Making a Prius Fast?

In terms of ease and cost there really is no better car to get for heavy modifications then a Civic especially if you like to do it just because you like tinkering.

I have also found that there are lots of great mods that you can do on any VW platform. A few nice mods to their 1.8T engine (Golf, Rabbit, Jetta, New Beetle, Passat) combined with the larger wheels and stiffer suspension that they already use on the Turbo models and they can become quite a fast little race car. There are guys that have swapped out the turbo's and chipped them and have well over 250HP. The wife has a 2001 New Beetle and based on my readings by connecting it to my laptop, by just changing to copper plugs (they disipate heat faster), changing air boxes, plus keeping the inside of the intake manifold and throttle body clean I have increased it from 150HP to just over 180HP.

As far as the Prius goes I can't imagine any one modification that you could do other then stiffening the suspension and or bigger rims and wider tires to improve the sports driving performance. Making it faster probably not. Like one of the previous posters already said if you reduced some of the weight maybe a little. I bet you could remove about 300 pounds by removing the front passenger seat, carpets, rear seat, spare tire and jack, trunk cargo shelf, glove boxes, door paneling, and only driving with 1/4 tank of gas.

 

For those with the technical skill, and no common sense, some guy has both supercharged and turbo charged his Gen I Prius.
Browser Warning
Browser Warning

It is worth noting that he did not feel he had more power, he felt he had full power longer.

 

It also has the non-Atkinson Cycle engine (I believe from the Echo, same engine as the Prius but with conventional compression and valve timing). That swap alone is probably worth quite a few HP (at the expense of torque).

 

buy a subaru wrx

 

While I think it wouldn't be terribly hard to significantly increase power output as long as emissions and fuel consumption were ignored, my gut feeling is that the PSD wouldn't handle much increased power and stronger parts for it probably don't exist.
Pretty sure that if the PSD were capable of handling say 300 HP, there would be an efficiency loss that would result in lower FE, so I believe Toyota worked pretty hard to "match" the size and strength of the PSD to the stock power output.
Yes, I can see how a Prius "sleeper" could be fun, but I think you would be better of buying an old one and completely gutting it of all mechanicals and replacing them with some proven engine/powertrain combination. Of course then it's not a Prius, but it would look like one.

 

i would tend to think the cvt would blow apart

 

Got Hybrid? - Sport - Auto Reviews - Car and Driver
Actually the land speed record article shows how to make any Prius fast, push it with a Toyota Tundra.

 

I wonder if it's different from the one in the bigger Toyota hybrids? If it's the same it would handle more torque.

:rofl:
ound:

To be fair, they only pushed it up to speed to conserve battery power.

 

If I was forced to make the Prius faster and was given a several thousands of dollars I would swap the engine for the same Toyota engine in non Atkinson and add a turbo. Those changes might confuse the computer but the sensors could be fooled to make it work. This would be easier on the 2'nd gen vs the 3'rd due to the preheater that works on the exhaust on the 3'rd.

 

c'mon, i am definitely not saying canyon racing any vehicle constitutes "normal driving," let a lone a Prius

however, i do not feel the Prius is adequately powered for "normal driving" in my environs, which does included merging onto the many interstate exchanges of LA ... 605/405/10/110/101/91/90/5/134/118 ... heck, there's a lot of them, and plenty of hills and what not

i really feel the 4banger is working quite hard and not giving me much to work with at times ... not all the time

i think a longer stroke would have made a big difference, but i'm far from an expert on integrating a gas motor into an electric and battery powered hybrid system

but really, i'm in no way suggesting that my canyon story constitutes normal driving

 

i agree with almost all of your assessments, but there's some pretty innovative SOB's out there, and someone is going to squeeze some power out of that 4banger without compromising the system,

and i think it would be nice to tap into a torquier gas motor when you need to go deep

i would not want to compromise the economy of daily driving

i'm not disagreeing with you
i'm not looking for a 300hp Prius
i think it's darn near perfect
i would like to be able to dig deeper when necessary

i know electrical motors can provide serious torque without compromising efficiency, and i think the four banger can be adjusted to provide more when needed ... it just doesn't

i have other vehicles for playing
including a 1200cc motorcycle that gives me 100 ft/lbs of torque and still delivers 40 mpg ... it's a little lighter on storage space than the Prius, and it's not as convenient for long trips with my kid
... so i compromise and take the Kawasaki in the canyons, and Prius for road trips with the kid

if i wanted more power in my daily driver, i could go with the wrx or wrx wagon, but i like the Prius, just find it slightly wanting in a pinch

 

I know what you are saying. There are times I wish my Prius had a bit more power but once you know the amount of power available it has enough for the driver to compensate. All in all it is a pretty good compromise weighted toward efficiency.

