New Prius Plug in less than impressive

Hi All

We just got our new 2012 Prius Plug-in---It's Cool--BUT---It only gets about 8 or 9 miles on battery power,and is showing only 61 miles to the gallon on average.

My wife drives this car to work on a 110 round trip commute ( she charges the car both at home and at work----this car is loaded and cost $44,000.00--I am less than impressed. I drive a 2005 Prius with leather seats and get 49 mpg and the car is paid off and runs as well as it did the day I bought it!

Is this a correct average for this car or are we doing something wrong?

Cheers

Dorn

You really cannot compare a 2005 to a fully loaded GenIII model Five.

If you wanted the car strictly for mpg you should have went with the base model or skipped the Plug In model and bought a Two. The car simply was not designed for 110mile commute or rural towns like Rio Vista where there are no real shopping/entertainment opportunities and to get anywhere you have to hop on Hwy12 and mash the pedal so you don't anger other drivers. LOL

Have you tried driving the car in circles or at lower speeds on the levee roads to check the battery range? I ask because high speed driving can really wreck the total range on any hybrid or electric.

Those are the numbers you got, so I assume they are correct.
From you Gen 2 mileage, you were not hypermileing the gen2, so I assume you are not hypermileing the PiP
What other car were you getting 61 MPG with before that this is unimpressive?

I did not learn enough in your post to know why you are not getting 13 miles on electric, perhaps you have hills or freeways in the first 8 miles somewhere. Would it do better to save some electric range for the other end of the commute?

If you had a Gen 2, you know that nothing more than the base model improves MPG, this is true in every Prius.

I am unsure why you are unhappy. 61 mpg in the PiP is about 25% better than your usual 49 mpg, equal to 27.5 EV miles a day in the 110 mile route. As for the car price, surely you knew that the toys you bought to bump the car price up to $44k would not add EV miles ?

Did you buy the car for HOV access ?

Addendum: More precise arithmetic for the 110 mile trip --
2.244897959 gallons @ 49 mpg
1.639344262 gallons @ 61 mpg
2.244897959 - 1.639344262

0.605553697 gallons 'saved' by EV = 29.67213115 EV miles a day, compared to 49 mpg Prius.
Is this making sense to you ? You can read it as 80 of the 110 miles are petrol in the PiP.

First, this should be moved to the PiP forum, second, surely you knew the range of the battery was fairly limited on the plug in? Best to save the EV miles for the non freeway part of the commute, and read the threads here for tips on increasing your EV range and MPGs!

That's nothing compared to what the Europe will get. EV mode only up to 51mph. That means, that even though I have (12km )8 miles drive to work (I can charge there), I'd be using gasoline, because 2km of that road is 100km/h section and I don't want to be a moving obstacle. I can even ride my 4 years old Vectrix up to 110km/h.

http://www.toyota.co.uk/cgi-bin/toyota/bv/frame_start.jsp?id=CC2-Prius-Plug-landing

Not to mention the windy conditions! My MPG decreased on a trip out there.

The car's doing what it's advertised to do. What were you expecting?

61 MPG is advertised in my window sticker......

If you are only getting 8-9 miles on battery I would look at how or what you are driving. If I turn on the seat heaters and the AC, I will get 10, with them both off I will get 13. I drive all flat surface streets at 40-50 MPH to work.

Sounds like the PiP isn't the right car for your type of driving.

That's the magic question.

61 MPG is pretty remarkable from a platform with a base price of $32k.

True, people like me with much shorter commutes in comparison are seeing higher MPG values. But that should be fairly obvious of an outcome considering the size/capacity of the battery-pack.

Assuming you are not doing hypermiling, you can get 8-9 miles in EV mode and 61 MPG, it sounds right me and this is similar to what my wife got in her 20 miles commute with 50% highway before I showed her doing pulse and glide. Now, she can get ~11 miles in EV mode (MID shows 12.6 miles constantly), and consumes ~75 MPG in HV mode.

can't add much to this. 110 mile commute is not exactly ideal to max out pip efficencies. i definitely would have gotten a loaded prius with lka and radar cruise for all that highway driving.

To me this sounds like a lack of research or just a poor buying decision. The plug-in feature is not very useful for a 110 mile round trip commute, so why pay for and carry around extra batteries?

