. Again, not why we purchased it and we are extremely happy with the vehicle so far.


"You just can't have any fear of completely flooring the pedal and holding it there. You won't break anything, you won't hurt anything except your gasoline stash, there isn't a sore hangnail under the gas pedal... just do it!"

I take your point. And noticed this as well when i did floor it. I am used to my old car reving up to 7k rpm and sounding like a bat out of hell doing that. With the prius it was much more muted and it did feel like i could floor it all day. Gas savings being the primary reason for buying the car, we would not be doing that however.

 

A typical Prius redlines around 4400, and that's not difficult for an engine to do all day.

There are a few other threads about the acceleration of this car, home of the same-day 0-60.

But just going by the published 0-60 times, the c is actually solidly in the middle of the pack of the cars I've been driving for decades.

The horsepower war in commuter appliance cars is a relatively recent phenomenon.

 

I always thought of the 'redline' as a mechanically-determined maximum speed for the engine (avoid revving higher, because you want the parts to keep moving in circles).

The nice thing about a Prius is with everything computer controlled, the computer knows what the actual redline is, and it just won't ever go there. The value isn't published. The old Gen 1/Gen 2 version of the 1NZ-FXE engine would produce its peak power at 5000 rpm, and the computer would definitely take it there if you called for full power. It wouldn't go beyond (why would you, as the power curve turns downward past that point?). Wherever the actual redline is, it's somewhere above that. You just don't have to think about it.

The Prius c version of the 1NZ-FXE seems to produce its peak power at 4800, if wikipedia is to be believed. The redline is still somewhere safely above that, and you still don't need to think about it, because the computer won't go there.

 

The term 'redline' definitely got softened up. Now it's artwork on the tachometer we don't have anymore.

 

"Brand new" and "previous owner" (a 2013 model) seem mutually exclusive.

That sounds like a tire issue, not an engine power issue. Though my winter trips up the Coquihalla are always in the other car, not my Prius (and not a 'c').

PS: Though I didn't realize it was as steep as 8.5%:

 

I'm going to try this one more time. Every time I hit "Post Reply" it says it can't find the page I"m looking for. Here goes.

Nope. It won't take it. Maybe it's the "e" with two dots over it in the link to the Wikipedia page about the Citroën2CV page.

Well, it took it this time. Hmmm. Let me paste the original again.

Well, maybe this article about the Citroën 2CV will help the Prius c owners feel better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citroën_2CV
I recently saw a "Car SOS" episode where the restored on. What a brilliant minimalist design!! But the one they took for a test drive took about 50 seconds to go from 0 to 30 mph with two people in it. (Not 0-60 ... 0-30.) LOL!

And that time it worked. Go figure.

 

The Volkswagen Bug in the 60s had a 0-60 time of eventually as marked in one of the test magazines.