 

1. Turbo on a Prius? I hope you are joking.

2. Turbo and remap? Do you even know anything about forced induction applications? let me enlighten you.

To turbo your prius you would have to do the following:

1. Pull the motor and tear it down.

2. Replace stock pistons and con rods with forged units. Pistons have to be low compression units around 8..6:1- 9.0:1 com ratio. These WILL have to be custom made as you will not find a manufacturer that will makes these for practical applications. Throwing a forced induction unit on a motor with stock high compression and structurally weak pistons and rods, is asking for a disaster.

3. Send your heads out to be worked. This including a complete port job, boring it out to accommodate the increased flow. Installing +1mm overbore valves, performance valve springs, and titanium retainers, and VVT delete cams and custom made adjustable cam gears. Oh and a Kevlar timing belt is a minimum. The works basically.

4. The ENTIRE fuel system has to be re-engineered. A new high flow fuel pump installed, all new high capacity fuel lines need to be run. You will need a high flow fuel rail as well as some high flow injectors, probably around 850cc. The manifold will probably need to be modified to accept these larger injectors.

5. The entire turbo system will have to be custom made. Custom made turbo manifold, custom turbo back exhaust system. Custom oil pan to accept new feed and return lined to the turbo. A custom mandrel bent intercooler piping as well as a custom sized intercooler, with custom mounting brackets and clamps.

6. You will need a performance water pump and an increased capacity performance radiator to keep up with the higher temps you will be producing.

7 You will need a performance oil pump and oil cooler for the same reason as above.

8. You will need the following gagues installed as well: Boost, water temp, oil temp, oil pressure, WIDEBAND, EGT and possibly fuel pressure as well.

9. You will need to have a complete brand new custom map made by a reputable tuner with the car on a dyno.

But even after going through all this, it is highly doubtful that the car's transmission will be able to handle the power of the new turbo setup.

BTW all this work will end up costing you WAY more than the car was worth brand new. In all honesty, you could just have saved the cash and not have bought a prius and bought an A4 or a STi or whatever.

Even if the transmission by some miracle holds up, you still have to have a complete custom suspension made, as the power has to be balanced with proper suspension tuning.

Plain and simple. if you want a turbo car, then buy a turbo car. Stop trying to make your prius fast. IT WILL NOT HAPPEN!

Oh and if you happen to see a silver Subaru STi out in those canyons, I will be glad to show you the difference between a car made and driven for economy and a car made and driven for speed and performance.

 

no, you can't make it turbo, but you can make it a lot more fun to drive.

 

We're all so impressed you know so much about turbos!!!!!!111!!one

 

If you can change the programming, you will be very popular here. There are several things that many of use would like to change, such as:

1) The warm up cylces
2) ICE off speeds (stealth and glide threasholds)
3) The amount of battery charging and where.

Just to name a few.

Seriously, if you know how to program the ECU then we have several questions for you.

 

I'm no automotive mechanical expert or much of tinkerer, but this whole thread just doesn't make much sense to me.

I mean there might be countless ways one could tinker with a Prius and get it to be faster. But ultimately why? Outside of the novelty of having a Prius that might belch smoke and squeal tires what is the point?

I think hybrid technology could be used to make a very fast automobile, but a stock produced Prius is not that automobile. The Prius has a lot of programming and equipment designed to control emmisions. Sure you could bypass or modify all of that, but again why?

As an observer to this forum, and other hybrid information outlets, I think what is interesting is the desire many owners have to make The Prius more efficient. As opposed to what we have had for decades which is the usual tinkerer or weekend mechanic that wants more power or speed as the benchmark for their automobile.

You pays your money, you makes your choices, but if your desire is a fast Prius? I'd recommend just getting something else with less modification hurdles to jump through.

 

Well I am impressed with the sheer lack of knowledge you people possess about your own cars. The posts in this thread verify this. Hell I know more about your car than you do and I don't even own one.

I just posted to inform you guys of the task you face in order to modify your cars in the way you are discussing.

 

I think a Prius funny car would be awesome. Throw out that little starter motor up front and put a gas tank there instead. Chop the top a few inches, section a few more out of the body, and lower the suspension. After the rear seats, batteries, and tank are removed, there'd be lotsa room under the hatch for a real engine.