Prius Plug-in Lifetime Charging Stats and EV miles

So "no-go" on taking the other vehicle with an ICE/hybrid/PHEV when needed for long trips?

This combo has worked really nice for us. I drive the PIP to work and errands around town, all in EV mode. The wife drives the Leaf around town, school, work, and midrange stuff like out to the airport and cities/towns in the near abroad. She could drive the car much further, but is adamant against using charging stations. It's taken some prodding, but we swap vehicles occasionally when doing so maximizes EV use and minimizes gasoline use.

This weekend we are headed up to Reno, Carson City, and South Lake Tahoe. As usual, there will be the four of us loaded into the PIP (>200 mpg/person in HV mode). We could take the Leaf (I want to and there is quite robust CHAdeMO DC fast charging infrastructure to do this) but the wife draws the line on that one.

 

We're a PiP/Leaf family as well. We just take the PiP for road trips longer than about 200 miles round trip. For anything less than that we take the Leaf. We regularly swap vehicles and let the person who will be driving further take the Leaf so as to keep our overall fleet EV% as high as possible. Our Leaf complements our PiP extremely well.

 

Just call me "Mr. Backup Plan." It has saved me grief like the time a couple years ago when one car developed problems the day before we were leaving for Ohio. No problemo. We just took the other one. Dealt with the problem when we got back home.

 

Will, do Mr. Backup Plan.

Agree, Toyota created a large halo around the Prius brand. When that product was newer and cutting edge, the competition was few and far between.

Still, they could have used that halo to sell many BEVs and Prius branding would go a long way. They would be late to the party and opportunities wane with time and the competition intensifies, but there is probably still time and Prius/Toyota fans that have the appetite for such.

 

At a certain point electric range on a PHEV starts to be a problem. You have too big of battery, and you are just carrying around a big hunk of metal in the form of an engine for the majority of the time. And then when you do use the ICE, it gets less fuel economy because it is hauling around such a heavy battery.

 

who knows what toyota is thinking, but unlike the prius, a decent bev is fairly simple, and they may not see much profit in it, now, or in the future.

 

There's not a ton of profit in most cars, unless they are high end. Companies like GM and Toyota are more like banks than anything, at least that is where a lot of their profits come from.

 

Sounds exactly like our scenario, guess it’s pretty common combination. My wife drives the Leaf most days, as she only drives about 40km (~25 miles) on average going to work and handling kids drop off/pickup most days, whereas I drive the PiP as I need to do much longer distances for work (usually minimum of 100km per day, sometime up to 300-350 in a day), as I am in a sales role. Obviously, the PiP is also our travelling vehicle, and did great on a recent road trip to Florida (20 hrs each way).

The Leaf is also our weekend family car for local driving, but my wife also never wants to take the Leaf if the distance means we HAVE to pick up a charge on the way, even though there are CHAdeMO chargers everywhere, it seems now. I think we have only put three L3 charges on the car since we got it over 2 years ago. (thanks IKEA!). Not that she is opposed to free public charges, she just thinks I am a geek when I hunt them out.

Back to the Prius, My EV/HV ratio does take a beating (especially after that 4700km road trip, lol); I am at only 13% EV in a little over 2 years driving the car (about 80k KM in that time, 121k on the odometer). I rarely get a chance to charge during the day, but at minimum she gets an L2 charge every night. We have one L2, and our routine is that I plug in the PiP when I get home since it only takes 70 minutes, then before bed I swap and plug in the Leaf overnight. Works great.

 

I've toyed with the idea, but always seem to have something else to do.