2023 Prius Reviews

that wording seems a lot more innocent and informative than what gokhan is saying about gen 5.

efficiency goes down for all fuels as speed or acceleration increase. and doubtless battery life will be affected.
but those aren't reasons to not drive 80mph in ev, unless we don't want those outcomes.

 

BEV efficiency does not change with the speed. It is always close to 90%. However, the ICE thermal efficiency is maximized near 40% at high torques and high rpms.

 

I don't know, beginning to think they're clueless.

 

we're getting old mendel

 

The PiP was a blended PHEV that used the energy source with the densest energy content when the most energy was used. So is the Prime, but buyers in North America want a full EV operation, thus EV mode there is different than EV mode in other markets.

 

That's not uncommon. Many FWD cars use cables instead of chains because they are lower profile.

 

I'll be honest, that was a little bit of shade thrown to those that seem to need to nitpick every tiny detail; especially those that already hate the 19" wheels.

Personally, a set of Hakkapeliitta 10 would be calling my name if I lived in a mountainous area. Heck, I might end up doing those anyway even though I live in one of the flattest (land) places on Earth.*



*I believe a geologist once said the way to make an accurate topographical model of my region was to take a 2'x8' sheet of plywood and stick two pieces of paper under one of the short sides that marks the south end. That accurately models the 50mi wide, 200mi long region I live in. lol

 

What does the RPM of the engine have to do with speed of the car? In a simplified view, in older designs the gearing of the CVT would allow Electric motors to run the wheels up to 40 something MPH without having to spin up the ICE to keep the electric motors from over revving. That was not a matter of not enough energy, it was a matter of spinning too fast.

As I remember, the engine will run at whatever speed the ECU requests, and any excess energy will be stored in the battery. That's been observed in the old and new models. When the battery is charged to the target SOC, the ICE stops running and the electric motors take over, providing power to the wheels until the SOC falls below a preset (lower) target. Then it starts over again. It is during this give and take that the gas engine will need to spin when driving 90 MPH, and when that happens it is probably more efficient to start up the engine so that it can provide power instead of just being a drag.

 

Prius Prime 19" 70 mph test in bad weather.

50F outside
Raining
70F heating
34 ml in EV

According to the tester, 39 ml possible in better conditions.
Means 44 ml possible with the 17"
Not bad.

2023 Toyota Prius Prime: InsideEVs 70 MPH Range Test

 

Unfortunately, Auto doesn't do much. It is simply a way to tell the system "if I floor it, you are more than welcome to turn on the ICE", compared to a pure EV mode drive.

My Prime limited has maps/routing, I would expect that in Auto it would turn on automatically the ICE - I am driving on a highway, turn it on. I mean, they have a system to improve re-gen based on previous drives on the same roads. You don't even have to use routing, it just remembers where you drove the most.
Instead Auto simply uses up all the charge merrily at 70-80mph, and then once the battery is finished, it runs the ICE. Which gets warmed up at highway speed...
For me Auto is more a gimmick (like the EV mode in the vanilla Prius) than anything else. Because even at lower speeds, to have the ICE kick in, you really have to floor it to get it to "help" (as if the acceleration in EV mode wasn't fast enough for a car like this) and if I am driving slow, I am probably somewhere where "flooring it" is not a good idea.

 

In the meantime:
Toyota Said To Develop EV-Only Platform Just As CEO Steps Down
(from Jan 2023)
and
Toyota will build a $1.29 billion electric vehicle battery factory in North Carolina - The Verge
(the factory will be up and running "in 2025").

I am still asking myself: where is the BEV Prius? Why didn't they offer the BEV version as an option (even if in "super limited quantities" like the bZ4X)? The Gen4 prime has an excellent MPGe rating, one of the highest available (133MPGe), why not offering something similar with a big battery and ditch all the ICE portion of it?
In the meantime Tesla, Kia and Hyundai, as well as a bunch of others, are merrily selling EVs in the thousands.

On a side note: in Europe the Prius is sold in the PHEV version ONLY. They don't sell the vanilla Prius anymore.
In Europe they also sell four versions of BEV commercial vans (depending on the market, they also offer the bZ4x - in some markets it is provably too expensive to sell, or the local marketing geniuses at Toyota Europe, have made the decision for the consumers in that market). The line is called ProACE. All versions come with two battery sizes (so much for not having enough batteries...).
One of the four versions can be also used as a non-commercial vehicle and can be configured with 3 rows of seats.
Here in the USA, nothing. And I am seeing similarly sized vans used here too, sold by Nissan, Ford, etc.
I continue to say: give the consumers a choice. Instead, I feel that now in the USA market (with the no longer valid excuse "logistical issues"), they are offering more and more take-or-leave-it "options".

