2023 Prius Prime - Share Your EV Mode Range, Rate

I guess in Auto mode, HV is kicked in at 30% battery SOC (State of Charge) gauge blue area

I hit once and chargePoint show only 11.4764kWh added for 32%-100% (actual it 80% of battery capacity according to
Owners's Manual/Toyota 2023 Prius Prime Owner's Manual Quick Guide (OM47E54U) @ page 3 and 7)

You can try use EV only mode, but that will hurt battery life when lower than 20%

2023 XSE

In Auto mode, battery from 100% drop to 32% and turn into HV mode, total 41.3 mile, chargePoint show only 11.4764kWh added for 32%-100%, that would be 3.599 mi/kWh

For other daily round trip around 25 miles, I got range from 3.757-4.189 mi/kWh

Also google map show 12.4 miles for one way, but prime only report 12.0 miles, that's 3.33% difference

 

After I fully charge, the EV range on the dash has crept up to 45 miles. That is consistent with what I thought I was getting. Up from the low 40s it was registering, so I guess it is calibrating to what I actually do on around town in EV mode. I'm not expecting it to go much above that, I think with the XSE that's about as good as it will get.

 

OK, after two months of just getting used to driving this car (and enjoying the heck out of it!!), I'm starting to pay attention to efficiency. Doing so for gas is clearly a mess, so starting with EV first as that is easier. Below is what I figured for a pretty decent set of errands today and it seems too good to be true, am I missing something?

Started with 100% SOC as I had about 35 miles of errands planned, so hope was to do it all in EV mode.
Total miles driven: 36.5, two destinations, then home.
Ending SOC 36% (!)
100% of EV reserve is 10.6KWh, so used 6.784KWh
That comes out to 5.38Miles/KWh or an EV range (if drained) of 57 miles.
??? That seems cool, but way too high.

This was a round trip, so no altitude changes to mess up results. Wind (if any) was minor.
Temp was low 70's with no A/C. Windows up with the fan blowing (yes, getting just outside air without AC takes ninja moves!!!)
It was probably 2/3 highways mostly at 65MPH, but some slow downs, rest was city streets at 25-40MPH.
I've been driving a Gen1 for 20 years, so know how to drive efficiently, but that seems too good to be true.

will

 

That sounds high. I think it is possible, but you would have to drive it until you fully used up the EV range to know. I wonder if the range somehow goes down faster toward the end? Not sure, but if that range, or even low 50s, was real world in the XSE that would be awesome. Even though I am happy with anything over 45.

 

Gooj: Interesting point on the battery gauge maybe not being linear. Maybe at some point I will manufacture some additional errands to get the battery down to 0%. The tricky bit is I need to try and keep the altitude change to 0 which around here isn't easy. It does seem too good to be true.

will

 

@Will B
search priuschat @3prongpaul for his posts old posts mostly Gen 1 through Gen 3,
especially if you know the person that got your old Gen 1.

https://boulderhc.com/

 

Fantastic, as I would have expected from Toyota. Especially when used at 65 mph in the test. Surely in ev only mode 100%?

 

Mr.Vandenburg: yes, this was in EV mode and since I didn't get to 0% stayed in EV mode the whole time.

will

 

11.5 kWh is identical to the EPA plug-in charge capacity calculated from the window sticker:

plug-in BEV charge capacity (kWh) = 33.705 kWh/ge × BEV range (mi) / mpge

 

I figured it was, but since the range was so good was wondering if the engine was helping out on the highway. I get better than epa range in suburban driving, but not on the highway at 65-67 with gen4. Maybe it’s a little better, never started on full charge, then drive on a highway until empty charge. But guessing not much more than the epa 25 miles.

 

MrVanvandenburg (and all): Yes, for highway driving I've settled on 68MPH or the posted speed limit, whichever is smaller. It was a speed by which I could net a reported 50MPG on my Gen1 round trip from Denver to Colorado Springs and back. It reported 2-3MPG high, but was always nice to see that "5x" on the display!

For my PPPXP on that drive the battery peters out at around 40 miles (not bad), but is a bit unfair as that is near the highest point in the drive from Denver to COS with a net altitude gain of about 2,000 feet. No luck on a fair highway range test yet.

