New PiP Owners...More data please!!!

Yes there is concerns, but there are many business paths forward to reach middle market and sustaining sales. I don't have the data necessary to evaluate their business strategies, but I don't believe GM is in the position to "buy" the middle market from toyota as toyota bought the early hybrid market by substantially underwriting the Prius. I also don't believe they need to buy it. Apple does not need to buy the smart phone market.. they charge more and get it. The more I've heard of the other BEV/EREV/PHEV entries the more it seems the Volt will retain its technological lead for a few years and hence can still afford a bit of a premium.

Is GM underwriting the volt?. I believe it is just not at the same level.
Do I believe the car is worth 40K? Yes
Do I wish GM would lower the price? Yes.

Do I think low price is necessary for the volt to be a good car? No
Do I think high quality is more important the low price? yes
Do I think lowering the price is necessary for 200K-a-year unit sales? Yes
Do I think low price is critical for business sustaining sales? No
Do I wish GM was producing them as Fast as they could and letting the price drop? I have insufficient data to decide.

I don't think the PiP has to outsell sell the Prius or Prius C to be successful. Its a segment that can be sustained with far fewer sales. I think the PiP will help keep people in the Toyota Family and may also be a halo Toyota just as as the Volt is for the Cruze.

 

That is one incredible deal that you got, what are the actual numbers? :cheer2:

 

very little

 

Good point. With the lack of city/highway break down for EV/HV miles, that's probably the best we can do to compare, just to get a feel. 58 MPGe for Volt vs. 61 MPGe for Prius PHV (so far).

 

I second that-- would love to know the details of how you negotiated this. Maybe I'm just not ballsy enough, but I wasn't planning to even try and negotiate. But I just got the email that my car is on the way to the dealer, and now the reality of spending $40k on a car is hitting home. If I can save even a few hundred, I would...

 

Time is not a luxury.

 

Not sure why you feel compelled to try to make the comparison, still too little data.

The 58MPGe is your rather contrived estimates over all cars on the road and the 61 is over a very small sample of self-selected people. If you want to compare to self-selected people at least compare with voltstats which while only a 10% sample, is still probably a better match of self-selected individuals.

We all know there are PiP users that are not plugging in at all.. because they posed here on PC that they bought it just for HOV. If you want to do MPGe for Pirus PHV you need to include them too. People like whiteshadow (White Shadow (Toyota Prius Plug-in) | Fuelly) will quickly pull down your numbers.. because they drive the most miles and use the least EV. But he/she is not even in the spreadsheet.


Is there any type of phone app for the PiP that shows efficency data, or is it only in the car's display. How many people are using something like torque.. which could be automated to report PiP data?

 

Actually, White Shadow is pagemillroad (his/her user ID on Fuelly). I suspect someone plugged those numbers in the spreadsheet on his/her behalf since someone else here said pagemillroad isnt even a user on PC.

In fact, I think it was you who created the 2nd average on the spreadsheet that removed people like pagemillroad from the MPG average calculation.

I've long suspected pagemillroad may not even be a real PiP owner. Perhaps someone who thought they were posting their Fuelly stats to the no-plug Prius category. Or maybe even someone who wants to see the PiP look bad on Fuelly, IDK. But regardless, it is on there and on our spreadsheet as well.

 

Actually, it was someone calling himself 'terry.boult' (by the comment he left) I do not think it is drinnovation.
I do share your suspicions regarding pagemillroad though.

 

Just to see how they stack up, or starting to stack up. It interests me because Prius PHV is a midsize and uses far less electricity than the Volt.

Conventional wisdom would say Volt should get higher composite MPGe but Prius PHV is no conventional car.

 

In the past there were some comments about my activities online (on many forums) and its reflection on the my role in the university. So in most online forums I don't use my real name so people don't go complaining to other people on campus about what I've said. Guess I should have edited the document using a different name..

 

Thats it.. I'm going to complain

I'll go back and edit my posts.. may not help a whole lot, but its all I can do.

:focus:

 

Please cite your source. From this USA Today post which references J.D. Power & Associates, image is the primary reason people buy the Volt. Reiliability is the primary reason for Prius buyers.

Buyers reject Chevrolet Volt's cost, Nissan Leaf's looks

 

I'm beginning to think I may be closer to 70 MPG, by the car's calculation. I'm 225 miles into this tankful, the display says 70 MPG average, and just now, I drove 26 miles at a 79 MPG average. It's raining here, which brought traffic to a crawl. I finally gave up and stopped for dinner, otherwise I'll go nuts sitting in the stop and go. My battery was less than 50% charged when I started, and I used it to glide for much of the drive. I'll try to rig up a video camera to record how I do it, but I frequently punch the EV button to pulse up to 40 MPH or so, then I release the accelerator and put it back into Hybrid mode, which lets me better restrict the battery depletion for the glide. If I had a ScanGauge or better instrument, that might not be necessary, but the HSI display isn't the same in EV mode. If that doesn't make sense, I'll try a video recording.

It's too early to be certain, but I guess that a fully-charged battery will give me 60 MPG (metered) on the 85 mile commute, if I "just drive" at 65~70 MPH. With careful driving, it looks like it might be a 70 MPG car. Mind you, I had a 2010 Prius before this, so I'm already familiar with pulse and glide and with milking the regenerative brakes. But I'm certainly no hypermiler.

Completing my commute, I logged 16.2 miles and 64 MPG. The plug-in battery charge was gone before I got out of the parking lot. I drove very conservatively on the freeway, with a lot of glides and at pretty low speeds, but I think the fresh lithium ion batteries out-perform the nickle metal hydride cells of the stock Prius, but as lithium batteries tend to lose performance over time, it's hard to say how long this advantage will last.

If anyone has suggestions for how I can capture data more effectively, I'll try it.

 

From
Opinion | How the rise of trendy environmentalism is harming the planet | Seattle Times Newspaper

And it been true for years.. same results were true in 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/business/04hybrid.html

 

No worries.. its mostly precautionary actions. I don't really think this thread will cause me problems. Anyone that tries hard can probably correlated by identities.. just dont' want it to be too easy for a occasional flamer to make me waste time in meetings justifying my discussions. While I try to use different psuedonyms its not like I can really get fired or anything for such discussions. Now that Pascal wager thread.. that could cause flack. But even that is nothing like when I get going on privacy, other various government policies..

 

First Look 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid - Consumer Reports!

 

In person, I simply reply by stating my MPG for the day.

That's stops them cold everytime.

The reaction seems to indicate they hadn't actually given the design much thought.