PIP worth it for 55 mile commute?

Before you get too carried away, make sure the prices you're seeing are before the TFS rebate, not after. That looks suspiciously low.

 

Lets use Fuelly numbers for the 2012 Prius and the 2012 Prius PHV.
You commute 110 miles a day, if you commute 250 days a year that is 27,500 miles a year before any non work driving.
On fuelly, the 2012 Prius gets 49.2 MPG (your mileage will vary) and the 2012 Prius PHV gets 79.5 (again, your mileage will vary)
So the Prius will consume 559 gallons of regular, while the PHV will burn 346, a savings of 213 gallons (using my best price this week of $3.059, a very good price) or $652 a year in savings. (If it turns out you drive more often than just to work, it will change the numbers So will using your local gas prices)

Once you know your best offers for both cars, you can begin to work out the number of years it would take to 'payback' that initial cost difference.

 

You can go out to lunch with EV miles. If you have extra EV miles, spend them during highway traffic congestion or use it to boost MPG.

 

Jimbo, using fuelly to estimate his mpg for a PiP is troublesome. I think it is better to approach it as 13 EV miles + epa mpg hwy. His EV % commuting is probably going to be closer to 11% than 25%.

It would be nice if the Green Race website supported the PiP so that you could plug in your route and get a reasonable estimate of your consumption.

jurassictest.ch/GR/

 

Well there's that too. But I meant that when you're looking at prices, just verify whether those are before the rebate or after. I.e. if it says 28k, does that mean 28-4=24 or does that mean 32-4=28? That's all.
I suspect to get the rebates you need a credit score of 700 or higher. But if you get in touch with the dealer and give them your info, they can verify whether you qualify for the loan before you leave the house.

 

which rebate? The TFS rebate is indeed processed on "your behalf", if you can call it that – it's basically applied as a down payment toward your car loan. The CVRP and IRS rebates, obviously, you do by yourself. It does get a little confusing because the amounts are identical.

 

… 110 miles a day is some serious mileage. By comparison, mine is "only' 60 miles, and you can see my current PHEV mileage on Fuelly since I got mine in April.

Having had an older ('09) Prius for the same trip before, I can report that except that my mileage has increased from about 48.7 mpg to what it is now, at 66.8 mpg. So considering that my daily commute and conditions surrounding it (including driver habits, etc.) haven't changed between the two vehicles, the increase in mpg can probably be attributed mostly to the larger battery and EV driving. A small bit might be attributable to the slightly larger ICE and general improvements from Prius v.2 to Prius v.3.

 

Yes, to get the 0% and TFS rebate you have to have pretty good credit. A dealer should be able check if you qualify before you get more in to the plans.

The lowest price I saw in the price thread was 29900 for pip before rebates. (with the then $3500 off it was ~26400). Taxes are paid on the before rebate as the rebate is more or less a down payment.

Also, you can't really use Fuelly's number as a lot of peoples MPG are boosted up by doing tons for short trips. A quick way for you to get your approximate commute gas cost is to figure is to use the Prius 49MPG and subtract 11 miles from the trip. So, a normal prius 55 / 49 = 1.122 gallons PiP 44/49 = .89 gallons.

If you can get the price close go for the PiP all the way. It is like a regular Prius on steroids, and you will love running short errands on all EV during the weekends.

Even after you run out of EV mode it works in HV better than the regular Prius. Here is a segment where the engine started and I was out of EV and went 10 miles @ 97mpg on city streets for 25 minutes.

 

Make sure you do all your research on transportation when buying out of state. At $27k + change OTD, you're only saving a little over ~$1500 off what I purchased a PiP for locally not counting airfare, hotel, or whatever costs to get the car home, etc. Undoubtedly, it's a deal but just make sure you have everything spelled out down to the penny.

You don't want to make all the arrangements and then find out the car includes dealer add-on pin stripes, VIN etching, or such nonsense. My sister had made arrangements to buy her Prius a few years back and agreed on the OTD price over the phone. When she got to the dealer they told her they weren't able to locate her car but this one here is almost the same but includes a additional options she didn't want and had to pay for.

Even lensovet here had a little adventure with financing up in Oregon.

And finally, Fuelly is next to useless for approximating fuel costs for the PiP until there are more data points. I mean, bfd gets 66.8 mpg going 60 miles roundtrip. I should be getting lower with my 107 miles roundtrip but it's actually higher at 75 mpg.

My back of the envelope costs in CA rates for my local PG&E E1 electricity rates means gas needs to cost $5/gal for me to break even using electricity vs gas. Electricity is $1/day which equates to 11 miles which is approximately 1/5 the distance a gallon of gas in regular Prius would get. Since gas is not yet $5/gal, we lose money plugging the car in. If I switched to E9 rates off peak night charging, costs could go down to $0.20 but my day time charging may go up. Point is, you may never recover the additional costs of the PiP over the Prius Three.

You have to find some other intrinsic value in the PiP. For me, it's less time at the gas station. Gas up every 4 days in a regular Prius vs every 6 days in a PiP. And of course time savings in the HOV lane.

 

On that note, it bugs me when some people on MyNissanLeaf (I'm pretty active there) keep saying that EVs are so much cheaper to operate than gasoline powered cars. Well, sure, if you've got really cheap electricity (the people who make the claims usually do) and it helps when they compare to cars much less efficient than the Prius.

PG&E can be a ripoff esp. due to the high prices at the upper tiers. Heck, our tier 1 non-TOU rates (E-1) are higher than the average that many people in cheap electricity states are paying. Some areas don't even have rate tiers.

Seattle's electricity is dirt cheap vs. PG&E (Seattle City Light: Electric Rates & Provisions).
2012 Rates (July 1, 2012)
is incredibly cheap.

 

Right, yes

 

If you are recharging at your first destination, then it does make sense.

I'd be getting close to 100mpg if I could just recharge at work.

 

I need a quick answer: should I never plug in a PIP, with 12 miles commute in NYC, will I gain any mpg's over regular 2012 Prius?
I recently lost my 2012 four( to that bitch Sandy), so $4k and 0%, and tax credit do look pretty' pretty good! There is stil a 2,5k tax credit, is there?!
P.S. sorry for hijacking , I really never researched PIP before....

 

I have 2010 Gen 3 Model III which averages around 49 mpg over the almost three years I've owned it. Lease will be up in a few months and yesterday I leased a PIP base model for $3,000 down and $285/mo out the door price including gap insurance. This was in Northern NJ, not far from NYC. I currently have no way to plug it in at home but dealer fully charged it before I took delivery. Ride home (less than 10 miles) showed 162 mpg with about 4.4 ev miles left when I got home. Used up the remaining 4.4 today and have been averaging about 55 mpg in hv mode in the driving I've done since then. So, from what I've seen so far, PIP without plugging in is better than 2010 Gen3 and could be even much better if you can ever plug in. My lease price was just about the same as I could have leased a 2012 Gen 3 Model III so it was a no brainer for me to go with PIP. If I ever get dedicated line in my garage, will have best of both worlds. Price to buy with all the rebates/tax incentives should also be similar to buying a regular Prius. I'm glad I did it and would highly recommend you to consider it. Fed Tax Credit is still available as far as I know if you buy it.

 

You should get slightly better MPG. The regen brake can absorb more due to bigger battery so there will be less friction pads in action.

PiP is tuned to finish the gas engine warm up quicker too. Yhe only downside is no spare tire. If you are purchasing it, the resale value will be higher than a regular Prius.

 

the only thing to add is that yes, $2500 IRS rebate is still available, as long as your total tax liability is 2500 or more.