Tom

Although your figures aren't really bad, there are a whole bunch of owners doing much better. I'm mostly retired, so can do almost all my local driving for errands, etc., in EV, usually getting 15+ miles. When I drive on an occasional 180+ mile trip, I get from 70-80 mpg, depending on how fast traffic is moving. Because I don't have a regular daily commute, charging at work, etc., my ratio of EV to HV is roughly 27%-73%. Several posters have reported just the opposite.
One question might be is what mileage your wife got if she ever drove your Gen II on the same route. Also, is the PHEV mileage a significant improvement over what she was regularly driving previously? And finally, how did the price get up to $44K, unless maybe you are including tax and license?

There are those who feel that the Plug-In can get better mileage in HV mode than the standard Prius since the larger LiIon batteries can absorb more regenerative energy and at a higher rate, than the smaller NiMh batteries in the standard Prius.

Not sure why you're only getting 8 or 9 miles on battery power unless
you're jumping on the highway and driving at high speeds in EV mode.

I routinely see a 12.7 mile posted range after charging the battery and
the mileage I'm *actually* getting on the battery exceeds that based
on my typical driving.

I just filled up and calculated 101 MPG.

For highway driving, I switch to HV mode and drive that way. I reserve
the EV mode for slow, in-town driving. On the highway I've gotten
anywhere from 57 to 65 MPG.

Hi All,
Boy! There sure is a strong sense of reprimand in moist of these posts---Lets see here is a list of some of them " Sounds like the PiP isn't the right car for your type of driving--and” " 61 miles was advertised in my window sticker" and " The car's doing what it's advertised to do. What were you expecting? And "You really cannot compare a 2005 to a fully loaded GenIII model Five"

First, I am a big Prius fan--my wife and I have both been driving them since 2005--when I bought my first Prius I sold a two year old $70,000.00 car and got on a 2005 Prius waiting list---since that time I have told everyone that would listen that My Prius is simply unrivaled as a Car to Drive in America. My post was related to the fact that at 8 miles a trip (16 miles roundtrip) I saved about $1.20 a day minus the cost of electricity ---and this in my mind is no big Whoop. My wife really did buy the car for the Sticker--and that is nice for her commute.

I can see that I am in the minority here in my thinking---I sort of wish that we had chosen a Volt instead but I think that in all probability once the Hype was cut through the Volt would probably deliver closer to 20 mpg instead of their advertised 40 mpg--and at only 36mpg non-electric mileage it might end up worse off than the Prius on our particular commute.

"As advertised" is a relevant term--during our search for a new fuel efficient car my wife and I attended a number of Electric Car shows and expositions, we were told numerous times by the Toyota Reps that when the PiP became available it would deliver around 20 miles a charge depending on usage---we put our name on the early list and we did not quite get what they pledged.

I will take peoples advice and go look on the PiP forum for driving tips. I will most certainly be keeping my 2005 Model, it has nice Italian Leather seats that I put in, runs as well as the day I bought it--essentially has all the bells and whistles of the Newer Prius cars, and has (to my way of thinking) a bit more comfortable interior (front seat area). I have even thought about doing all sorts of add on power options to my 2005 but it always comes out as a lot of money for not much real gain--said another way--actuarially incorrect.

I see the new PiP Prius as a lot of Hype for not much real gain---If Tesla can do what they are doing then a big powerful company like Toyota should be able to do better. We Paid $44,000.00 for our top level Prius--we could have paid $49,000.00 For a low end Tesla and received the perfect car for our commute--Oh Well, Lesson Learned--Tesla next time.
Dorn

PS

Since the electricity in my house is totally provided with solar power I should not have quibbled about the cost of charging our Prius (I only noted it as an average situation/example)
DC

machie, if you could just plunk down $57,500 (the lowest priced Model S), and actualy take delivery in 2012, that would be fantastic.

Here is the reality of that situation: Tesla is a public company, they also have a 450+ million dollar loan with the DOE. They simply are not making the 140 mile range, $57K car this year, and probably not many (if any) in 2013. The reality is, you would need to wait until sometime in 2014 for that car.

Now, if you have about 100K in cash, can afford to give Tesla a $40K deposit, their might be a few spots to get one of their "signature" edition 300 mile range models, they are only making 1,000 of them, and they are very close to 100K+

Tesla production is mostly also sold out for 2012 and 2013 anyway. Elon is laughing all the way to the bank.

So you can't really compare a Plug in Prius that you can buy today, with a Tesla Model S availbe in 2014, now can you? It's apples and oranges.

machie, i think you have it right. sorry it came after the fact. i think most are satisfied (although some were only interested in carpool stickers). for my commute, 15 miles r/t, it's perfect. beyond that, i get 70-75 mpg's for the kind of driving i do. i looked at leaf, volt, and they are right for some, not for others, just like pip. if the pip only went 13 miles on my 15 mile commute, i would be less happy.