2023 Prius Prime EV Range

My experiences with Honda and Nissan would not allow me to make such a sweeping generalization about Japanese cars in general. Toyota, yes. But even Toyotas have some baffling oversights, bizarre design decisions. Nothing's perfect.

 

LOL... I have never owned any car, foreign or domestic, that I drove past 200Kmiles. In our region, any car, including Japanese, does not last longer than 15years due to rust problems regardless of miles driven, unless the car is garaged during winter months. Our 12 years old 2005 Toyota Sienna had only 100kmiles, a very strong engine but rusted out underbody made it not worth fixing it. I had to sell it to a scrapyard.

 

It's sort of funny how opposite the southwest US is. I've only seen a rust hole on a car that lived here once, and I'm not sure how it happened. Other than that car I've never seen more than some reddish "freckles" on the underbody of a car here.

 

If you wash the underbody of the car with seawater for 6 months out of the year, year after year, you will see the same effect.

 

This is the undercarriage of my 2012 PiP this afternoon. 148,000 miles on the clock and 9 years in operation. Climate makes a difference

 

mine is all white

 

what were you driving previously? gen 3 is a nightmare

 

That includes local political climate, such as whether salt is loved or hated as a winter road treatment.

Up here, it used to be hated. Now it is loved, especially by folks with no winter driving skills, which has caused me significant corrosion problems.

 

This is purely speculative on my part, but it wouldn't shock me if Toyota did up the EV range on the PP assuming they make a next gen version. It seems that most EVs (PHEVs included) try to ratchet up their EV range when they reboot (i.e. Volts going from 38 miles to 54 miles of EV from gen 1 to gen 2). That said, Toyota seems hesitant to sacrifice fuel efficiency for the sake of extending battery range which a bigger battery would necessarily entail. So if they can somehow cut down on vehicle weight while adding more battery capacity, there ya go. Just gotta figure out how to make a car out of bird feathers.

But I'd say if your goal is to be a nearly-all electric car, the Clarity probably works better in your favor. It's a lovely car. I considered it very closely before choosing the PP, but ultimately I couldn't justify the additional expense and the merely above average fuel efficiency -- and that 7 gallon gas tank, yuck -- mattered to me since I can't really charge for a while. That and they are even harder to find than PP's. At least local dealers are selling a handful of the PP's. No one in my market sells the Clarity, so I had major qualms about ever getting it serviced.

 

I went to college in Colorado, so learning to drive in snow and ice became a necessity. They don't close roads for snow or ice, nor require chains. "You want to drive up that mountain road with 2 feet of snow on it in your lowered Honda Civic with no chains? Be our guest." I went from being petrified the first winter to using the emergency brake to swing the rear rend around corners (or just do a 360 just because) on icy days by the end

Now I scare the pants off poor Californian passengers (usually my family) whenever we encounter snow in the mountains. They think if there are flakes falling on the windshield we're just going to slide off the road and die. I try to explain how there's no ice on a road when the snow can't even stick, but they act like I'm pulling their leg.

 

I wonder if I'd need hearing protection, or if they'd just faint into silence, if they rode with me the times I've crossed Stevens Pass here on solid snowfloor for 40 miles, with no pavement visible whatsoever for that much distance. (Total trip roughly 120 miles, but the extra 80 was mostly on exposed pavement or broken snow and ice.)

For me they were actually very pleasant drives. After extended storm closures, I-90 reopened first, without a chain requirement, and soaked up the delayed and waiting traffic. Stevens reopened hours later, with chains required, too late in the day for the ski hill to open for the day, so had no ski traffic. I was able to cross both times with virtually no traffic, even the oncoming cars were 5+ miles apart. With no other traffic within sight going my way, no jockeying between faster and slower vehicles whatsoever, it was just "pick whatever speed is comfortable for your own skill and equipment", making for a very pleasant drive through a winter wonderland. But only for those comfortable in the conditions ...

 

You may get about 35 miles with the current-generation Prius Prime in city driving. The best I could get in mostly highway driving is about 32 miles. In very gentle city driving, I get about 43 miles, but that driving style is not for everyone.

Your EV miles will depend greatly on the A/C setting. If you set the A/C to about the outside ambient temperature, you will get the maximum miles. Otherwise, your miles could be cut down 20%.

Also, you should charge your battery just before you will be driving for longest battery life and less degradation in battery performance.

 

Greatly depends on your city and your highways. In the Los Angeles area I find that highway driving is far more efficient than city driving. In city driving you have to stop at about 75% or more of the traffic lights, and they're often less than 1/4-mile apart. At bad times it can take more than 45 minutes to travel 2 miles. If it's hot you're just sitting there burning range with A/C.

City driving in those conditions almost always means you're either accelerating or braking with almost no cruising. That's terrible for efficiency. The best efficiencies I've ever achieved are in heavy stop-and-go highway traffic, where I can leave a large buffer ahead and cruise at the average speed (usually 15-20). Even at 60-65 I usually do better than city driving.

 

It sounds like you set your A/C too low or too high (check your eco diary on your MFD) or accelerate or decelerate too hard. I have never had poor EV mileage in city driving, and I typically get 35 miles round trip per full charge or longer.

 

I don't use A/C most of the time. There's no amount of acceleration that can use less fuel than continuous driving. You're still accelerating the same mass to the same speed no matter how long you take to do it. Inertia is real and cannot be overcome by driving technique.

 

I suspect that the acceleration comes into play when you look at the way batteries discharge. Higher current demand generally reduces the level of the battery charge more than the same number of watt hours at a lower current over a longer time span.

 

Inertia isn't lost energy. You gain it back when you decelerate by recharging your battery. The reason you are not is because you are braking too hard and using your friction brakes instead of regenerative braking.

On the contrary, viscous drag is friction and lost energy, and it increases as the square of your speed. This is why for most people high-speed highway EV or HV mileage will be a lot less than city mileage.

If you drive gently, you will not only increase your mileage but also extend brake pad and rotor life substantially. Priuses should use virtually no friction brakes if they are driven gently.

 

You gain about 50% back in the best case scenario.

I do not use the brake pads except in the most extreme situations. My 2012 PiP with 147,000 miles still has 70% of the original factory pads.

 

That and it takes more energy to accelerate a mass to velocity y than it does to maintain that same mass at velocity y.

 

It is a lot higher than 50% for gentle acceleration and gentle deceleration. There is some loss because of the internal resistance of the battery and other resistive elements in the electrical system and because of the maximum current capability of the system, which both become more important at high currents. Inertia itself is not a lossy process. There are (nearly) lossless energy storage systems that use inertia in the form of flywheel.

I certainly get a lot better mileage in the city. The mileage starts decreasing a lot above speeds 55 mph (57 mph on the speedometer), and I can easily see that every 1 mph increase takes a huge chunk at the mileage. This is because of the aerodynamic drag and tire drag, which increase proportional to the square of the speed, not just proportional to the speed.

I get about 30 miles per charge in freeway EV driving, but it would be less if I went over 65 mph. In city EV driving, 35 miles is easy. It is the same thing with HV driving—the city driving is more efficient. I average about 78 mpg in HV driving overall (minus the exaggeration of the MFD fuel meter, which is around 5 mpg). What kind of EV and HV mileage do you get in different conditions?