Prius C No More?

People are so quick to forget. When gas in the US returns to over $5 per gallon, even my Gen 2 will see a sudden surge in appeal. Electric is coming, but affordable without range anxiety is still a bit longer to come. I could have purchased a used Leaf for about the same as our Prius. The range of the Leaf on a used battery just wasn’t enough, even with several friends who have one. I’ll try again in a few years.

The C is a nifty car, reliable and efficient car. Sad to see it being discontinued.


2006 Prius Base

 

It's still around, just not in North America.

 

Going by the press release, it seems to be a US-built car. But you're right, there's nothing about the hatchback or station-wagon in the US.

 

I don’t see electrics taking off quickly in most of the country either, there are still 16 states that sell under 100 new/used plug ins a year and that’s counting PHEVs and used sales.
In California however 10% of car sales are plug ins, they still have a long way to go but in some areas they are everywhere.
Just shows the massive disparity between different parts of the country

In terms of your commute I moved close to work when I had that situation, also there are PHEVs for that type of drive as well. (Which are as good as an EV until you deplete the charge, my Volt went on a 4000 mile round trip vacation out west through the mountains, not a single issue and only a couple charging opportunities.

 

Any of the less populated states they just don't make as much sense. Fuel is cheap by comparison to the coasts, and there are more people in rural areas that don't want to spend a few hours at the grocery store so their car can recharge enough that they can make it home. lol

As far as my commute, we had 9 cars when moved 100 miles away, which was mainly because we couldn't find shop space for the collection in San Jose. (It's very much an anti car community.) When we moved I did the math on fuel costs for some of our existing cars as well as the fuel cost on a selection of new and used cars + their payment cost. The C is the only that fit. A Prius Prime's higher cost would have put the payment high enough that it would have been cheaper to run gas through one of the existing cars. The C was actually supposed to be a used car to come in less than the comparison value. The used ones all had more damage than I wanted to deal with, and the dealer offered me a great deal on a new one. It was a good enough deal that I decided paying a bit more to have a new car to ruin would be worth it to not run into repairs on the older cars.

As far as moving closer, it won't happen any time soon. I'm probably closer to moving on and out of the Bay Area than I am to moving back in to it.

 

Logically that is what you would think but many densely populated areas sell effectively no EVs.

Rhode Island for example sells on a per capita Basis about the same number of EVs as North Dakotas annual 32 cars.

 

Are you sure about this statement? I remember rolling blackouts during the electricity crisis back before Gray Davis was recalled (and Schwarzenegger became governor), which was basically an artificial crisis created by Enron. Prior to the current El Nino year, we have had several hot drought years in California, and I don't recall any news headlines about rolling blackouts around here. We have installed so many solar panels over the last 10 years, which provide most of their output during the middle and afternoon periods when air conditioning demand is highest.

 

I'm sure this has been mentioned before, but at least the C is going out in style. CR listed it as the most reliable vehicle. The Prius Prime and Prius were also in the top 5.

Most reliable vehicles.

 

Very few areas of the U.S. have experienced rolling power outages in modern times. And even those that did, experienced them mostly during peak AC times, when many commuters were out on the road and disconnected from the grid. Drought, and fraud be a certain long-gone energy company, were major contributors.

If people are stupid about their plug-in car recharging by trying to do most of it at peak load times such as during maximum AC use, then yes, numerous southern climate areas won't have enough capacity. But it doesn't take much human or machine intelligence to shift the recharging to low demand times such as overnight, when plenty of capacity is available. Many afflicted utilities already have time-of-use rate structures to encourage this shift. Northern climates tend to have their electric demand peaks during winter mornings, after the cars should already be charged for the upcoming day.

Some folks are even working to leave some plug-in cars plugged in to operate in reverse, to help supply the grid from car batteries during peak load times. The car batteries could provide some load leveling, soaking it up when utility demand is low and sending it back at peaks. The costs and battery life issues associated with this may not be settled.

Most rural folks will also be charging at home, not at the grocery store. And relatively of them live far enough from the nearest groceries to need recharging to get home.

 

That statement is confusing.
Comparing "per capita" on one side to total sales on the other is NOT a good comparison.

Low sales numbers in RI might be partly due to high electric rates.

 

I remember issues when I lived in the southern part of California 8 years ago, but not specifics. Most often it was just warning, and sky high rates on certain days. As far a the rural sales, it depends how far it is to get to the store. If you have a 225 mile range (Nissan Leaf IIRC) and the store is 100 miles away you'll probably be okay, unless you have to take a detour or want to go to more than one store in the town you just drove 100 miles to get to.

I still have high doubts that the high population areas of the country have enough reserve power being made to handle a huge influx of electric cars. Sure there are work arounds like charging at off peak times, but those are generally not the things that the average person is willing to do. The average person will expect to go on with life with the same or more convenience of a gasoline based car.

 

And I still don't know.
But after an extensive discussion with my Toyota salesman, the C IS still on the production schedule for the 2020 model year.