2021 Prius Prime informal review vs. a "vanilla" Gen4

OFF TOPIC WARNING

I don't know about you, but my insurance rates have increased over 30% this year. Even my pet food costs about 25% more than last year. Gas prices are up 19% from pre-COVID prices. Lumber is out of control at 193% higher than a year ago.

The number of dollars in the economy increased 26% between March 1, 2020, and March 1, 2021. You can't increase the money supply by 26% without creating massive inflation. In other words, given that fiscal policy's effects on inflation can take up to a year,* you ain't seen nothin' yet.


M2 Money Stock (WM2NS) | FRED | St. Louis Fed

* Batini, Nicoletta, and Edward Nelson. "The lag from monetary policy actions to inflation: Friedman revisited." International Finance 4, no. 3 (2001): 381-400.

 

Good review!!

Yeah. I've pondered that for two years now. It does the same at sea level, so that's not it, although it might be a tiny bit more pronounced up there. When we visited CO in our Prime, it felt the same as it did here. All I can come up with is a mismatch in throttle mapping between HV & EV. Using one device (accelerator pedal) to control the power of two different machines (electric motor and gas engine) is almost guaranteed to be a mismatch.

There is no conversion. One is a measure of gas efficiency and the other of electricity efficiency. MPGe has nothing to do with gas. It's a convoluted way of expressing miles/kWh. It only applies in EV mode when the ICE is off.

Yes. At Denver's elevation 85 octane has the same preignition tendency as 87 does at sea level. Regular there is 85. Regular most everywhere else is 87.

Same here. EV/Auto just uses up the battery exactly like EV. But I keep hearing of people who get completely different results. <scrating head icon here>

There is an advantage if the highway trip is short enough that the battery can do it. It's a real shame to use 5 cents/mile gas instead of 2 cents/mile electricity. If it's a long trip, then by all means use the gas at higher speeds. You just don't want to get home from a long drive with range still left in the battery.

Attachment points are here. I think there's supposed to be some sort of fixture for drilling the holes. Unfortunately, I have a car that came from up north and now has ugly scars on my bumper.

WOW!!!!! That's even worse than when we used to live there in the 70s. We just renewed ours here in FL. One year for a 2017 Prius and a 2017 Prime came to $79 combined.

Me too!! The thing is amazing.

 

MPGe is for converting any fuel, or mix of multiple ones, into a single value comparable to gasoline consumption. It can be used for diesel, CNG, or hydrogen, but it is only getting used for electricity. Early on, the Volt had a third EPA rating that was based on a trip using electricity and gasoline modes that was expressed in MPGe.

If you want to convert fuel used on a trip to MPGe, Miles per gallon gasoline equivalent - Wikipedia

 

It's a huge upgrade from an older vanilla Gen 4 to a 2021 Prius Prime Limited!

 

Useful when shopping, but not for normal use. What messes up so many people is that they don't know this. It sure has generated a ton of people asking questions like, "What do I have to do to get 133 MPGe? Best I can manage is 102." Or some such number taken from their mpg readout on the dash.

The user is expected to use a complex formula they discover in Wikipedia to try to make a comparison or notice the fine print on the EPA info on the Monroney sticker which says it means 25 kWh per 100 miles (or 4 miles/kWh to use the terminology the car itself uses). The big print says, "Electricity + Gasoline" while the big/small print says no gas was used (0.0 gallons per 100 miles).


That's a lot of work to go through to eventually arrive at a number that affects me personally -- cost per mile. It's far simpler, knowing what I pay for gas and for electricity to measure what I use of each and add their costs to arrive at the effect on my bank balance.

 

Blame focus groups for the MPGe.

If we wanted easier math, we wouldn't use MPG, but GPM.

 

How is gallons per minute useful??

 

per mile

 

Well, we do litres per 100 km up here, sim to gallons per mile. Maybe it’s a case of grass-always-greener, but that calc never gets easier; when hand calc’ing I invariably need to lay it out as a ratio equation:

liters pumped is to kms driven, as what is to 100? An example, with 20 litres pumped and 400 kms travelled:

 

It is generally easier to visualize fuel use in volume per distance as we think trips in terms of distance.

If you wanted to get an average MPG from a set of figures, you'll need to convert MPG into a volume/distance, and then convert back.

 

I drive 97 miles and use 1.7 gallons of gas. How would 1.7 / 97 be easier than 97 / 1.7?

 

Or just add them together. If you drove 25 miles and used 0.5 gallons, then another 60 and used 1 gallon, you just add 25 / 0.6 + 60 / 1.

 

There is no difference between the two. They are simply inverses of each other. I prefer mpg.

 

Wait, it's (25 + 60) / (0.5 + 1.0).

 

If you divide either mpg (US) or litres per 100 kms, into 235.2, it converts to the other value.

 

Interesting. You made me exercise the old algebra noodle. Indeed, it is true because there are 3.7854 liters per gallon and 62.1371 miles in 100 kilometers. 3.7854 * 62.1371 = 235.2138

 

My last tank calculated at the pump came to 408 mpg. The other way around, that's 0.00245 gpm. Kind of hard to visualize. I guess I could make it 0.245 gallons per 100 miles. Hmm. Not much better

Or on a highway trip, I'd get like 55 mpg. That's 0.018 gpm.

I'd go crazy in a metric country. Most each month my average on the eco history shows from 0.2 to 0.6 L/100km. One tenth of a liter per 100 km variance seems small, but it's a big difference in actual fuel economy.

Granted, most of my miles are EV, but the mpg still gives me a fair idea of how much is EV.