Prime destined to be doa?

I was just thinking about this. The PiP was slightly slower than the standard Prius due to the extra weight, but with a dual clutch and the ability to utilize both MGs at the same time, the Prime should be slightly faster, even with the extra weight.

 

Don't think I'd go there...I am thinking it's easier and good to recycle lead acid batteries to recover lead. Admittedly there is potential for mismanagement. Lithium might have hard time being better than lead from cost/benefits ratio.

Absolutely Prime will cannibalize Prius sales in CA if Prime gets green HOV stickers in CA. PHEV already 65% sold just in CA for 2015, and hybrids were 30% sold in CA my guess hybrids approaching 40% just in CA this year. Overall CA is 12% of car sales/population.

 

The idea that someone would "throw away" a 200kg package of a 8.8kW battery that could easily salvage for a couple of thousand dollars is ludicrous. Even the Prius' standard NiMH battery is easily salvageable for at least a couple of hundred if not more. We have some enterprising people on PriusChat who are not above replacing a couple of bad cells and making a battery new again. The batteries in hybrids and EVs are like engines, they are made of discrete parts that can be replaced and have been replaced and rebuilt many, many times. As for lead acid batteries, although the lead is easily recyclable in wet cells, in the AGM batteries it is not as easy to get "the lead out". It takes the same sophistication as getting the 10kg or so of the rare earth lanthanum out of the NiMH batteries.

 

Well lithium metal itself is probably not a big cost...

 

That puts you directly in the crosshairs of those arguing that only offering 4 seats will keep Prius buyers away from Prime.

What would the problem be with some of the gen-4 Prius overall sales growth hope shifting over to Prime anyway?

 

even many of my thoughts do that
.

 

Any Basebal fan in PC? 1898 Boston Beaneaters season - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

funny, i never heard of them.

 

I use 2 seat 10% of the time and 5 0% of the time. What % of us really need 5 seats?

 

None that I can think of. It would be a win-win for Toyota anyways. It's an individual choice for the car buyer and not the car as whole. I've never advocated that the 1st gen Volt was somehow inferior because it failed to seat 5. I will admit one thing though. I had predicted earlier that the next gen Plug-in Prius would get no more than 13 to 15 miles of EV range. I based that on growth of lithium capacity and not that Toyota would actually grow the pack. So now my curiosity is peaked. Just how much room does that larger pack really take up?

 

Reportedly 7-ft3 of the Gen4-no-spare boot space. Gen4 (no spare) boot space reported variously as 17.7-ft3 (EU VDA spec) up to 27.4ft-3 (USA EPA spec).

In hindsight PiP1 was great for cargo space...not going see that again for a while in a Plug-In car.

 

That complete avoidance of cargo sacrifice was promoted by many of us.

I'm quite glad the hump (like C-Max) didn't happen. Prime resembles the 5.2 kWh capacity floor height tradeoff the prototype PHV had.

 

I have this sneaking suspicion that we did NOT see the final production model.


iPad ? HD

 

you hoping / thinking maybe 5 seats after all?

 

idk, when the gen 4 came out, and we saw the loss of storage under the hatch floor, the obvious question was raised: where are the going to put the pip 2 battery. i think we've got the bad news, and it's not going to change.

 

...used 2015 PiPA sounds pretty good deal in a couple years

 

One consideration regarding fun to drive and the Prime is the higher center of gravity (battery in the same place as Gen 2/3, taller, and deeper), and greater polar moment of inertia. While the weight distribution is going to be more neutral (meaning that once the vehicle turns in, there may well be less of a tendency to understeer), turn-in will be more sluggish, and it will have more inherent body roll (Toyota can tune this out, but will they?)

I'm kinda wishing they had reprofiled the fuel tank, which would have allowed them to push some of the battery forward and down, under the middle rear seat position that they didn't end up using (and maybe even creating a central tunnel of sorts to get more of the battery further forward and down in the chassis). As it is, there's a lot of wasted space in the Prime's packaging.

 

I think you all did a good job with PiP1 feedback.
Thank you. At that time, it was over my pay grade.
Is the implication though that Prime was less based on potential buyer feedback?