My Concerns with the New Prius

After 55 years of marriage, I've gotten used to the relationship.

JeffD

 

Surprisingly my wife, although she grumbled quite a bit about charging on long trips, still to this day misses the Leaf and says it was her favorite vehicle. She loved she didn't have to fuel it herself, the instant heat in the winter and how quite it was.

There are also other alternatives like renting if you do those long trips only once evey while.

Still, to be honest, I'm quite weary about EVs myself. The killer for me is the drop in range in the winter. The Leaf lost up to 50% of it's range even trying not to use the heater, freezing ourselves to death (including my wife) and hypermiling. There are some roads out here I take that don't have a charging station in over 200 miles. During the winter, that might be sketchy. On the other hand, most other people don't drive in temperatures of -30°F or colder and EVs besides the Leaf usually have much better battery temp control.

Edit: One word of advice. If you have a wife and an EV and are traveling, you'll probably want to charge at places of interest, like a shopping mall or museum. But make sure that place is open before planning on charging there. Twice I parked by shopping malls on those long trips only to find out they were closed.

Well, maybe not exactly. The Bolt has 16.3cuft of cargo space and the Prius has 20.3 to 23.8. But the Bolt also has a square back which may be better for holding boxy items than the Prius' long sloping back.

The Bolt EUV has more passenger room but seems to have about the same cargo space. I'm not sure how either the regular Bolt or the Bolt EUV compare to the Prius in termos of passenger space.

 

i'll take a look at the euv when the time comes. i don't want to go smaller on passenger or cargo space.

hopefully gm will offer up some decent pricing. i saw it got a good revue from sandy munroe

 

Toyota better take heed; @bisco walking...

 

in all honesty, they've probably got a few years to make things right, we'll see

 

Not on mine. We like remote scenic routes, off-Interstates. US-2 across Montana doesn't make it. Neither do several scenic routes through other Montana places where I used to visit cousins. I'm seeing only one way in-out of Havre MT, and it is not the US-2 cross-country route. We enjoyed a scenic route through the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument on our cross-country tour, and it also flunks.

Several of our explorations through Nevada also fail. More failures are present on routes we've taken through Utah (I-70), