Featured Toyota Talks Prius Prime versus Chevrolet Volt, Mirai, TNGA, and CH-R

While likely more comfortable for those two in the rear, the Prime will still have all the criticisms and cons leveled against it as the gen1 Volt did for having only 4 seats.

 

We have already seen some hypocritical posts coming from Volt supporters, those who argued heavily in favor of 4 then abruptly changed their mind upon seeing Prime.

That could bring the spin to a close. Contradictory messages tend to kill a topic.

 

For any Prius fans who criticized the Gen 1 (and Gen 2) Volt for only 4 real seats or any Volt fans who are criticizing the Prime for only 4 real seats, it’s a fair question.

However, there is at least one important caveat. The average adult white male height in the U.S. is 5’10”. It’s a bit above all 5’9” for all males in the U.S.. Nearly half of adult males are too tall to fit in the back of either Volt. At 6’2 (taller than 90% of males) I barely made it into the back of the Gen 3 and Gen 4 Prius.

Height Percentile Calculator, by Age or Country - Tall.Life

 

The reality is that cars of the Volt's size aren't normally bought by people that regularly transport adults in the rear seat. Those will buy a larger car. In the case of five heading out to eat, they'll likely take the largest car available. So four seats is fine for the car. Which is what I said about the Volt back when it first arrived.

Then people pointed out 4 seats makes the car unattractive to people with kids. The average number of kids per family is a fraction over two, and the middle spot is the safest for a car. It is a valid point, and GM responded by putting a plus one seat in the next generation. It won't be comfortable for anyone but a kid, but neither can a potential buyer take the Volt off their list because they have three kids or they insist on having the baby seat in the middle.

Families with young children may not be who Toyota is targeting with the Prime, but buyers of cars aren't all made up of who the car company was targeting with the car design. Four seats cuts out some potential Prime buyers.

 

I'm not sure who these people are you're referring to. On the Volt forums having only four seats is/was one of the biggest complaints about the first gen Volt. I don't recall anyone ever saying "if it had five seats I wouldn't have bought it", but there were plenty of posts saying the reason they didn't buy one was due to the lack of a fifth seat.

 

What a strange interpretation. Again, 4 was ok and now it isn't. Not sure how that wasn't understood. Point is, the message changed.

Adaptation can be good. It's the flexibility I've been talking about. But it confuses those who don't have all the info.

Put an entirely different way, there's no reason to expect one size to fit all. So, how should we look at situations know that?

 

Four seats was never okay to the majority of car buyers and reviewers. People got the gen1 Volt in spite of it having 4 seats. The pros of the car out weighed that negative, but for some it was a deal breaker. Just like people bought earlier Prii in spite of the lackluster handling.

People saying the four seats was no big deal back then, because of the limited use of the fifth seat of cars that size, is not the same as saying four seats were okay, or not a limitation. If most people said they were okay was so, then GM would not have felt the need of getting a limited use fifth seat into the gen2.

 

Know your audience... and recognize change.

Volt gen-1 was admitted to be a niche, but that came after long after the okay comments and confirmed it was not for the majority.

Volt gen-2 is for how many and who?

The answer to that question is the source of contradictions.

 

If "We" is just an average car buyer, then I agree. If "We" is an automotive engineer examining everything inside and outside of the vehicle, then I do not agree.

For example, the discussion of optimum battery location and shape was a straightforward for Tesla. Low, flat, and conformal outside the people compartment solves a great many issues. Meanwhile, the PiP and Prime (and many other EVs) are stuck putting a space consuming battery brick in the people/cargo compartment where the fundamental Prius design never planned for this. A nice outside battery pack for a PHEV Prius would be very likely if the Prime were not constrained to the fundamental Pruis production limitation.

The same is true of the drag coefficient of the car. In the battle of aerodynamics vs existing tooling/styling, only aero wins out when efficiency is rated higher than looks...a true rarity unless a couple of percentage points of efficiency counts more.

We do have an ICE comparison for the Prius. It is the Prius itself. It was designed from the beginning to be an ICE car. Take out the hybrid stuff and you have a Corolla. (We have a 2010 Corolla and 2010 Prius in the family. The engines and a lot of small components are the same. The rest of the changes are optimized for the market each car seeks.)



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Presently owning a 2001 and 2010 Prius, the comments above applies to them up to the point where the Volt-2 is now being evaluated by the auto buying public.

(PS I know you also owned Gen 1 and Gen 2 as well, so you know where I'm coming from.)

 

Nothing strange about it at all, you said "those who argued heavily in favor of 4 then" and I pointed out that there are probably few to no people who were/are in favor of 4 seats. I'd be very surprised if Prime buyers wouldn't prefer 5 seats but buy it anyway due to the other benefits.

 

The skateboard layout for a BEV pack is great, but BEVs don't have to contend with an ICE exhaust and emission system sharing the space. Systems that shed a lot of heat. Rerouting exhaust pipes more to a side shouldn't be a problem, but catalytic converters with their heat shields can be a bulky item. Say the design can put those systems to one side, the battery pack won't be able to extend all the way out to the other side. It is a heavy object, and doing so will shift the car's center of gravity to that side. Which is bad for handling, and could be very bad in a crash. Which limits the size of the pack to what fits in the middle.

Exhaust down the center, and the pack split to each will work, but will likely increase the cost of the pack's cooling system, which already needs to be more effective to deal with having the exhaust nearby. The i3 REX avoids this by putting the ICE in the rear, and it doesn't lose any space compared to the BEV. However, its ICE is small, and can not provide full performance to the car. The limited space may also limit the effectiveness of the emission controls that can be installed. The REX does not have the Prius AT-PZEV label.

