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

It wasn't a Porsche, but it cornered better than any car I've had before or since.

You don't have to bend at all if you adjust your mirrors. The trick is to align the edges of all three mirrors so that as a car passes off the edge of the rear view mirror it's entering the edge of a side mirror at the same time. The three mirrors' images form a continuous image with no blind spots.

 

Most cars have blind spots. For instance....

When your sedan is parked between SUVs in a parking lot. I LOVE the rear cross traffic radar in those cases.

When a pedestrian (or motor cycle) is at the 10 o'clock position on any car with airbags stuffed into the A pillar.

When you have big honking headrests for all passengers in a Toyota sedan. You can't see out the back right, and can barely see over your shoulder on the back left.

When you have arthritis of the spine, and can only turn your torso + neck about 100 degrees.

 

They tested the LE, XLE V6, and Hybrid trims.

LE: 50 mph with Michelin Energy MXV4 S8 size 215/60R16 94V
XLE V6: 51 mph with Bridgestone Turanza EL400 size 215/60R16 94V
Hybrid: 51 mph with Michelin Energy MXV4 S8 size 215/60R16 94V

I doubt the SE trim is any better in the maximum emergency maneuver speed. Prius Prime's 55 mph maximum emergency maneuver speed is hard to match for a family sedan. 2007 BMW 3-series and 5-series achieve 55 mph, but they are BMW. Interestingly, 2021 BMW models achieve a lower maximum (54 mph for 3-series and 53 mph for 5-series).

Therefore, Prius Prime is a very capably handling car. Combined with TSS 2.0, it handles very safely.

 

That's not objective.

The 2007 SE had these improvements over other Camry trims:

• 15-percent-higher spring rates
• Special shocks that offer up to 50-percent-firmer damping at low piston speeds
• Stiffer front anti-roll bar
• Stiffer bushings on the rear suspension arms
• Underfloor brace
• V-brace behind the rear seatback
• Thicker body-side brackets.

How is "maximum emergency maneuver speed" defined, and how is it correlated with general handling and cornering? An undefined metric serves no purpose.

 

It's very well-defined. See the Consumer Reports website. Those enhancements may or may not add up to a 1 mph improvement. It could also end up being worse than the other models. Usually, the biggest improvement results from how well the ESC works.

 

Can you send a link where we can view it without paying Consumer Reports, or post the specification here? So far I'm not seeing any connection with handling or cornering.

EDIT - Is this the test? Best Car Safety Performance - Consumer Reports

If so, that will be affected dramatically by a stiffened body, stiffer shocks, and different suspension geometry. If you contest that, please provide the basis for your assertion.

 

That provoked an observation; stiffened body, stiffer shocks, and different suspension will impact handling. HOW it will impact handling depends on how well each component works with the others. Make everything too stiff and you will lose contact with the road if there are bumps, berms, etc.

I remember from the 1960s when mag spoke wheels were the hot thing for motorcycles, and then some research pointed out that a certain amount of flex from the spokes contributed to the handling. That started a stampede for mag rims with just the right amount of flex.

 

Yes, that's the avoidance-maneuver maximum speed testing procedure.

While sportier cars tend to do better in the "avoidance maneuver, maximum speed," this is not necessarily the case. For example:

2021 Toyota Camry LE: 54 mph with Toyo Proxes A35 size 215/55R17 94V
2021 Toyota Camry Hybrid LE: 55 mph with Firestone FT140 size 205/65R16 95H

So, the hybrid got a higher avoidance-maneuver maximum speed with thinner and higher-profile tires. You would think that your 2007 Camry SE with 17" wheels would do better than the 2007 Camry LE with 16" wheels due to lower-profile tires (both have the same tread thickness otherwise), but this is certainly not necessarily the case according to the 2021 models. As I said earlier, it is very hard to increase the avoidance-maneuver maximum speed simply with sportier tuning and sportier wheels and tires.

Perhaps, the weight of the battery is helping achieve a higher maximum speed with the hybrid cars. In fact, I just looked up the vanilla Prius, and it got 54 mph vs. the Prius Prime's 55 mph; so, the heavier battery in the trunk of the Prius Prime seems to have helped stabilize the car.

 

That's why most of the effort to increase the handling of the SE went into body modifications to reduce body roll and other issues. The suspension modifications work together with those modifications.

 

I didn't do that for my Gen 2, but I do have spreadsheets for my long gone PiP and for my Prime. Both have columns for cost per mile and cost per 100 miles. They combine the cost of the gas and the electricity I buy.

 

Exactly!

Doing a multiplication is easier than doing a division. If you have 52 mpg and 11 gallons of gasoline, you can easily multiply them in your head in three seconds to get 557 miles for the accurate available range. Now, let's try the European system: You have 4.5 km/100 L and 42 liters of gasoline. Try finding the accurate range in your head in three seconds as you did with the mpg units. You need to divide 42 by 4.5 in your head, and let's see how fast you can do it.

 

Is it okay to ask battery questions here about the prime or it's in another topic?

 

You can ask here or you can start a new thread, but you can also search a topic to find an appropriate thread that already exist.

 

Searching is likely easiest just using Google, say look for:

PriusChat [topic]

site does have its own search function, but it’s not that good.

try to post in most relevant AND recent thread.