Newbie advice and tips on a new 2024 Prius Prime SE

It's a brand new car... Repair & Maintenance is primarily the responsibility of the Stealership that sold it to you.

Come back in decade and we'll be happy to help...

Specifically: "The 2024 Toyota Prius Prime comes with a three-year/36,000-mile basic warranty, a five-year/60,000-mile powertrain warranty and an eight-year/100,000-mile hybrid component warranty. The hybrid battery is covered by a separate 10-year/150,000 mile warranty."

 

Set up your PriusChat notifications for the forums of your choosing and then nearly everyday you'll learn a little bit more about how to best care for your car. The past dozen years I've been on here has taught me so much about Prius and there's always more to learn. Basically, I enjoy helping people learn how to do their own repairs so they don't get ripped off by mechanics.

 

It's the kind of car that people who like to think about tech stuff will enjoy... Way more fun than your Honda CRZ will ever be.

 

All 3 Generations of the Prius Plugin dating from 2012 have been a new learning experience from the previous Gen Plugin. 2012 Prius Plugin aka the PiP was from the the Prius Gen 3 family, and was a decent primer for those who wanted to experience being able to drive in EV mode and to learn how to plugin charging worked in their area / location. The next Gen Prius was 4 and the the first Prius Primes were in the Gen 4 Prius family starting in 2017. The Gen 4 Prime 2017 - 2022 was a completely new game for any PiP owner with 20 or 30 new gauges available on the dash screens and twice the EV range. Your new Gen 5 Prime is also a new game even for those who owned a Gen 4 Prime.
The 12 volt things you're reading about are mostly owners that don't understand exactly how the Prime behaves. It's a similar situation in both Gen 4 and Gen 5 Primes and it's complicated, not something that is easy to describe and also can be different for owners in warmer climates than it can be for owners in the colder northern climates. On a related note, depending if you live closer to NYC or Buffalo the climate can be a much bigger influence of the Primes behavior than most owner might be aware of.
Also, Ready Mode is when the Prius in has been turned ON and is "ready to drive". If the Prius has been turned Off, it's never in Ready Mode until the driver presses the brake pedal and pushes the ON button.
There are a lot of proximity sensors in the Primes, but if the car is Off, there are only a certain set of circumstances that will wake up the car. Understanding some or all of those reasons the Prime will use 12 volt power has been an ongoing journey for all Prime owners since 2017. This sure not anything like it used to be with earlier hybrids that were not equipped with all the newer sensors, radar, sonar, cameras, etc that are part an integral part of the newer Primes and many other newer cars.

Also, so far there are only a few SE Primes represented here at priuschat. And the different Prime trims can behave slightly different than other trims.So if you read something about another Prime Gen or even the same Prime Gen but a different trim than your model, it's never a guaranteed that your Prime will behave the same way. And besides a lot of how the Prime behaves is governed by the way the owner drives the car. And that is after all the other unique things the car senses about the climate, other cars, pedestrians, internal component temps the computers keep track off, some of which are monitored even when the Prime is turned Off.

 

What I love about the CRZ is the same beautiful styling as the original Gen1 Honda Insight Hyrbid... But that old hybrid gets 60+ mpg compared to CRZ that gets half that in MPG? Like what were they thinking? Trying to make the fossil fool companies happy or what? It makes no sense when you're better than Prius at MPG when it comes to classic hybrids and then you design a hybrid CRZ that's get horrible MPG? Why?

 

One reason for the CRZ and the 2nd Gen Insight (2010 - 2014) was the smaller hybrid battery at around 100 volts as opposed to the 144 volt pack in the gen 1. Which meant only 14 NiMH sticks or 7 stick pairs in those cars packs. The skinny form one dealers perspective of the Gen 2 insight was that is was the least expensive hybrid in the market at that time. The CRZ was also marketed as a sportier model and was among the first honda hybrids to offer sport mode along with normal and econ.

