Car & Driver Says Prime Ugly, Too Slow

The outside looks of the car are not very important to me - I ride inside so what is inside is most important to me. However I think the Prime is much better looking than the Gen IV.

As for the inside I really don't like the looks of the large LCD display. It may be practical to use (or not), I just don't think it looks like it belongs there.

I also don't care about slow. I drive for maximum MPG, don't find any need to accelerate quickly. So I don't buy a Prius to drive fast. If I want power I drive my V8 4Runner but it really sucks gas. I just think a high mpg car is just that and doesn't need to be fast.

 

The ONLY thing that would have sold a Tesla to me:

• 4-wheel drive
• Integrated house-vehicle power
• ICE power sufficient for 75 mph on level, standard day
• dynamic cruise control or auto-pilot
• Tow package

Except for ICE power, Tesla has a good solution.

 

Add a trailer hitch and a :



But then you have some way of defeating the interlock that prevents you from driving the car while charging.

 

The base Prius Prime Plus comes standard with navigation, auto emergency braking, radar cruise and powerful LED headlights for $27100 MSRP. A Civic Hatchback with Navigation and Honda Sensing costs $26300 MSRP. The Prime is eligible for $4500 or more in government rebates and saves money every month in fuel and maintenance costs.

So no.

 

This has been a common pattern since the first Prius. The standard equipment has been optional on competing, cheaper cars. For example, alloy wheels which our Prius use for weight, often cost hundreds of dollars as options on the ordinary cars used to price-compare with a Prius. Our Prius also have functional, aerodynamic spoilers which like the Gen-1, were barely detectable and mocked by Prius skeptics. The same skeptics who are mute with:


Bob Wilson

 

Car and Driver can say what they want about the Prius Prime.....truth be told, it won't stop the best Prius Plugin ever built from selling like hot cakes. Have you all noticed how many major car manufacturers are quietly sneaking hybrid versions of their best selling models on to the market? And then there's hybrid technology being incorporated into racing cars too. Yet, at the original inception of the Prius, the infinite howls of derision were deafening back then as they still are to a certain degree today.

Slagging off the Prius Prime might help Car & Driver cling to the core of their petrol V8 obsessed readers, but every single day, more and more drivers from all walks of life are seduced from the dark side of motoring to the light - when they somehow by accident or design, stumble into "The Temple of Prii". They discover gospel truth about this advanced technology, try it for themselves, and are totally smitten.

It may take time, but one day in the NOT too distant future, Car & Driver will discover that a disproportionately high number of their readers have evolved to the point where 0 to 60mph times have attained a status of great irrelevance. Instead, they'll all want to hear about more revolutionary advanced technologies that save the earth's energy resources while still providing above average automotive capabilities.

Personally, I'd buy the Prius Prime in a heartbeat if I could afford one....but, I suppose being one of the converted, I'm irretrievably biased!


iPhone ?

 

more likely, car and driver will slip into the sunset with the generation of drivers subscribing to it.

 

I felt exactly the same as you do. What opened the door for me was the excellent leasing incentive of the 2014 Prius Plug-in ($5300 upon lease). Perhaps Prime will have a great leasing option in the future. In the US, the dealer will claim Fed tax refund, but you can claim state and local rebates if any. I am enticed by Toyota's unapologetic focus on fuel efficiency over performance (e.g., 0 to 60 figure).

 

Not related to thread, but how does one get cash without an ATM?

 

ski mask and note?

 

Hummmm, I'll take a photo of my refund check and part of my 1040 showing the Prime credit ... then post it to their comments section. <GRINS>

Bob Wilson

 

I did a new analysis of NHTS 2009 data (the above was for NHTS 2001 data). Seems it's a bit less now:

< 1 mile 0.5%
1-2 miles 1.2%
2-3 miles 2.6%
3-4 miles 3.1%
4-5 miles 3.0%
5-9 miles 14.7%
10-14 miles 11.9%
15-19 miles 9.8%
20-24 miles 7.7%
25-29 miles 6.0%
30-34 miles 5.1%
35-39 miles 3.6%
40-44 miles 3.0%
45-49 miles 2.3%
50-74 miles 6.6%
75-99 miles 3.1%
100+ miles 15.9%

The last three (50 and over) add up to 25.6%.

With regards to the Prime, the under 25 miles bin for all types of trips is 54.4% of all vehicle miles traveled.

However, if you restrict the data to just driving to and from work, under 15 miles (you can make it to work and back in the Prime) is 70.6% of all trips and under 25 miles (which works if you can charge at work) is 86.3% of all trips.

 

Many ways.......


....some of them legal.

 

A quick and dirty (and not entirely accurate) analysis of your weighted miles shows the Prime consuming about 50% more fossil fuels than a Volt. The diminishing returns of larger battery sizes in PHEVs is interesting, and I think matches up pretty well with the crowd sourced data (extrapolated from Volt and PiP.) Of course this is only a statement about oil use; the Volt loses in terms of carbon pollution or energy use or fuel cost per mile.

 

In real life, it is actually much better. I'm about 9 miles from work but I've found this approach works:

	miles	paid-free	purpose
1	9	paid	morning commute to work
2	.25-1	paid	commute to one of three chargers within a mile
3	.25-1	free	covers lunch and morning commute
4	6	free	to shops on the way home
5	6	paid	to home
6
7	16	free	using lunch and shop chargers
8	6	paid	the trip home from shops
9	22		total miles

Charging at work, not something I've experienced, would tend to keep me and other EV employees at work through their lunch hour. No work charger, and I'm going out for lunch to one of three 16-40A charging stations within a mile . . . with no incentive to scamper back.

Bob Wilson

 

I'm surprised that you can't eco-shame them into at least granting you L1 charging rights,
It would cost virtually nothing since GCFI outlets are probably already available for the diggers and fillers.

Seems that all one would need at most would be a few hundred dollars worth of electrical supplies, and some paint and appropriate signage.

I'll betcha if somebody at the executive level adopted this as their pet project you could even get a Sunday morning ecoinfomercial out of it.
Even in Bama, there might also be some tax-cheese available.

Should not be that heavy a lift.
I'll betcha your company even has some equivalent of an ECO (see what I did with that? Environmental Compliance Officer..... )
You could be one well written white paper away from a greener company.....

 

I know why it's different.

In 2001, I did it for 40+ miles (a "P40 car"), not 50+ miles (a Volt). That adds up to 30.9% now, which is pretty close to the 1/3 I remembered.

 

I asked when I first got the BMW i3-REx by talking to the facilities guys who talk with property management. I got a lot of push back even after pointing out it would be ~$0.25/day per car. Then I got used to taking lunch out of the office. <GRINS>

This is really a tenant problem for my management and I really don't care for them. Near as I can tell, I'm only one of two employees who could use it, the other is a lady Leaf owner. If I was dealing with interesting problems that would keep me in the office, I would have different motivation. But truth be told, I would rather change employer and let them 'figure it out for themselves.'

Oh, you do realize I'm not on any sort of ECO crusade. I'm just cheap about my operational costs.

Bob Wilson

 

38%, and that's if you assume electricity is not produced by fossil fuels.

Put another way, using the NHTS and EPA numbers, the Prime would consume 138% as much gasoline and 58% as much electricity as the Volt.