"Why I truly don't give a [poop emoji] about high gasoline prices"

i don't give one either. but i'm hoping for less driving and higher efficiency car purchases from the american public

 

That's an excellent analysis. Because most trips are short, it's easy to operate the Prius Prime entirely in electric mode the vast majority of the time. What your analysis addressed is something which I had not seen before: number of electric miles vs total miles for a vehicle in this typical use.

After five years of owning our Prius Prime, my major wish is not about the vehicle but about the lack of easy charging points at common destinations like shopping centers, restaurants, office buildings. And, even when Chargepoint stations are located in places like the parking garage at our local medical center, these are usually occupied by other electric vehicles, many of which are fully charged. (Few owners will return to the garage to move their vehicle to free-up the charging station.)

Most people -- especially those who do not yet own electric vehicles -- do not understand this and still think of electric charging as if it were driving into a gas station for a fill-up. A more ubiquitous infrastructure would go a long way to improve this situation.

As for battery life, we are five years into ownership and always plug-in the car when parked at our home. We've experience no noticeable battery deterioration and think Toyota's engineers did a remarkable job in incorporating charge management into the car's internal circuitry.

 

i'm rarely in one place long enough to make charging worthwhile. when there was a free one at whole foods, i used to plug in, but on the whole, running the engine a little is probably a good thing.

 

Thanks for sharing the link. I enjoyed reading the blog, and I agree with him 100% that the current high price of gas has a very little real "economic" impact on us as long as we use the PP for our transportation needs. I also concur with him that our PP is by far "the cheapest new car we’ve ever owned" for us as well.

I further agree with him on the point for "universal use of a 30-mile-battery PHEV would electrify 43% of all U.S. personal vehicle miles driven in the U.S." Although in our own case, the percentage of electrification is only about 35%. This is primarily due to the fact that we live in a rural setting in that most of our trips are further than 30 miles. And since we live in a very cold climate, such that the winter EV range for our PP diminishes to less than 20 miles/charge.

As the blog cites the graph from NHTS, the percentage of the number of trips for 60+ miles may be a very small portion of the pie graph. But it is misleading that the actual distance traveled for the most average families is not as small as the graph indicates.



I have shown this in my own example from the data I collected for the last 10+ years of driving our own hybrid cars. As shown below, the days I drove more than 100 miles represent only ~3% of the total trips I have made (left pie graph). Yet, that 3% of trips actually are close to 30% of the distance (mileage) I have driven the car (right pie graph). For our PP, this is a substantial portion of the trips that were made on gasoline only (HV mode). As it turns out, for our use case, currently those over 100 miles trips can not be accomplished by a BEV due to the lack of charging infrastructures and the short EV range of most BEVs on market. So, if I switch our PP (PHEV) to a pure electric BEV, we would have to use our second car (which is a hybrid SUV with much worse fuel efficiency) for those longer trips. This results in using more gasoline overall for our household.

 

Yes but, that head of lettuce is double in price, due in part to the jump in oil price.

Just with a 2010 hybrid, we're only tanking up every 2~3 months, because we're barely drivning anymore. This is something anyone in any vehicle can do.

Then, every so often 3/4/5 city trucks show up in our neighbourhood, the latest chore being fiber optic install. I think it's in their DNA that they've got to leave them all idling away.

 

One point in that writeup was the impact the number of charge/discharge has on the overall lift of the battery - which I'm sure it does in some way (hopefully way down the road) BUT as someone said in a review, even if the battery does lose some status in the future you still are driving a vehicle that gets 60MPG on regular - take that Escalade V (which I think I could put my entire car inside)

 

Well, lettuce is coming from our garden now. We are self-sufficient on most veggies, eggs, honey, and some meat at least for now until it gets too cold to grow veggies, and our flocks stop laying and honey goes to winter survival mode. That being said, the high oil price, if continues into winter, will hurt us economically on heating costs. I was thinking of installing a wood-burning stove in our kitchen/dining and had an installer estimate on the thru ceiling chimney system installation. But it seems that is going to cost more than to have a ductless mini-split heat pump installed. I am also exploring a pellet boiler system to replace our aging oil boiler.

 

We have had a few Toyotas over the years and have loved them. In 1979, when I retired from the Navy, we bought a new Celica. In 83, when I had a good job, we bought a new Cressida (5-speed) for me and a Supra (automatic) for the wife. In 1989 traded them for an 89 Cressida (automatic) a pickup. In 1999 I bought a new Tacoma (5-speed) and in 2000 the wife bought a Lexus ES-300. I sold the Tacoma 20 years later and bought a used 2002 4-Runner with 4wd and an automatic. The wife still has the Lexus. I was into old cars as a hobby and was restoring a 1963 Thunderbird convertible. I was working under it on the exhaust and got a bunch of rust in my eyes. Decided screw this, and sold the t-bird and bought a new Miata hardtop convertible. Loved it, but traded it in in 2017 for the Prius. So it has been five years since we have bought a car. As a practical matter it doesn't make sense to buy one, but I did notice that our local Bremerton dealer has some Ioniq 5s in stock selling at no markup. My PP has about 28K miles on it and I add gas about once every 3 months, so I might wait a year or two to see what is available. My ideal EV would be a Miata with about 300 miles of range.

 

after 10 years and 60,000 ev miles (75% of total miles) my pip has only lost 15% of capacity.

i expect your prime to do much better.

 

I still fill up 2-3 times a week. But at least with the prius prime it's not nearly as much. I do nearly nearly 5k a month.

 

That's a lot of driving. I only do 2k-2.5k a month and think that's a lot. Would a 300 mile EV work for you? Can you get Level 2 charging at home or work? Does your state/country have any EV subsidies? How much are electricity and gas prices in your area?

Right now, electricity is $0.11/kWh and gas is $4.60/gal in my area. So I would pay double for my commute in gas vs electricity. The best part is I don't have to stop for gas once a week anymore.

 

I'm not a graph/data type of guy, I still don't know how to bring those tricky things up on our 2017 PP screen yet!! However, we are thrilled with the rudimentary gmpg that I figure out the old fashion way. We winter in AZ. and this past winter I had 1100+ miles on the trip meter when I went into Costco to "fill up"! It took 5.5 gallons - so my abacus figured that was easily 200 mpg! The type of driving we do there, the PP is the PERFECT car for us. We did have to drive it down from our home in the Puget Sound area and still got over 65 mpg on that trip. We made no attempt to attempt to charge it up while on the road. Yep, thrilled with it!!

 

Electric is closer to .3 in my area. Gas is around 6.23. I have free level 1 daily that I use. But that's really about it. Conceptually, I could probably setup something up to 30A but it would be a likely investment to do so and I don't know if it would be free at that point since the usage would be so much higher and be noticeable.

 

While it's nice to have the gas option, except for work, I can easily handle my weekly travels on one charge. I do have solar panels or set the calendar for an early top off.

 

i'm told electrons are going to increase 30% here

 

YIKES!! So that raises the price from "obscene" to what? Unconscionable? Unacceptable? Unbelievable?

 

Yeah , it’s going to be interesting.
Could go as high as 30+ cents.
I suppose it’s the cost of natural gas?

No talk from our bleeding heart politicians on help for low income folks though.
Funny how it’s always about gas prices and never home heating

 

Nor are they brave enough to bring up 'Windfall Profits'.
That was dealt with in the 70's, no? Why not now? No guts? Lobbyists? Lots of dollars in donations?

 

I wonder if EVs will lose some appeal if it costs a lot more to charge them.