And BTW, in China they sell things like this vehicle, with USA-market level warranties (so they believe in what they sell) and for $70k: Li Auto
To the point that some wealthy Chinese buyers are ditching their 230k$ Porsches to get one of these:
China’s Car Buyers Have Fallen Out of Love With Foreign Brands - The New York Times

More than "fallen out of love", I'd say "foreign car manufactures don't listen to their customers" ("we know better" approach, that sunk companies like Nokia, Kodak and Siemens Mobile - remember those?).

And Toyota (and I'd argue all Japanese manufacturers) is the most deaf of them all.

[the US market today reminds me of the East Germany "market": you have one version/model (the Trabant), you wait forever for it, and you pay and arm and leg to get nothing (or you pay even more to lose fundamental characteristic of the cat, like, you know, EV range on an EV vehicle...Like saying, I give you big tires but you get a smaller tank - that sounds like a fantastic deal to me).

 

I’ve been waiting for the bev Prius for years

 

It is going to be a while longer, it seems.
And I might have moved on to somebody else in the meantime.

 

Same here, if someone makes a Prius sized car or a bit larger, and there are quantities on the lots to choose from, I will be very interested.
I don’t think I’d be interested in a gen 5 Prius bev though, they’ve made it too small

 

I think that Toyota is listening to their customers. Have you ever participated in a focus group? I have, but not for Toyota. I've added my two cents to the feedback on local hospital services. They ignored any suggestion that might cut into the hospital profits. I also provided feedback to the Quaker Oats Company as part of a focus group when they were setting up to market a Captain Crunch cereal spin off. As young teen, my input was just what they wanted. I recall that they changed the product slightly, but I can't remember what the changes were. The spin off is still on the market today. I had some for breakfast a couple days ago.

The problem is that everyone wants their personal favorite features added to a design that was not designed to be a universal platform for all uses. You say that you want a BEV without the ICE. That's a loosing proposition with the Prius. You'd take out a 400 pound engine to replace it with a 1500 to 2500 pound battery pack that is much more expensive to build and maintain.

Re: the suggestion that they can build "just a few" is almost always a loosing proposition for the customer and the builder. Look at the 2023 Corvette for an example of what you end up with when building a limited run specialized car. "The Corvette Z06 configurator is out. If you tick every box, the car can be specced to more than $184,000—before dealer markup.Oct 24, 2022" (copied from wiki)

Toyota has delivered a Prius that will run on a small battery for over an hour without firing up the ICE. Running only as a gas hybrid it will move you more than 60 miles on one gallon of gas. Without having to do anything different from any other mainstream car, It's one of the most fuel efficient and pleasant cars on the market (in that price range). When the last gas station shuts down, the 2023 Prius prime will still be usable for many years if there is enough energy to charge it. When the Electric grid goes down due to storms or droughts after 2030 I hope that I have a 4 kw solar installation to charge my car. I'm not sure what I would do if I had a large battery that lost 760 watt hours per day just from the internal battery drain. That would be around 22 kWh per month just sitting there.

 

Then why is Toyota shifting focus to electric vehicles?

 

The Proace is a rebadged Stellantis.
"So, think of this Proace like you would a Toyota Aygo, which shares all the important bits with a Citroen C1 and Peugeot 108. To all intents and purposes, it’s a French van."
https://www.topgear.com/car-reviews/toyota/proace

The EV version exists now because Toyota doesn't have the means of making their own, and they need one for the EU market. Honda is doing the same in the US with the Prologue EV; it's a GM.

 

Years ago, we lived in Germany, and heard many jokes about the beloved "Trabi" "Car of the Year in 1989!" Here's one that relates to the complaints about available colors:
Buyer: Can I get the Trabi with a two-tone paint job?
Seller: Of course! And that model comes with mag wheels, heated leather seats, fog lights, and AC!
Buyer: You're kidding!
Seller: You started it!

 

Were you asking me Bisco? I'll assume that you are.

I don't know what their motivations and deciding factors are. I'm not employed there. I can think of several motivators that would fit their actions and announcements, but that is not the same as being able to accurately answer the question "why is Toyota shifting focus to electric vehicles".

There was a lot more typed 8 hours ago, but I fell asleep and did not hit "post".

 

i'm sure @dbstoo knows this - but the various lobbies that push for EV sales only - is driving the shift away from ICE & PHEV here, as well as in the EU and China. It doesn't make EV's or PHEV's good or bad. Less we forget - it was dino-fuels that allowed us to progress from beyond steam trains & fire places for heating. You don't have to be employed by toyo to know why they too will shift to EV's. If the largest market (CHINA) tells ANY auto manufacturer that they have to sell ev's there or get out? You can bet their bottom dollar they will do what they're told.
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