Gen 5 Prius (possible in 2021) will we possibly see 60mpg?

My bet is that Toyota won’t introduce a new Prius until something entirely different is ready

 

They are the science of weights and measures. I ran my tank down to empty and then some. Put a full tank of gas in the engine and loaned by Prius out to someone who has never driven a Prius. He came back 160 miles later. The trip computer showed 57.8 MPG. The driver doesn't know the mileage tricks or how to hyper mile. I rest my case.

 

The previous owner of my 2016 loaded pkg 4 averaged 62mpg! Not sure how they did that. Maybe driving a lot of highway miles at 65-70 mph? I’m getting 51-54, but have achieved 60 for a few hundred miles.

 

More likely lower speed driving, around town.

 

Well the new Aqua (Japanese version of Prius C) model press release talks about a new Bipolar NiMH battery. The new Aqua is rated at 35.8 km/l on Japanese WLTC cycle, however this is on the old NiMH battery and they have not published any figures on the efficiency of the other Aqua versions that have the the new Bipolar battery.

However the new Bipolar NiMH battery has 2 times the output (I'm assuming power) of the existing NiMH battery. I think the main advantage of this will be the ability to increase the electric power to somewhere similar to the RAV4 Prime. In other words Toyota hybrids could get a significant power boost without the cost of a larger PHEV Li-Ion battery.

It looks like the Aqua is a test mule for this new battery and I hope Toyota put it into the next Gen 5 Prius to give it greater performance (what people want these days) as well as a 15% efficiency improvement.

 

So the Aqua Bipolar battery has 1.4 times the energy density/capacity .. so EV range would increase assuming they keep the same sized battery. In terms of my Gen 2, its 16 years and on the original battery .. and yes I can confirm the EV range is not great, but it still works as intended.

 

bestcarweb.jp has just published an article about the bipolar battery claiming that it will become the standard battery for Toyota hybrids (not plug-ins): (use google translate)

HVに革命起こす？ 新型アクアの世界初搭載バッテリーは次世代の本命か - 自動車情報誌「ベストカー」

 

Nice article. Thanks!

However, it still pains me reading articles about the Aqua/Pruis C knowing that it won't be available in the USA. I like the redesign a lot!

 

This makes sense because Toyota would not release it in Aqua unless they were confident it would work well and its likely to be ultimately cheaper. I just hope they roll it out other models quickly, such as Prius.