Thinking about buying an "Advanced Plug in Prius"

ouch! maybe your projection of 50mpg for the pip is a bit high? must be the hills or your mph also because i cn get 60mpg in my 08 with a bit of a/c at 55mph and temps in the high 80's.

 

Using the A/C isn't so bad. Comfort of the battery is directly related to your own comfort.

 

As I stated earlier, I'm only 2.7 miles from work, so.....15 minutes is not enough time for the A/C to cool the battery.

 

I was pretty sure the plug in was the right car for me and was waiting for some special end of 2012's incentives to purchase. But it wasn't until the 4th dealership that I had talked with that I heard about Toyota's July PIP lease incentive. According to the sale's associate, Toyota had boosted the PIP roll out when price of gas climbed to $4.00, but now that gas prices have come down, they have a bit of a surplus. So the incentive is almost 0% interest for 3 years to lease. Because the interest rate is virtually zero, most of the payment on the lease goes toward the purchase price. You are only investing in part of the vehicle for 3 years, rather than paying interest on the full purchase price. For me, the payment for leasing was almost half of what it would have cost me to purchase it.

I also think that the technology will eventually get better so that instead of 10-11 EV miles, it will be quite a bit more, so the idea of resetting at the end of 3 years was very appealing. Because of the special, low cap rate, it really made sense to me to lease rather than purchase. Not sure why the sales associates don't talk this up more. But then again they aren't very encouraging about the PIP either. Is this because their markup is so low or they really don't understand it? I was told the best use of the PIP was in the city. I live in the country and it's 7 miles to the closest city. I charged up my PIP this morning, drove into town and back and got 88 mpg. Only the last 5 miles was gas, so about 35 cents. This trip would normally have used up $1.80 in gas. True, it's going to take a lot of trips to make up the difference in investment, but when I think of the monthly expenses, I'm going to be very happy, esp since the car is so reasonable to lease.

 

Driving around here is part freeway, part surface streets. I'm keeping my mileage way up there by using HV on the freeway where it's more efficient, and EV for the surface streets with any leftover burned on the freeway. I'm going for a 1000 mile tank now.

 

ayerscreek, welcome to team plug in!

 

Is this city or highway driving? Thinking of getting plug-in. Hypothetically If 4 mile commute takes 4 hours driving at 1mph, will battery drain a lot due to time?

 

no, time will not drain your battery. it's a function of speed and accelleration. 4 miles at 1 mph will probably use 1 mile of battery capacity if it's not stop and go. and if climate is off of course.

 

drive and accellerate slower.

 

lol! i was thinking of you on my drive home tonite. when i first got my pip, i was just making my 15 mile commute with a couple tenths of a mile left in the battery when i got home. 3 months later the ev range estimate is up from 13.8 to 16 and i have around 2 miles left when i get home. so, either the car does better as you break it in, or my driving skills have improved dramatically! i like to think it's the latter.

 

You think the monthly lease rate was low before - don't look what it is today or you'll kick yourself.

 

What's this? ONLY 345 mpg ... snicker ... All of the above sounds MOST encouraging!

Sadly, I'm still at least 17 months from being in a position to seriously consider buying / being able to afford a PiP. That's when I can "legally" draw from my IRA - if needed - without paying a "penalty", although I would have to report any distributions as income. With a bit of luck, the trade-in value on our '08 will still be close to 15K as it's a Pkg #3 and also has fairly low miles; it'll be 4 years old in August and only has about 37K on it.