No more Prius Prime.

You are missing the whole point. I did not really need a new car other than the fact I wanted to switch my daily driver to a BEV this year. But that plan did not work out. It's not that I wanted to replace the 2021 PP. And I certainly don't need more speed. Even if the 2023 Prius Prime SE with a $30,000 MSRP is available right now, I would not have traded my 2021 PP for a new PP without the tax credit. The whole point of purchasing Escape was to recapture my tax liability by the tax credit the purchase will allow me to claim. If the 2023 Prius Prime SE with a $30,000 MSRP is available right now and I traded in my 2021 PP Limited for an even trade, or maybe even with a small check coming back to me. I am still out $7,000 on my tax liability for this year. With the purchase of the Escape, I can avoid paying the tax and have a vehicle that will reduce gas consumption. Plus, I get more cargo space and ground clearance which are two of the weak points of Prius Prime. The all-new Prime may offer a longer EV range thus reducing gas consumption, but I really doubt it will improve the cargo space or ground clearance issues. Besides, it is not available now, so all of that is a moot point.

Yeah, I can see trading Escape sometime in the future for a BEV, but at least not for 3 years. My current plan is to keep it until it runs out of warranty, by then I hope there will be an affordable BEV and better-charging infrastructures. The Pathfinder is going to be sold. I could have traded in with the PP to the dealer, but their offer was low. I already have an offer from someone for more money. A single car in our household would be fine as long as that single car functions for most of our hauling needs, and as long as I keep working from home full time. A PP would be too small for that function, but before purchasing the Escape, I was entertaining the idea of selling Pathfinder and doing everything with just a PP. That may have worked and would have been the least costly solution for us.

As @Gokuhan said... I don't like any bright colors. But the color of the car is the least of my concern when it comes to choosing a car. I will take any color as long as the price is right. In the case of Escape, I had to pay $495 for the color... If I had a choice, I would never pick it with a premium price. But for this case, I had absolutely no other choice. The car was probably the last 2022 Escape PHEV they are going to get.

I don't know how much of the 13.4kWh from the wall was actually used to charge the battery. As @Trollbait pointed out, some kWh are used for other functions. Actually, I did see somewhere on the dash or app that the total charge was ~11.x kWh which seems to be more in line with the EPA-rated 105mpge which is 3.115 miles/kWh. From the EPA-rated 37 miles EV range, the full battery capacity used for the EV mode is 37/3.115 = 11.88kWh. If the full charge is around 11.88kWh, that means the battery buffer is about 18% for a 14.4kWh capacity traction battery. Yep, that is still less than what Toyota allocated on the PP's battery. But, that's fine for me. I don't plan to keep the car for 10 years.

 

I get your point too. If someone is looking for a car he/she has to purchase next year and comparing Escape PHEV vs a new Prius Prime, then I can see your point is valid. But for this year, in order to recapture the tax liability I increased on purpose, Escape PHEV is the only choice I had. Even for those who are looking for a PHEV next year, the new PP may not work for some who need a compact SUV. They are just not the same class of cars.

Yes, sales tax exists. But unlike in CA, when trading in and purchasing from the same dealer, the value of the trade-in is subtracted from the taxable value of the car purchased.

I will have to check a few more times to see what is the actual charge that goes into the traction battery. If the BTM is actively heating the battery more aggressively as @Trollbait suggested, it is possible that the wall kWh would be lower on warmer days. It was mid-20s F last night while the car was being charged.

 

OK, I am a bit puzzled here. The screen capture shown in my previous comment was taken from a web browser on my laptop.

Then the same information on my phone shows different values for the 2022 Escape PHEV. I don't know why???

 

Yes, I had the side panel scrape fixed using insurance. And that fact was disclosed to the dealer who bought my PP. But I don't know if that did show up on the Carfax or not. The initial offering was $28K. I said NO to the offer. When they asked what would make the deal possible, I told them we are at least $5K apart. After some negotiations, they came back with a $32K offer. They also sweetened the deal with ~$1K worth of perks on top of that.

Yes, the first numbers I posted are the correct values. I don't know what is causing the discrepancy. But it seems it is a browser-specific setting. Here is the same URL displaying two different values on my phone browsers. One on the left showing the correct values is using Brave browser. The one on the right (incorrect numbers) is by Chrome browser. Both on Android 13 phone. But I don't think it is a Chrome issue per se. The correct value is displayed on the Chrome browser on my laptop.


No

 

I found what was causing the discrepancy. The fueleconomy.gov site gives the ability to "Personalize" the underlying conditions assumed for the calculation. The default is set for 55% of the driving to be done in "stop-and-go" traffic.



I must have changed this value on the Chrome browser on my phone some time ago and checked the "remember my setting" on the page. So, my setting was 100% of miles are in "stop-and-go" traffic. With that assumption, you get the increased mpge, mpg, and EV range numbers. The 100% "stop-and-go" traffic is slow-speed traffic only. If I use 0% of miles in "stop-and-go" traffic, I get reduced mpge, mpg, and EV range numbers as shown below. This assumes everything is fast-speed traffic.

 

Congrats on your Bolt EUV! I also thought about Bolt EUV or even Leaf when my plan to purchase Solterra fell apart. The problem was that Bolt did not offer any tax credit this year, so that would not work even though it would have been cheaper than buying a Leaf Plus with the full tax credit. Then I thought, since if I get a full BEV, it will be strictly a neighborhood vehicle anyway, I was going to get the cheapest Leaf with 147 miles EV range. The problem was that even if I find one available at the nearest Nissan dealer, I can't drive it home without stopping to recharge. There is absolutely no fast charging station in between except one Supercharger station exclusive to Tesla. I would have to stay at a motel or friend's to get the car charged most likely overnight. The thing is that situation does not improve much even with Leaf Plus or Bolt or most other BEVs on market today with over 200 miles of EV range. With the current charging infrastructure, I would need to buy either Tesla and depend on the Supercharger station, or buy a non-Tesla BEV with 400+ miles of EV range. Either way, it would be too expensive. That's when I realized, I have to keep a PHEV as our main car.