Just got my Prime Advanced today

watching that video at high speed looks like you're about to die a dozen times!

 

I don't know if this will apply to the Prime but I once owned a car that my wife would take my son to school only a mile away and after doing this one winter the car ran like crap because it never had a chance to warm up. I can see situations where the Prime will be ran the same way. Just something to ponder.

 

The hybrid system is designed for much faster warm-up than traditional vehicles. It doesn't run as hard when the engine is on either. So, there is far less concern about short-trip impact.

 

After a year of owning our Prius Prime, let me share:

• short warm-up risk - I've only had two distinct incidents when I was 1-2 miles from home. Usually I avoid it by ducking into the neighborhood and taking 25 mph back roads instead of the 50 mph cross town. But sometimes I am in a hurry. It takes about 3% SOC for each mile at speeds over 45 mph. But at 25 mph, it takes less than 1% per mile.
• hybrid mode battery usage - the engine runs at a very low power and the hybrid-mode battery, startup power is good for 0,5-1.0 miles. Using a tripmeter, the first mile is ~66 MPG and the second mile drops to ~45 MPG and then rises. When I know I'll run short, I enable hybrid mode at higher speeds so the warm-up will be fast and efficient.
• cooled exhaust tap - the new engine taps the exhaust stream AFTER the catalytic converter which significantly reduces the risk of carbon build-up in the exhaust gas cooler.

I'm just over 9,000 miles in the first year and pretty much pegged the odometer at 199.9 MPG.

Bob Wilson

 

My only problem in the snow has been getting stuck due to the low clearance after a fresh snowfall.

 

Time for new winter tires.

 

No, if the weight of the snow that gets blown under the car is enough to lift it partway off the ground, then you lose traction and the tires (regardless of snow or A/S, new or 6/32) spin when you step on the pedal. This happened to me when I had a Prius c last February and had 2.5 feet of snow in a blizzard (imagine that: 30 inches of snow in one storm and 50 mph wind gusts). I couldn't get out of my spot, and I had Hakka R2 winter tires with 9/32 tread on them. It took two of us plus a small shovel to dig out the snow that got blown under the car before I could pull forward (and that car has a higher ground clearance than the Prime by 0.7 inches).

 

Plus it’s very hard to shovel snow from under the car with that low clearance. Not fun.

 

Conventional ICE has a starter motor that connects to the flywheel for starting.
Starting revolutions are in a few hundred rpms.

The prius starting rpms is in the few thousand's, and is driven by a fairly large motor.
The engine has no choice.