I agree, putting the Prime's battery underneath the rear of the car should improve the interior cargo space. It might take some space away from the hybrid, but then that could mean space for an underside carried spare. If Toyota insists on four seats, a T-pack like the Volts would be better, by moving the battery's weight towards the car's center. This would require a different cooling system for the pack.

Car's have to sell, and ones that prioritize aerodynamics over all want to the majority of car buyers because its looks. The Prius Kammback profile was itself a compromise to looks and function. The Sonata hybrid/PHEV has slight design changes that improves its aero drag over the ICE model, but they aren't obvious to the untrained eye.

My point stands that a platform could be designed for an ICE, hybrid, and even a PHEV with the compromises to do so minimized to the point that the general car buying public may not notice them. There will still be compromises, and the only way to eliminate them is to design the platforms separately. Which carries the compromise of increased cost.

We can't compare a Prius and Corolla to each other to determine the space loss for the hybrid battery. Since the gen2 made it big, it has been pointed out that its clean sheet design meant not losing space to place the battery pack. I'm just pointing that we can't say that is totally true for the gen2 and gen3. I'm sure the ground up approach minimized the space lost, but take out the pack for a Prius ICE conversion, and at least some of that space can become more cargo room.

 

It's worth noting that the 2014 Corolla got bigger, though, and now shares both the wheelbase and platform with the Gen 3 Prius, so it's probably the closest comparison yet, outside of the Lexus hybrids, the Camry hybrid, and the Highlander hybrid. (Apparently, our previous Corolla was still on the original MC platform that debuted with the original Prius and was also used by the Gen 2, although other markets got an identical looking version of the Corolla on the New MC platform.)

Europe does also have the Auris hybrid to compare to the standard Auris (also on New MC, but with independent rear suspension, as opposed to the twist beam of the Corolla and Gen 3), and the Yaris Hybrid to compare to the standard Yaris.

 

But this is exactly my point as well.

If significant interior space in the Prime is being gobbled up with 22 miles AER, then what would be the situation if Toyota was desiring to put in a 50+ mile AER? The answer is enough to give up trying to push past 22.

For a compliance car or a car line expected to be just a few thousand a month for a few years, these compromises are the right answer. For a car line expected to exceed 100,000+ of units, these are no longer small compromises, they are fatal weaknesses. The Prime is definitely considered an extension of the Prius line with these compromises being the understandable decisions. The Teslas, Volt, Bolt, and Mirai are not extensions of some other line, but the start of a new line with all the associated infrastructure and supply sourcing being setup for big volumes. Tesla is winning, GM is positioned to win if they make sure reliability matches performance, and the Mirai is a loooooong shot more dependent on politicians than buyers.

 

Source: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ABEA-4CW8X0/2013531490x0x889927/27EE2FDA-9C77-4D6A-8CEE-E8DFE45227BA/Q1_2016_Tesla_Shareholder_Letter.pdf

Our Q1 non-GAAP net loss decreased 34% sequentially to $75 million, or $0.57 loss per share based on 133 million basic shares, while our Q1 GAAP net loss was $282 million or $2.13 loss per basic share.​

This one sentence has been used by Tesla skeptics to foretell doom and gloom. Personally, I'm not sure. Before building product, you have to make significant capital expenditure and train staff. The open question is how far away is Tesla from making a profit. So far, the investors are still confident.

Bob Wilson

 

it worked for amazon and ebay.

 

The only way to maximize the profit of selling over 400,000 cars is to build over 400,000 cars. They cannot be sold if they are not built. If they are built, they will make money.

The actual investors are big banks making big loans. Look at it from the bank's side. If they don't make loans, they die. Just like mortgages, if the homebuyer has a solid job, good credit, and proven payback, the mortgage is going to be made on good terms. If you were a bank, what auto company (or any american manufacturer) do you see having the lowest risk of paying back the loan and interest? The banks do not care about the stock near as much as the market, backlog, and operating revenue. The banks making the loans want Tesla to pay for high return capital expenditures to make the cars.

Now look at it from a stock speculators view. The only two profit mechanisms are to either buy stock expecting it to go up or short it. The actual making of cars is of no interest, it is only the stock fluctuations that matter. This is what the vast majority of most "financial" blogging of Tesla is concerned with. Folks on both sides of stock commitments are deeply concerned with today's "perception" of Tesla and not the underlying long term planning of Tesla.

 

You may have heard of amazon, netflix, ebay.

Tesla is further from turning gaap profitable since model 3 sales look so high. That means they are likely to invest more this year to get production up to 4K cars a week by the end of next year. That would mean profit won't come until kinks with model 3 production are through sometime in 2018 if not 2019, as they try to ramp up quickly from 51,000 cars in 2015, to 500,000 cars in 2019.

 

who?

 

Okay.
I was arguing from the point of view on the Malibu. We know some trunk space is lost, but without the specifics on how much and other components, saying it is an ICE platform converted to a hybrid is too early to call. Which applies more to the likes of the Ioniq and Clarity.

The Volt still shares a platform with the new Cruze. The major difference to the Volt's exterior are the grill blocks and black accents. The exterior measurements are different enough to see that the platform was tweaked for the different models to some degree.

 

Hey I think I said that first, but I am willing to give you credit if it helps get a vPrime...actually i'd give up a few kWhrs too