I apologize in advance if this is a dumb question or doesn't make sense. I'm pretty tech savy but this car is beyond my knowledge. I currently have a short commute (12 miles round trip) and I can charge on both ends. I can't quite make a round trip on 1 charge. The price of Electric is actually a bit more expensive than gas right now where I'm at, even with gas being pretty high. My car is a 2013 with 32k miles. Just bought it. The original owner only did like 3-5% EV. I am faced with the option of doing all / mostly all electric or gas. What is better for the overall health of the car and making the car last as long as possible? Would you use all electric as much as you can or gas or an even split of both? I'm thinking long term wear and tear and repair / replacement parts costs. Assume that that both cost similarly. I'm thinking of doing mostly electric since the previous owner didn't use electric much at all.
unfortunately, we don't have all the answers. with the old nimh batteries, usage was better than non usage, and that was learned from a lot of older cars with lower miles and bad batteries. lithium is still in the learning phase, and toyota chemistry cannot be compared to others. personally, i would use the battery when convenient, and the ice when convenient. toyota calls it a plug in hybrid, 'with the ability to run all ev'. i'm at 65% ev, (28,000 miles) but i'm not sure that's what they had in mind when designing it.
I agree with Bisco. Unfortunately, we just don't know the long term reliability of lithium batteries. I am also hedging my bets to use as much electric as possible despite the increased cost. The reasons are: 1. Oil is a finite resource. The less I buy gasoline from foreign entities that hates us, the better. 2. CA electricity is comparatively cleaner than the national average. Depending on whose chart you choose to believe on well-to-wheels energy generation, electricity is cleaner than gasoline. 3. My personal take is the electric drivetrain is more reliable than the ICE. I have no data to back this up. I just think it is true. 4. Electricity is only more expensive if I use a lot of electricity that month due to tiered pricing. This isn't always true and I'm too lazy to do the math every month. If gasoline drops to $1.50 or something like then, it will always cost less.
Li-ion batteries have a shelf life - even if they're not used they will lose their capacity over time. This is explained in the manual and is excluded from the warranty. So you might as well use it while you can... Petrol costs about 3 times more than electricity for me, so I've never even considered the potential of electricity being the more expensive option
When faced with the issue of traveling further than EV range I strived to use each fuel to its best advantage: electric for slower city streets and gas for highway. Using gas for just a mile or two on a cold engine will deliver very low fuel economy.
I agree with Modem's reasoning. I'll also add that running gasoline might not be the cheaper option for such a short commute. The car might spend much of the drive in warm up mode, which is not very efficient. However, being in SoCal, the warmup period will be shorter than us Northerners. Still, short trips are considered severe duty for any petrol powered vehicle. Not so when running on electrons. You say you can charge at both ends of your commute, and I assume one end is your home. Would you have to pay for electricity on the other end? If the charge at work is free, I would probably only plug in there and let the gas engine kick in when needed.
This is how I would do it if I had a PIP. I have a 16-18 mile commute depending on route and my regular Prius does very well. But it would be nice to have a plug for my 3 mile trip to lunch where I get 28 mpg. I'd prob drive in HV mode on the commute and electric at lunch
I usually bring a sack lunch but it is mildly exhilarating the few times I go out for lunch and realize work is paying for transportation. It also helps with my EV ratio which is an abysmal 20% currently.
I used to go out a lot but not as much these days. I think the low mpg is an actual deterrent for me. That, and losing the prime parking space I get from getting in so early to work out! It seems like a good use for PIP or Prime level EV. Let the efficient ICE take care of the long trips and the battery take care of the short ones. Like fotomoto said, let each thing do what it does best
