Prime destined to be doa?

People who want the convenience of a liftback, comfort of a larger seating interior, a few high-tech goodies, but don't want the look of Prius.

That, combined with an affordable plug, sounds like an untapped market opportunity.

 

okay, but if prime doesn't look like a prius, neither does the lift back.

 

Toyota's notion of what their customers want is intriguing to me. The prius 'v' comes to mind. Sales are decent - but Toyota wouldn't dare name it 'minivan' out of fear it would kill sales. Meanwhile, the Dodge minivan is readying a plugin version - & not a single lick of competition in sight. If the extra storage via a lift back is good - it should mean a minivan plugin is possibly going to steal sales ... unless another company changes their strategy.

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The run of the mill auto journalist doesn't think like us, and they were part of the crowd calling the gen1 Volt's lack of a fifth seat a con.
How many people opted for the ICE Camry because of the trunk size of the hybrid?

What have been held as negatives for a PHEV would be a negative in just about any car segment.

The gen1 Volt, Mirai, and Prime all have rear bucket seats. Two are because of space requirement for the drive train equipment, and two are trying to sell it as a luxury item. It is a luxury option on luxury brand cars, which is likely selected by people that will have someone else driving them around. Most of that crowd likely would choose a Lexus over a Toyota for the same reasons Cadillac drivers don't look at Chevys.

Then everyone wants enough space for their stuff.

Higher end features can draw in potential buyers. It worked for the gen2 Prius and gen1 Volt. These were both new technology cars with a higher price tag than a comparable ICE car. Carrots were needed to get hesitant shoppers to commit. The Prime is a second gen PHEV coming to a market in which the gen2 Volt no longer needs widgets to cover a large price tag.

As for families that don't want a 'family' car, there are enough options already that makes the number of Camrys sold surprising if those families are a large market segment.

 

see, you're looking at this too logically. we need to think out of the box.

 

Timely article on EVs. Reminder that it is very very early in this game. Tesla is way ahead of the pack, but it is still very early.
5 yrs from now, it will not be that early, but still very early.
Automakers face a bumpy road to electric vehicle success - FT.com

 

Yeah and I wonder what Nissan will do Mitsubishi's Outlander PHEV now that they're buying part of them since they have multiple SUVs themselves.


Unsupervised!

 

The Pacifica will be very interesting. I have a Chrysler minivan and they have huge compartment under the floor for seat storage, so once Chrysler got around to the plug-in idea, there is already tons of space to put the batts. Will be interesting to see what they do for seats but I think removable 2nd row buckets like mine. 3rd row let's see what they do.

Talk about utility of 2nd row buckets in the minivan, guess what?
we use the Prius with 3 grandkids seats across for most of the kid hauling.
OK but my passengers love the heated buckets in winter.

 

Like the irrational masses flocking back to SUVs and large cars?

Put an honest MPG label on it.

I am surprised it hasn't made a post here, but Mitsubishi has admitted to cheating fuel economy tests for 25 years.

We have a Dodge minivan at work, and it has the Stow-n-Go seats for both rows. Sounds like the ICE Pacifica does too, and uses one row of them(2nd I guess) for the batteries in the PHEV. So one row should still have the seat storage.

Were your bucket seats an upgrade option? Perhaps fancier seats didn't fit in the under floor bins.

 

exactly.

first i recall hearing about mitsi cheating, but perhaps because they are a non factor here?

 

Although the green plugin hybrid HOV stickers ran out at the end of last year there are serious discussions in the legislature about bringing them back later this year. Meanwhile, Volt sales seem to be doing fine without

 

perfect. kill the stickers and rebates, and let the best cars win!

 

I got VW version known as Routan and VW was apparently not allowed to offer stow-n-go. So I got a big storage space. It was cash 4 clunkers purchase and I happened to be standing in a VW dealership when the program suddenly ended so I had to pull the trigger.

MERGED

My speculation is Volt is doing well due to anticipation of more green HOV stickers, and maybe lease companies are picking them up. We will see in a few days when the CNCDA 1Q data is released we will see how many plug-ins PHEV were in CA (65% in 2015).

 

.... but Nissan doesn't have a plugin SUV. And the Mitsu won't go on sale (if there's not another delay) until this fall.
2017 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV arrives in the US after a long wait - Autoblog
I was REALLY looking at this, until about 2 months ago. Mitsu litterally "pulled the plug" on this ride. The U.S. version, unlike its sister vehicles in the asian & european market (VERY popular there) - we will NOT get the Chademo DC quick charger.

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Any reason given for pulling the Chademo?

 

It has 9.6kwh charging... as much it is nice to have Chademo charging, most would not sit for 30 minutes of charge for 20 miles. Remember, the rate of charge depends on battery size. At that rate, it is cheaper to use the ICE in America.

I rather they give 16kwh like the Pacifica for $7500 tax credit. That would make it a 30 miles phev. MERGED Speaking of phev... I wonder what Honda is going to do with the Clarity phev. That is a good size car with 5th seat that Prime could not do. Plus 40 miles ev would be nice. I guess it might be the Accord's ICE layout?

 

8kwh @ 50kw (1st 80% of the 9.6kWh) would only take ~6 minutes to charge.
& yes - people CAN hack 6min's.

stupidity?
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Have you gotten prove that is the case? Most rate of charge I have seen is relative to the size of battery. Even Tesla does that. Ie. Leaf and rav4ev with Chademo mod take 30 minutes to charge to 80% from near empty.... even though Leaf has much smaller battery pack.










MERGED







Oh... even Mitsubishi Europe indicated it takes 30 minutes to charge.

 

rav4ev pack is 2x as large as the leaf - so that'd make sense.

checked the Mitsu phev board - my bad. Owners say 20 to 30 minutes. 20 minutes takes a trick. As it nears 75% charged, you have to unplug and restart. That causes the CHAdeMO to revert back to 40 kwh & start slowing all over. But you missed the point by hyper focusing on 30 minutes. You get out of your car to chsrge because you're near some place where you're doing something else anyway. You don't jump out & charge for no good reason. You're at a store, or burger joint etc - & that's likely going to take more than 20 or 30 minutes anyways.
If you're in the US, don't worry about it you're not going to get Chademo. The markets that do get it seem love it. BTW the web says the pack is 9.8kWh ... that 2/10 might account for an extra mile.
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I get it about l3 charging. What I am saying is would you pay more than gas to charge? Places like eVgro is not cheap.