I have an 06 civic hybrid that has 11 stick pairs for 154 volts and that's still not enough for a car of that weight, the way honda reprogrammed the IMA systems during dealer service, in both insight and civic ( maybe accord too ) around 2011.

Still the CRZ was so much smaller and lighter than the Gen2 insight and even more so than the Gen2 civic that is had almost enough pack voltage for a car of it's size and weight. imo anyways

Yes, you'll find that posting about "Ready Mode" most everyone ( at least here at piruschat ) will understand that as the Prius being booted up and is ready to drive. The proximity stuff is all in another category, and is descussed a lot not only what is actually active at any one time, but also it's effect on the 12 volt system.

 

Toyota did a similar thing with the Prius C by going down to 10 pairs, or 144v-168v range with a smaller size Prius for people in crowded cities. But more than a dozen years later it's clear that reducing, rather than increasing, battery power shortens the lifespan of the battery.

What I love most about Honda and also Subaru is they've been way more tolerant of reverse engineering efforts... That's why you'll see way more Subaru and Honda at race tracks and rarely Toyotas.

For example, over at www.insightcentral.net a guy who goes by @mudder is an electrical engineer and he built a Battery Management System (BMS) that Honda computers don't create error codes for, which means he has his own firmware he regularly updates and modern circuits and processors that weren't around in 1999: www.linsight.org

With his current system maxed out with battery power people are getting 140mpg and because he's sold 200 of these, that means 1.4% of all Gen1 Honda Insights built are running his system. He's eager to get into selling his own aftermarket packs for Prius but he said last week that he's only done "slightly more than 0% of what needs to be done to enter the Toyota market."

Meanwhile, if you want a hybrid vehicle that allows you to transition to all electric it's your best option because Honda also hasn't thrown warning lights on people like Toyota does; even when they've added much more powerful motor-generators to the drivetrain, which is essential to the transition to EV.

Suspect one day Toyota massively regrets having a long history of being so closed-minded towards crowd-sourced innovations.

 

My advice, read the manual after a few weeks. I've never read a car manual before this one, and big difference with your 2011. I'onstantly finding small things -- holding down the EV button to switch into charge mode, turning off the lock for the charging cover, defogger always starts ICE, what the buttons on the trunk do, why it's always beeping at me when I walk away, etc. I've picked some up on the forum over the last few months, but actually sat down at one point and read the manual.

 

After a dozen years on here it's quite clear that we aren't allowed to read the manual. It's the only plausible explanation.

 

Ok but for real, what's this thing about the 12V dying on people? Is it related to something you're supposed to do when you leave the car? I'm confused after reading some of the posts here

 

Not sure about Gen5, but 12v has always had a really weak charging system because 12v doesn't start the engine, only turns on computers, so there's no need to aggressively charge it. But that turns into a problem if you aren't driving every day.

 

The answer is really simple. Once it's charged to 100%, disconnect the charging cable from the car.

 

There are tons of ways the batter can get discharged. HacksawMark mentioned one of them. They're all in the manual. Just open the PDF and search for "12-volt". Futzing with configuration screens when the hybrid system isn't on is another one.

"When the vehicle is left with the AC charging cable connected, the electricity consumption amount of the 12-volt battery increases due to controls, such as the system checking, operating. When the AC charging cable is not needed, remove it from the vehicle."

 

Note the wording there, which is precise. "When it is not needed". Not "once it's charged to 100%". People have been getting a bit carried away.

The 12V battery won't be replenished from a cable that's never used, because the system won't connect the mains or battery without a reason (and low 12V is not deemed to be sufficient reason - there is no deliberate 12V top-up function). But if the cable is being used, it will be replenished.

And the cable can also be used for heating as well as charging. So if you're in a temperature range where the battery heater (or Greenland/Canada protection) operates, it should be fine to leave it in. So that would be something like -15°C (5°F) to 5°C (41°F), or below something like -30°C (-22°F).

 

Again, the manual covers that.