Help interpreting Dr. Prius results on Prime

I'll try posting this here and maybe will get a response. I'm looking at a used (not certified) 2021 Prius Prime XL and I got to test drive it. A few paint chips on the hood and near the electrical fill up port, a pretty dirty engine compartment, but otherwise *looks* good. I plugged in my OBDII sensor and got the following reading. The car had 25 miles at the start of my test drive and ended at 24. That was Thursday, Feb 22. I called on Saturday Feb 24 and the salesperson said the EV range was down to 21 miles. So it lost

I also made a recording but I don't know how to turn that into a real-time video. I do have the .csv file data though. What should I look for in that file?

Here is the snapshot. What should I be looking at/for?

Dr. Prius data snapshot by Kirker posted Feb 26, 2024 at 3:44 PM

 

42,100 miles

 

I don't know why it says I own a 2020 Prime in my profile, I'll change that. I do not own one, but I've been looking for awhile.

I can open the .csv file in Excel or Google Sheets, that's not difficult, but it (obviously) doesn't show an animation of the data like in the Dr. Prius main screen. It just has rows of data with timestamps when it was recorded. I ran it for about 2-3 minutes.

My test drive was about a half hour but I only drove it about 1 or 2 miles. I parked and did a once over on the outside in a bright parking lot (it was nighttime and wanted to get a better look). Also fiddling with my OBDII scanner and Dr. Prius app took some time.

I did not use all of the 25 miles.
The engine did start and run when in Auto EV mode when I gunned it or going up a moderately steep hill. On pure EV it didn't kick in unless, again, I really hit the gas. At least that's what I recall.

Someone below said he wondered what the range loss issue is. The issue is that I didn't buy it after the test drive. So it sat at the dealer for two days. I asked the salesperson to check the range. It was at 21 miles after two days. When I brought it in after the test drive it was either 24 or 23 miles. So it lost about 2-3 miles fo charge in two days.I had the car held so no one should have driven it. Is that kind of loss normal?

 

Again, I took several minutes to fiddle with the OBDII dongle and getting it connected to my phone - maybe upwards of 10 minutes. Then about 5-10 minutes at a big box store parking lot with lots of lighting. So I only drove it for about 10-15 minutes. It drove well, the engine was not on all the time (or even on that much).

I don't think it was moved or test driven - I held it for $500 so they said it's mine and I would be surprised if they'd have someone else test drive it.

I am going to take it in for a pre-purchase inspection tomorrow, Feb 29th, but not at a Toyota dealership. I have to wait until Saturday for the Toyota dealership to look at it. They tell me they can't hold it beyond the 29th as the manager wants it sold by the end of the month. It seems a little odd to be pushing it out the door so quick (they just got it a week ago).

But yes, I test drove it Thursday night and it had about 25.1 mile range and between the relatively short drive time and regen it went down to 24 or maybe high 23's. On Saturday when the salesperson texted me the remaining EV miles on the dash it was 21.1 miles.

 

So far that has not been my experience. I've looked at three used Prius Primes: 2019, 2018 and this one, 2021. I had the dealers fully charge all of them and send me a photo of the dash EV range. The first was 30 miles, second was 23, and the third was 25. After three days the first two were: 5 miles (2019), 0 miles (2018), and 21 miles (2021).

It appears that as the cars age at least *some* of them have batteries that lose charge while sitting unplugged. Maybe not yours, maybe not anyone else on this thread. After all, you still have yours. These are all trade-ins. So maybe they traded them in partially or solely due to the battery losing charge?

I don't know, but scouts honor, that is what I've seen. It's extremely frustrating and makes buying a used plug in hybrid that much more dicey.

 

I've seen what I wrote above. Not clear on what you mean by "You haven't seen it because you are not in possession of the cars." What does that mean?

Using PriusChat as the touchstone for whether this is happening isn't adequate. First, there are other venues for people to bring this issue up. Reddit (r/prius), priusonline.com, etc.

Second, the population of people who own Prius' is not the exact same population that frequents (or even knows about) PriusChat. Think of it in terms of a Venn Diagram. There are thousands of Prius' and Prius Primes and not everyone are aficionados that frequent chat boards like this.

So could this happen? You bet. And if you Google search it you'll see other people have had this problem.

At any rate I didn't buy the car more because of a title issue.