Height of cargo area for dogs

Hi there, first post, not a Prius owner. Space for a dog in the cargo area has long been a top priority for me, along with high mpg, but it is extremely hard to combine those two things. In 2005 I considered Prius but went for a Toyota Matrix for this reason. Now, car shopping again, and very confused and conflicted!

In early March 2019 I looked at a new Prius at one dealer, and measured these vertical heights in cargo area (estimated with tape measure):
28-1/4" at front end (just behind rear seats)
24" or so in the middle
21-1/2" or so at rear end

This was higher than expected, so I got very excited that this could work for my dog. I even put her in the car, and it looked OK. Her shoulder height is about 23".

Next, got very excited (since I'm in CO) about the AWD-e models (newly introduced in 2019). After a week or two, finally tracked one of these down, and went to measure it. Wow, what a great car! BUT here are the measurements I took:
25-1/2" at front end (just behind rear seats)
22" or so at middle
18-1/2" or so at rear end

That was very disappointing, so I then asked to see a current (2019) regular Prius. I was shocked to see the cargo measurements are the same as the AWD-e.

The only possible explanations are
1) I am a complete idiot and somehow did all 3 measurements wrong on the first car (cannot see how this is possible)
2) somehow, the first Prius I saw had part of the cargo flooring removed (seems impossible though, I've looked under them, it's just storage nooks / tire or repair kit etc.)
3) or somehow the various regular Priuses can differ in cargo height (seems 99.999% impossible)
4) so I have to conclude that the first Prius must have been a 2018 model. Doing a search i am seeing zero 2018 Priuses available in my area.
(I, of course, somehow forgot to photograph the window sticker on the first car!)

So I am extremely disappointed. WHY did they have to remodel the Prius just to break my heart over this?! Or is there some other explanation I didn't think of? Do you have a 2019 or 2018 Prius with the 28" cargo height that I measured initially?

 

Tideland, thank you for that explanation. It does make sense, sort of, except that I understood all the regular (i.e., not AWD or Prime) 2019 Prius are physically the same except for nuances of the trim (LE, XLE etc.). I was shown one regular prius with a 28" cargo height and another with a 25" cargo height - how can that be? Spoke with the dealer today and he is 99% sure that the 28" example was a 2019 Prius (and it certainly wasn't AWD). So, how can it be that one car had a spare tire and another one didn't?

 

Aha, thank you, I stand corrected and that makes a lot of sense now. So there are 3 choices for using that bit of design space: an AWD motor, a spare tire, or extra cargo space!

First, this made things easy for me because it meant I am only interested in the XLE (non-AWD), the only widely available affordable model with the extra cargo space for the dog.

But, the more I thought about this I realized the dog is safer on the back seat anyway, which changes the whole calculation. Now I'm reconsidering the AWD option.

But also, this opens up a new can of worms because I never thought my new car decision would include "Do I really need a spare tire?"!! What an absurd position to put the consumer in. I am wondering if the LE (non-AWD) might be the safest option because it has a spare tire.

So, the choice is between a couple weeks of definitely safer driving in wintertime, vs. 365 days of having a spare tire in case we are beyond cell phone range and suffer tire damage severe enough that the repair kit can't handle it.

 

Yikes, @alanclarkeau, those are vivid and cautionary tales you've shared, and any visible chunk of Australia traversed at that scale is impressive indeed.

Well, I bought the LE-AWD, so now I will be among the many relying on a questionable risk calculation - in my case, traversing the Colorado mountain roads. I am strongly inclined to buy a temporary spare for the cargo on long trips, perhaps when summer begins I will look for one. Since the dog will be in back seat, I can toss it in the cargo, but probably safer to tie it down in some way. I brought this up with the dealer (who was trying to sell me heated seats etc.) and he said he had never heard of someone retrofitting a spare into a car that didn't come with one.

I have had 2-3 flats I can recall. They were always nails, in town, usually in snowy weather when it is easier for a nail to be pointing randomly upward in the snow.