Help with Prius Plug in or Prius

Yea, now that you point it out it would indeed. I have a bad habit of using sport mode and getting around the "sport cars". I upset someone a few days ago and they decided to zip past me once they got up to speed, only to find themselves being pulled over for speeding in a school zone.

 

The data speaks for itself... no pattern.

 

I think that's the real crux of the problem. Consider the Volt. Depending on your driving pattern, you'll either get 37mpg or infinite mpg, or somewhere in between That may be even worse for the PiP, as you are likely to spend even more time in the "somewhere in between" region. That does make it hard to make an informed choice as a buyer, and set your expectations appropriately. Particularly for Joe Carbuyer who doesn't know anything about MPGe's or what have you. It would be great to see someone figure this out, and put together a tool that would let the average buyer simulate different drives to get a reasonable idea of how different vehicles will perform under various conditions. The basic idea of the jurassictest site seems pretty good with its map driven interface, but it leaves a lot to be desired on the vehicle modeling end.

The auto manufacturers are probably the ones with the data that could actually make this happen, but I'm not sure they are motivated to make it easier to directly compare their products to their competitors.

Rob

 

That's possible. It was certainly the case when they ran the test fleets of early Prius PHEV conversions a number of years back. The big problem there though was that they didn't track EV miles, just net mpgs which basically sucked because drivers frequently didn't bother to plug in or forgot to turn the system on even if it was charged.

So to the first order this data set eliminates that gross operator error, by providing separate data for the miles driven in EV. The "driving style efficiency" graph on the lower left of the first page is also interesting, showing the majority of EV miles driven in either the >90% or 80-90% efficiency bin. No idea how they generate that data though, is it a value the Volt computes?

Beyond that nothing looks particularly atypical. Temps are pretty average, batteries are almost always full at the start of trips, and well depleted at the end of most trips. The lower EV % seems mostly to be a function of a fair amount of long highway trips. However, the number of EV miles is still substantial, and EV% shouldn't effect EV efficiency, only composite gas/electric efficiency.

I agree its still hard to compare directly with other sources, but it does seem to be a substantial and statistically significant data set based in real world driving that shouldn't be ignored. Particularly as its the only large dataset I've seen that computes net electric efficiency (EV miles driven / AC recharge power consumed).

Rob

 

The manufactures tend to have their hands tied in these matters. Toyota doesn't want to campaign Hybrids so hard that they kill Tundra sales. GM is in the same situation, with more margin dollars coming from their other lines. The manufactures went down this path of more efficient vehicles not so much in response to consumer demand but in response to government mandates, initiated by a minority of consumers. I will point to the waining demand for fuel efficiency that happens with every cycle that gasoline prices decrease.

In a past life, total cost of ownership (including operation) was the standard for comparison, and tco for each usage profile was calculated and verified.

 

Agreed. TCO just seems a lot harder for the average buyer to estimate for plug-ins with the data currently available.

 

for the PEVs they are very easy to calculate, its the PHEVs that are difficult.

 

Turn on the heater, it quickly becomes complicated.

 

Try to decipher PG&E's electricity rate tables, it quickly becomes impossible.

 

Rebound, have you taken a swag at comparing a Volt to a PiP for your 85 mile commute?

 

Finding patterns in data require that one properly conditions on the right variables. If you don't account for charging, or normalize on distance on EV vs ICE, you cannot begin to understand a PHEV. Even with that there are other factors that are secondary and tertiary factors.

When people first saw the plants the were named as wanders as they could not discern the patterns. Years later people brought understanding of what underlying their causes of their motion, and the patterns became simple.

 

There are a few meetups happening around the country where drivers are bringing their PiP, Volt, Leaf, etc. Perhaps a part of the meetups can be a semi-controled benchmarking where all the vehicles get a full charge, full tank, and drive the same route at the same speeds and then measure the recharge and refuel.

 

No, but certainly if I could recharge at work, the Volt would be awesome. But, alas, I have three children, so a Volt was never an option, and with the Leaf's range, it was not an option, either.

 

Understand about the choice because of the kids. It would still be interesting to compare the vehicles for your 85 mile route. Do you mind sharing the start/stop points, and using jurassictest.ch/GR/ to get a idea of the pure EV numbers.

 

congrats! hope you love it as much as i do.