Finally picked up my car tonight

Congrats.. I remember you posting on Friday you couldnt pick it up until Tuesday. Glad to see you were able to pick it up finally .

 

Congratulations, enjoy your new ride

 

Congrats--enjoy

 

Congratulations

 

Excellent! The bigger lithium pack can regen more.

 

Yep, that is greatness!! Enjoy that PiP!

 

Thank you SO much for these sorts of anectdotes! I'm not sure how often i'll be able to charge my prius fully so it's nice to know that even if i treat it like a normal prius there are times that I might be able to build up some EV range when there are long hills (there are some hills where my current civic i can force engine off and glide for 6-7 miles).

 

Wait, you only got 4 EV miles going to work? It sounds like you started with a full charge. Is the elevation higher from home to work?

 

I took a drive in the devprius-mobile this afternoon.

I immediately recognized his description of our funky workplace plugin situation in his posting last night and looked him up in the company employee database. Too funny.

As background, I own a 2001 and 2004 Prius but have never gotten around to driving a 3rd gen. I had previously driven a beta 2012 PiP at the U.S. introduction last year in Richmond, CA but that was so brief it was hard to form much of an impression so it was fun to drive the real deal today. 

I really liked the PiP's driver display screens even though they are mostly monotone and lower resolution than the full color ones in the Volt. Toyota did a very nice job with the limited display resources. In particular, the instantaneous efficiency feedback gives more satisfying details than the abstract spinning ball in the Volt driver display.

I found the EV mode acceleration perfectly usable, at least up to 40 mph or so but I tend to be a conservative "Prius driver" after more than a decade of training. Overall, I felt "at home" behind the wheel. As I drove the PiP back into the parking lot at work we recognized another new PiP leaving at the end of the day that was being driven by a fellow employee in my own building....

I think I could be happy driving a PiP (especially if I had access to charging at work) but I made a conscious decision a couple of years ago to try something different by getting the Volt with its EV-centricity and farther range and I'm happy I got it.

Late last year I rented a Nissan LEAF for 3 days from Enterprise rent-a-car during a business trip to Portland and had a great time driving it around in Winter-like conditions (20-40F, no snow). I am definitely interested in spending some similar extended quality-time with a PiP sometime soon.

 

Forgive my PIP ignorance but is it possible for the combustion engine to fully charge the battery back to the full EV range?

 

It sounds like the blended operation is counted as HV mile. EV mile may look low but your overall gas consumption for the trip was 67 MPG -- better than the commute back home which had 9 EV miles but with 64 MPG consumption.

 

I think Toyota realized it and put color displays in Prius v and c.

That's quite a perspective coming from a Volt owner. Did you feel a flick of the foot would trigger the gas engine?

 

Sure, but at lower speeds it wouldn't happen the way I usually drive. At speeds over 40 or so I had the impression that acceleration was weaker and it would be easier to cause the engine to start. I would have to spend a full day driving around in different circumstances to really have a good feel for that, however. Most of my regular commute is along an expressway at 50 mph and I think the PiP would do fine.