I did go on another decent length errand yesterday. To the destination was stop/go city rush hour traffic, but the return was mostly easy 65MPH traffic. Results understandably worse, but not by much.
- Distance: 30.2
- Battery: 100% down to 42% (58% used)
- 6.148KWh used
- 4.91M/KWh
- Effective range: 52.1 Miles

will

 

Sorry for the double-post, still struggling with that hang-up issue on posting.

BTW for a related tangent, attached is the mileage data for my Gen1 from purchase through getting the PPPXP: 20 years and 220,000 miles of data. Red is what the car reported, blue is what I calculated based on miles and pump data. That is smoothed, the per-fill data is a LOT noisier! The initial bumps were seasonal as my driving was pretty consistent. Between retiring in 2018 and COVID in 2020 things got a bit weird, but all the major changes made sense. I wish I could do something similar for the PPPXP, but with two energy sources, not sure how to do it easily.

will

 

No, 30% is a random start point chosen by the app developers. It is the same number for Gen 4 and probably also for any Toyota/Lexus PHEV or BEV.

Therefore, ignore it. 30% means 0% as far as available plug-in capacity is concerned, and it does not refer to an actual battery capacity either.

 

I'm getting ready for a big (5,000 mile) road trip, so will be getting lots of data. As we all know, besides altitude, wind plays a big deal in overall mileage (kilometerage for the enlightened folk? ), so in case folk aren't aware, here are two surface wind websites I look at each morning before starting a days driving to get an idea of what lies ahead.

Wind Map
This one is mainland US only and sometimes doesn't update, check the date and time before counting on it. As you zoom around it shows cities so you can get bearings fairly easy.

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-101.63,39.21,1390/loc=-104.467,39.484
This one is global and works all the time. It gives very little in the way of location references, so harder to know where you are looking. I plunked in the coordinates for Denver so I at least have dot for home.

Does anyone have any similar/better websites?

will

 

The severe rake of the windshield on the 2023 Prius (nice!!), together with a roofline that comes to my belly button (not really that tall), translates to wind having virtually no impact in overall mileage. YMMV

 

Geoj: Weird part is that even though the 2023 Prii look more aerodynamic than the last generation, they aren't!!! Lots of articles about it online, for the older Prii it was 0.24 and with the 2023 it is 0.27. Other than the numbers being different I don't know how big a deal that delta is, but for the folk that claim to know what they are talking about it seems big. Go figger--especially since it looks so much sleeker.

will

 

Tovli: Yea, posts like yours make me really want to get a dongle and Dr. Prius going to monitor my car, that looks like all sorts of good data. I've been looking at various OBD-II dongles, do you recommend the one you have?

Seeing that (and getting confidence it is accurate) really does show how much margin Toyota has and that leaving it at "100%" for a quarter day or so before driving ain't going to be that bad since it really isn't 100%. I was (and still am sortof) fretting over the software bug that won't get me charge the car over midnight, but maybe not that big a deal to only have it at 100% right before driving off.

will

 

BTW, I purposely drained the battery on another round of errands over several days. Not quite as good as my first round noted above, I had several impediments to best efficiency. About a quarter of the miles were in rush hour stop/go traffic and I did a little "non-Prius driver" leaping off at the line takeoffs today. I guess I don't handle temptation well and with the PPPXP it is nice to play every once in a while. As before, all round trip so no altitude deltas and mid-70s. Windows down for city streets and windows up with fan blowing without AC on highways.

- Distance: 48.0
- Battery: 100% down to 5% (95% used)
- 10.07KWh used
- 4.77M/KWh
- Effective range: 50.5 Miles

will

 

I've also seen the Dr Prius graph turn full red once. I was on a hwy entrance ramp, go pedal to metal, on an incline. Only stayed red for a second or two and was lucky to even notice with other distractions. iirc, it was around 100 Amps when DrPrius graph went red.
I've seen DrPrius show 80 Amps regen once too, but the graph didn't budge from full green. I still have no clue exactly how many Amps regen these cars will produce given the right conditions.