plugless PHV driving stories

Share those experiences here...


Late this evening, I got one of those "please rescue me" calls. In this case, it was a family member unexpectedly trapped at the airport.

I had already finished for the day. The battery-pack was depleted, the display reset, and the plug-in timer set. Now, there was the need for a spontaneous drive. At a very comfortable 66°F degrees outside, I was looking forward to it and intrigued what that would bring in terms of efficiency. This was my first drive with the PHV as an ordinary hybrid, but with a Li-Ion battery-pack instead of NiMH.

The 37.7 miles of driving was a delight. The result was 64 MPG.

With an effort-free outcome like that, not using any plug-supplied electricity, I certainly am collecting some great real-world data to support this Prius with.

I've found the HV mileage in the PHEV to be better than a 20% increase over the Gen II. At 64 mpg for your trip, it sounds like that's about what you found, too. 64 mpg is really good for HV; I've experienced a range between 55 mpg and 70 mpg depending on how closely I pay attention to my freeway speed and other hypermiling techniques.

if i could get a 20% increase over my 65mpg in the gen II, i might never charge up! i'm going to give it a try sometime. it's hard not to charge unless you're forced to like john was. thursdays are the ideal day for me because i go to my fathers for lunch. it's my longest trip of the week at about 60 miles.

I hope I can get a 20% increase on my new pip. I pick it up today but before I trade in my 08, I took one last road trip to Rochester. After 274 miles of highway driving, at speeds of 60-75 I got 57.4 mpg in the 08. I was shocked! Because its been so damn hot lately Ive needed to use the ac and I was averaging 41 mpg.

If I can get 57.4 in the 08, a 20% increase in the 12 will be 68.88 mpg. I can live with that

Sweet! Holy cow, why do you think such a big difference between EPA? Especially with a passages and luggage for part of the trip.

The variety of highway & suburb driving I had to do was simply too different from the measurement criteria used for their tests.

More and more, the EPA estimate is just value for the basis of standardized comparison. Using their findings as an expectation is proving unrealistic for a wide array of owners.

Actually, the EPA numbers strive to get more realistic for the average driver.
That said, conscientious drivers can easily beat it. But to beat it by almost 30% is very impressive, especially in gas mode.
Kudos to you

Has anyone did a comparison study for MPG with a 2012 Plug In Prius
and a regular 2012 Prius without being plugged in to ascertain if the
Lithium Battery is more efficient than the Nicad battery system.

From what I have read from people who have owned both, the general consonance is that the PIP in hv mode is much better.

That's easy to agree with... difficult to actually quantify though. I didn't have a minute-by-minute display in the 2010, so subtle influences wouldn't have been noticed anyway. But we know that coolant temperature tolerances are different and the Li-Ion battery can capture more regen than the NiMH.

The beauty of the situation is there not being any negative impact from the added weight of the bigger battery.

Going to Lithium, the battery is actually lighter, isn't it?

No because its larger.

As can be seen in the profile below, we have both a 2006 Prius Hybrid and a new 2012 Prius Plug-in. We have had the PIP a few days over 5 weeks. We now have over 1200 miles and just filled the gas tank this afternoon after a 70 mile trip up north. This is only the 2nd fill so far.

In the summer we consistently got 55mpg if we went 55 mph with the 2006. With the 2012 PIP we are getting a consistent 10 mpg over that when in hybrid mode on the freeway. That is with about 7 miles left on the lith battery. We usually go EV mode until we hit the freeway and then switch to hybrid mode. We don't do anything out of the ordinary. We just drive the car. It's amazing.

how do you calculate hybrid mode mpg's when you have electrons left in the battery?

I don't calculate anything. The car tells me what the stats are when I turn it off.

My appologies, I rather muddled my question. Even with the larger battery, isn't the lithium based battery less weight than the smaller nickel battery? I thought there was quite a bit of savings, weight wise.

Zythryn:
PiP: battery 180lbs; curb weight 3,100lb
Liftback: battery 93lbs; curb weight 3,040lb

We drove a round trip of 112 miles today in our 2010 Prius. MFD mileage for the trip: 62mpg.

Need more information.

HV mpg is quite impressive in the PiP. I just did a plugless 72 mile trip and got 62 MPG in HV mode the whole way. Overall effortless with cruise contol on the interstate at 65 MPH, and good Prius driving techniques (feathering for glide and stealth)off the interstate.
I am immeasurably happy with this car.
Tank avergages for me are around 94 MPG consistently now!

John1701a:

A number of people obviously thought I was not responding to your thread properly. I have to admit I was a bit confused. The title of this thread is "plugless PHV driving stores".

Here is why I was confused. I actually thought you meant by "PHV" as meaning Prius Hybrid Vehicle. I was thinking you just wanted stories about plugless Hybrid Vehicles. But whoa, there isn't such a thing. So, I just figured you wanted someone to compare a regular hybrid to a plug-in. That is what I wrote about. Even your glossary from your web site has no PHV defined, which I check regularly. Best place to check on abbreviations concerning the Prius family of "stuff". Did you mean PHEV?

If we want to use abbreviations and be sticky about them we need to be accurate about them or in each article define what the abbreviation is and what it means. I totally understand we don't want to constantly repeat the same things over and over when an abbreviation could be used instead but sometimes we use these things so much which can lead to confusion.

So, I apologize for not knowing what this meant.

Edit: Link to Glossary:

John's Stuff - Toyota Prius Glossary