Any Volt owner switching over to Prius PHV?

Nope, EV range is far too short. Volt's is a bit short too.
Current plans are to get a second EV to replace the Volt in 1-2 years.

 

Not doing anything til my lease is up in another two years will then see what fits my needs best (I'm hoping it will be a Model S though).

 

I am having trouble visualizing having $40,000 spent on a Volt just to lose it buying a PiP.

I am hoping to keep my 2009 Prius 20 years, like my last Toyota.

 

No way. Prius PHVs range and limited speed just don't cut it. But I already expected that would be the case when I bought the Volt last year. The minor improvement in their self-reported EV efficency (which is still not even clear how they measured) and estimated MPG_CS does not make enough difference. The PHV may work for people whose daily driving is < 15 miles, mine is 35-45.


Maybe someone that was thinking Volt that has a short commute and wants to save a thousand or two, but its hard to imagine any actual volt owner trading it in. The only Volt I know for sure was traded in was for a Jag..

 

exactly! 14 here.

 

You might want to rethink your numbers. Even if you DO only get 15-18 EV miles out of the PiP ... if you only drive an additional 4 or 10 miles, your MPGe is still light years ahead of the Volt, because you don't have to worry about heater issues ... stale gas issues, better CS mode issues, etc ... not even counting the $1,000's you'd save on the cost.

My dilemma is that fly bridge ... making me want to hold out for the PiP v. I'm hoping it's only a matter of time.

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I have the other problem, my 'commute' is so long I use less $ driving a Prius than a Volt. But I never would have considered the Volt as a cargo mover anyway.

Volt
35 miles is about is $2 of electrons, but lets pretend they are 'free'
85/37*3.74 = $8.59
Prius
120/50*3.42 = $8.21

PiP
105/50*3.42 =$7.18 (Plus about $1 of electricity)
Until I can recharge at most of my clients, it is hard to justify a PiP.
90/50*3.42 =$6.16 (plus about $2 of electricity)

 

I know my numbers. One would need to do 80% EV mode in a PiP to reach the the 85MPGe that I'm getting from my Volt (including the pesky engine starting due to temp issues). And with a highway as part of my commute the PiP would never get there. The only number I don't know is the PiP EV range, which I estimate at 12m so 15m would be 80% EV.
But I did forget to say if > 75m a day without remote charge a regular prius would be better.

The goal of the Volt is not being cheaper, its about using less gas. And is nice tide too. If you worry about a few thousands in price, try a used prius or a motorcycle.

 

I really don't see why a current Volt owner would switch to a Prius Plug-In after spending $40K plus? If I was shopping now I might choose a cheaper base PiP over a Volt on price consideration but not if price was no object. The Volt's battery cooling flaw that will shortly be rectified would cause me no concern. Its' engineering is brilliant and I think it's more attractive than a Prius, although more cramped in back. I ended up with a standard Prius 2 after concluding the Volt was too pricey for me and maybe a bit too cutting edge to take a chance on. However, it would work well for my relatively short daily commute and I'd use fairly little gas. With gas prices maybe headed to $5. per gallon soon, it's the only rational electric alternative to conventional hybrids today for most drivers; pure electrics varying range issues are too dicey for average buyers to tolerate.

 

The Volt isn't quite as large in the back as a Prius but it isn't that much smaller and still has the flexibility of a hatchback.

You are assuming the PiP can drive 15 miles on electric but only 35 for the Volt. The European and Japanese test cycles give the PiP 14 and 16 miles and both are notoriously generous in their estimates. The European cycle gives the Volt 52 miles. The Japanese cycle gives an EV range of 120 to the LEAF versus 73 from EPA. It is possible to get 45-50 miles of EV range in a Volt in real world driving most of the year in a mild climate. Similar conditions would allow you to drive 13-15 miles in the PiP. However, 1-2 miles before you run out of EV range in the PiP it will start the gas engine to warm it and the catalytic converter up before having much driving load placed on it (for emissions control reasons). Once the engine is warm, the power available from the PiP battery is sharply reduced while you are still in EV mode and it is harder to keep the engine from running (at least this was true in the prototype).

Electricity for charging your electric car in Greenwood is about $.08 per kWh and a full charge on the Volt takes about 13 kWh so that would cost just over $1.

The "premium" for premium gas in Greenwood is around 10% but is around 6-7% in many urban areas.

Since your commute is 120 miles I assume the vast majority of that would be highway driving so it would be more realistic to use the Volt EPA highway estimate of 40 mpg rather than the combined city/highway estimate of 37 mpg. I get 42 mpg at 65 mph on a flat road with no A/C in the Volt. I'll be generous and continue to assume 50 mpg for PiP even though the Prius EPA highway estimate is 48.

A PiP takes somewhere between 3 and 3.5 kWh to charge so a full charge would be $.25 - $.30.

In any case, with a 120 mile trip the cost of gasoline ends up controlling the outcome and never producing more than a 10% fueling cost reduction for the Volt or PiP unless you were able to largely or fully recharge a Volt at your client site in which case the Volt would be quite a bit cheaper. I'll assume 40 miles EV range for the Volt at 60 MPH and for the PiP 13 miles at 60 MPH which seems reasonable and realistic.

Volt
40 miles is about $1 of electrons
80/40*3.74 = $7.48 + $1 = $8.48
With recharge at client site
40/40*3.74 = $3.74 + $2 = $5.74

PiP
120/50*3.42 = $8.21 (gas only)
107/50*3.42 = $7.31 + $.25 = $7.56
Recharge at client site
94/50*3.42 = $6.43 + $.50 = $6.93

 

Almost nobody is going to have their Volt engine forced to run in order to avoid stale gas -- that only happens when the computer determines the gas in the tank has an average tank life of 365 days.

I'm not sure where you are getting 18 EV miles out of a PiP -- getting 15 miles of EV on a PiP is a stretch and the gas engine starts up for emission control reasons 1-2 miles even before that (in the prototype, at least).

If you only drive an additional 4 miles using gasoline after running past EV range in a PiP, your MPGe is not going to be light years ahead of the Volt. For one thing, the Volt will still be running at 94 MPGe on battery at that point while the PiP is burning gas at a much lower MPGe. For another thing, the PiP is going to be getting poor gasoline MPG averaged over the first 4 miles it is running. Try resetting the odometer on your Prius and then taking a 4 mile drive on a cold engine. On a gen 2 you would probably get around 35 MPG, 30 MPG for 2.5 miles of distance, and 20 MPG or less during the first mile.

 

Considering the buffer SOC range that the Volt ICE is called to fill up, I would say those MPG are also quite low and with a unuseful purpose (considering shorter trips in CS), besides taking room for energy from the plug.

 

I'm confused by what you are saying.. the Volt does not fill up the battery using the ICE (unless you hit mountain mode with the SOC < 45%). I've watched my SOC and it does not recharge when the ICE comes on for cold starts or for the short runs when I've just exceeded my range.

If you are saying the initial miles on the Volt's ICE will be lower MPG, you are correct. Every ICE has lower MPG when cold, and the Volt it no exception. When I've had short engine runs (< 5 miles) which is a really cold start, I've seen between 28 and 39mpg, with my average MPG_CS on short runs since October being about 33mpg. (Overall MPG_CS has been 37 as I had 2 longer trips as well@40mpg).

However cold starts will be less frequent if a commute can be all EV. My car has had 56 cold "starts" since Aug 2011, but has gone over 5500 miles. If I had a PiP, I would have had more than 300 engine starts, and a Prius would have been > 400.

 

It's much sooner than that, since we've already had reports of that happening in the warm season... something like every 60 days for about 10 minutes. That's rare anyway, since travel would have to be quite limited to avoid ever depleting. And obviously, winter routinely triggers it.

What do you consider a "cold start" ?

We know that driving through suburbs with the PHV won't start the engine at all when it's nice out. But what difference does that make?

The point of PHV is to significantly reduce, not eliminate.
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Through town in the dead of winter, it's about 35 MPG. On the 70 MPH highway, including a hard acceleration to merge, it's also about 35 MPG.

That's pretty good for worst case and PHV warms up faster.
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Are you two *still* arguing whether 40 EV miles is better than 12 ? Let me put this to rest: yes it is, if the cars are otherwise equal.

Of course the two cars are not otherwise equal -- not by a long shot. One is a Daewoo body with a chevy badge, korean battery and GM parts; the other is a Prius. The Daewoo is designed to avoid blended fuel driving, the PiP encourages blended driving when efficiency gains result.

 

You are mixing up different conditions.

The fuel maintenance mode acts to prevent stale gas by estimating the average age of the gasoline in the tank and starting the engine to keep the average under 365 days.

The engine maintenance mode ensures that the engine runs long enough to heat the engine and exhaust system to burn out any accumulating moisture and keep lubricant in good condition. It causes the engine to start at least once every 6 weeks. The engine stop condition is temperature driven but with a maximum time of 10 minutes. In summer it typically takes 1-2 minutes. In winter it typically takes 5-10 minutes.

I've driven my Volt over a year and more than 17,000 miles and have never seen a maintenance mode startup because I've always ended up running the engine long enough within that 6 week internal.

 

The PiP blends during EV mode because it has to -- it wasn't really much of a choice given a 4.4 kWh battery and typical battery power output specifications. Also, it happily allows them to leverage their excellent existing Prius design. No matter how many times usbseawolf2000 says it, blending is a poor choice in EV mode when you have adequate battery capacity and capabilities. It makes no sense, in the abstract, to cold start a gas engine just to run it under heavy load while accelerating for a few seconds with the emissions issues and poor gas efficiency which that implies.

I'm confident that when a larger plugin market develops and battery prices and power/energy densities improve that Toyota will find a way to design a future EREV plugin with 40+ miles of range and excellent gas hybrid mileage that blends only after the battery runs empty. In other words, it will run like a Volt but with post-EV hybrid blending extending down to lower speed city traffic where the Volt presently runs the gas engine in a less efficient serial hybrid mode. In that future world, GM may find a way to improve city hybrid efficiency and overall gas mileage as well.

And finally.... the Volt body was not designed or manufactured by Daewoo. Daewoo was involved, as part of GM global engineering, in designing the Cruze body on top of the Delta II suspension platform designed by Opel. The Volt body was designed in the U.S. on the Delta II platform. The excellent battery cells are made by a Korean company (LG Chem) in a U.S. factory (or at least will be by the end of this year) and the battery design leverages technology developed by and licensed from the U.S. Argonne National Laboratory. The Volt's gas engine is being manufactured in a U.S. factory now as well (earlier imported from Austria) and the transmission will be made here as well so the Volt will be a high-content U.S. car manufactured here and exported to other countries.

 

Huh? When blending takes place, that's HV mode, not EV.

Why is that implied? We see a significant traction contribution coming from the electric-motor, resulting in less demand from the engine than even a regular Prius would have.

And why do you continue to imply that Prius is the only plug-in configuration of HSD possible? Haven't you noticed the much more powerful traction motor in Camry hybrid? 105 is quite a bit more than 60.
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