First day with my Prius Plug-in

I understand this. I was just pointing out that as a nation we have painted ourselves into a corner. And now, rather than trying to move back to a paradigm of less driving, we wring our hands about how nasty the oil exporting countries are, and we spend more on oil wars than it would cost us to reposition our energy consumption.

I was not referring to you in particular, and I'm sure there are individuals who really cannot change overnight. But as a nation, changing our commuting habits has to be part of the solution.

Bigger battery.

 

The Volt qualifies for the $7500 because it is an Extended Range Electric Vehicle. With over 500 cars on Voltstats.net with 3.2+ million miles with 70% of those miles on electric (I personally have 86.4% EV miles) I think it is safe to say that it qualifies for the fuel credit. The simple answer would be that it is based on battery capacity, but for me the Volt has more than proven itself.

I think the PiP should qualify for more based on overall efficiency, but since the credit itself is based only on max capacity like Daniel said that is why the PiP only gets $2500. Granted I am impressed to see you guys in colder weather getting 13 EV miles out of the car. At 50F I am usually at 39-42EV miles with the 10.3kwh usable in the Volt. So to see you guys getting 13 out of the 4.4kwh is impressive. That means you have a lot of room for improvement as you are only getting 2.9mi/kwh. If you can even get up in to the mid 3's to low 4's you will be all set.

As far as regen goes as DrInnovation said it is not 100% brought back. It is enough in some cases to zero out your acceleration (in the Volt I can nearly get enough back to cancel out the energy I use to re-accelerate to speed). So rolling downhill will not create equal energy to go back up the other side. To create a lot of regen energy you would need to be doing heavy braking as if stopping and all would be lost accelerating anyway. It is an interesting phenomenon I have played with in the Volt as I go through the tunnel everyday. On average @ 55mph I may get 0.1kwh going down into it on the one side, but use about 0.5-0.6kwh to go back out the otherside at the same speed. So regen does help, but it is a very small part of the equation. On average I can go 1 mile for every 0.24-0.27kwh consumed. Is just all about maximizing your efficiency, but as Daniel said not at the expense of other drivers (they tend to get pretty mad). Anymore I just keep up with the flow of traffic.

 

It's unfortunate the total amount of money available wasn't taken into consideration. Triple the number of new owners could benefit then.

In other words, if the same quantity of Volt were sold as PHV, it would require three times as much to fund.
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Any update?

 

Hey Tracksyde.... quick question on the tint job. Wanna get mine done in the next week or two. What type of tint did you go with and what shade? (Light, Medium, Dark). Would you recommend Perfect Window Tint?

Thanks!

 

I haven't yet seen any videos of PiP driving pure EV, so I'm posting two videos, driving aprox. 11.5km one way with pre-production PiP. Enjoy!

 

Hi Tracksyde,
I picked up a winter gray metallic Base model from Dianne this Sunday afternoon. I have a reservation to get it tinted in San Diego this Thurday.
Since this is the first time I am getting a car tinted. Can you tell me if you tinted the driver and passenger windows also? As per the rules it appears we are not allowed to tint those.
Can you also provide some information about the type of tint you used and the cost.

Thanks

 

Doesn't Toyota have an iPhone app for the Plug-in Prius that displays charging data in real time?

 

yes, Entune handles this and it's only available for the advanced model

 

lets see your Pip with tint

 

Is that empty to full? How empty? How many battery bars in HV mode?

 

You would benefit greatly from a plug at work.

 

My impression is that the prototype PiP turns on the gas engine when you still have a mile or so of EV capability left in the battery and then after it finishes its 40+ second warmup it turns back off but is subsequently much more likely to turn on due to acceleration etc. until EV mode is completed when the very last of the battery charge is used.

Is this still true in the 2012 production PiP?

If so, it would be great if folks would report both how many miles they get on EV before the gas engine first starts its warmup cycle and then separately the total number of miles until EV switches to HV due to the battery charge becoming completely drained.

 

Thanks for all this info....

 

Personally, I have three kinds of trips:

1. Five miles or less to local stores. My present ICE gulps gas and spews emissions and never quite warms up. PIP - perfect.
2. 15 miles, half on surface streets and half on freeways, to further stores and appointments. Some ICE use, but PIP should still be pretty good. Or I might hold my speed to 60 instead of 65 (the limit is 55) and do it all on EV.
3. Occasional 40 - 50 miles round trip, mostly on freeways. Will probably get home with a little EV range still remaining.

For the last two, I am just as happy to drive hybrid on the freeways, and not lug around any more battery weight than the PIP has. The sweet part for me is that when operated as a hybrid on longer drives, it is just as good as a non-plug-in Prius.

(Except for the stuff Toyota threw overboard to keep the hybrid mileage at 50 - like the spare tire. But life's full of tradeoffs.)