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The cell stacks limit how much you can rearrange things. IIRC the regular 4 th gen Prius (except base, which has NiMH) has 2 cell stacks, and the Prime has 5. Their dimensions are set, and somewhat unweildy.

 

you need to find pics of the 3" space under the battery.

keep in mind, toyota sent prime design to the u.s dealers with an even smaller battery, and the dealers sent it back with a note: will not sell well in the usa

that's when the battery showed up above decks

 

you need this space for the air cooling ;-)

 

If you have them, show them.

 

i don't have them, they are in another thread here, by @Lee Jay iirc

 

i doubt it, but the sides are tapered which means the battery would have to be narrower to be lower

 

And now it sells. Designing a car for the market, who would have thought of this?

 

If only Toyota had come to this forum before designing and building the Prime - they could have fired all those high priced engineers and got their answers here.

 

look at 2019 sales vs 2018

 

Engineers cost money, but the peanut gallery is free!

 

473 comments shows the fervor of BEV advocacy trying to argue the point.

 

They sold 46K of them in 2 years with the same design - the battery above the deck.

 

Here's the under battery space. I found the missing 4" (vertical) in the trunk. It is below the battery. | PriusChat

It is an ICE car platform, and leaves the spare tire well empty in the Prime.

The Ioniq PHEV loses just half the cargo space from the hybrid that the Prime does.

I think they did a bad job with those constraints, but they were probably also under one for time with having to increase the battery size after feedback from markets outside Japan.

And crumple zones.

Same place Ford is putting their battery cooling in the new Escape and Explorer hybrids.

Depending on trim the Escape hybrid premium is $800 to $1200. The same as to $400 more as for the Rav4 hybrid.

No, they should have looked at the Volt and Energis, cars that arrived 4 or 7 years before, and the public response to them. Or they could have just considered markets outside Japan during the design stage. North America is a bigger plug in market than Japan, but the Prime likely had a battery the size of the one in the PiP at first since that fits better with Japan's infrastructure.

Are 'out the door' prices for the Prime better than the Prius up North too?

 

down more than a 1/3 through 5/31 from 2018 is nothing to smile about

 

The sales drop isn't due to having the battery above the deck. All Prius models are losing sales as buyers move to other vehicle types. At this rate of decline the Prius may not survive (likely will not).

The V and C are already dead.

 

you were the one who said, 'and now it sells'

 

What is the cost comparison...are the sales explaind by subsidies/incentives?

 

My point was - after the "redesign" which put the battery above the deck, to get range that would satisfy consumers, it sold. Having the battery above the deck was not a deal breaker then, nor is it now.

Poorly worded, I'll admit to that.

 

That is quite a bit of space under the battery! Sounds to me that they have quite a bit of room to work with to lower the battery while maintaining the same capacity.