Jerry's Evolving Thoughts on "new-to-me" Prime Premium

There are a ton of threads about 12V batteries dying after not being driven for a week or two. Here's mine after we got back from a 16-day trip. I last drove it on Oct. 7. I popped the hood that night so I wouldn't have to open a door to check the battery voltage when we got home. Here's what it read this morning. I didn't do anything special.

 

No, I forgot to check it. But it normally is fully charged after coming home from work.

I just put the charger on it at 2A, so I'll let it fill back up even though I'm sure the car would have started fine. I noticed, when I opened the driver's door before connecting the charger that the brake pump ran at least twice as long as usual.

 

I'm glad I put the charger on the 12V Saturday morning. We came home with some kind of bug Friday night and still haven't left the house. I'm feeling good enough to work from home at least part time today. If all goes well, I think I'll be back to the routine tomorrow.

 

That's the speed I've usually seen mentioned. But there's a big difference in noise level, so I go with quiet. After 22 years of making aluminum cans in one of the loudest work environments in the world, I've had enough noise.

The general rule of thumb I see mentioned often here on PC regarding cabin temperature is that if you keep yourself comfortable, the traction battery will thank you. Heat is not good for them.

 

Nothing special. Just a pretty morning after a rare night spent outside. We had fog overnight and it looked amazing on the freshly washed & waxed hypersonic red.

 

Yeah, I whine about the love bugs here, but I'm glad my garden hose doesn't freeze. LOL!

I'm too lazy to wax the old fashioned way. I use that Turtle Wax stuff you spray onto a wet car and then dry it. Seems good enough for me. And now that I think of it, it was my wife's car that I just waxed on Saturday. I waxed this one several weeks ago. Saturday I just rinsed off the dirt spots on this one from a recent sprinkle of rain and then blew off the water with my leaf blower followed by a final drying with a towel. The wife's car took serious front end bug cleaning plus a fresh coat of wax.

 

Also, the sun does amazing stuff to it. In the shade, it's just another red car. But in the sunlight, it takes on a whole new personality.

 

I hate love bugs almost worse than anything. Sometimes here they get so thick that you don't dare open your mouth outside. And driving is like driving in a black snowstorm.

We digress (again, but who cares?) but several of us from our church went to MS and AL to help a few times after Katrina. What a mess!!!

 

Spot on, @OptimalPrime. Pretty close to my observations and experiences. The difference is that mine already had over 23k miles on it when I got it. I suspect that someone may have already adjusted the headlights a little bit. Whether or not they did, I've only been flashed twice in almost two years and both were on the kinds of low crests you described.

As for the sharp cutoff, I have mixed feelings. Like you, I think it might be nice sometimes to have a slightly more gradual edge to the top of the light beam. On the other hand, when I'm behind another car (which is probably 90% of the time when I drive around here day or night) I can see that crisp change from dark to light on the back of the car in front of me that happens just below their rear window.

As for the high beams, the distance is amazing, but it would be nice if the beam was wider.

Nevertheless, now that my wife has a regular Prius, the difference between them is radical. After years of driving Gen 2s with HID, she really likes her LED headlights on her 2017 Trim 2, but coming home from Ohio at night in October when we took her car, I was really wishing for the Prime's headlights. Especially when the deer standing on the shoulder of the road flashed by at the last nano-second. That was a little scary. I think the Prime would have given me a couple seconds of warning in case it was a suicidal deer.

 

Update on battery health:

My 2017 is about to turn over 49k miles. I checked the day before yesterday after buying gas for the first time in 3,500+ miles and it took a little over 6,100 kWh to charge the battery from fully depleted. Here are my numbers since I started checking on it just over a year ago. They will vary due to variability of how far the car has dipped into the HV capacity. Note that yesterday was the highest I've ever recorded.

The last tank was 8.71 gallons and I used 397 kWh of my own electricity, plus the free stuff at work. Cost per mile came to 1.94 cents. That's for 3,553 miles. Cost was higher than last time mostly due to gas being over 25% higher.

Maintenance since the end of February last year is:
wheel alignment
brake fluid flush
oil change w/filter
new windshield wipers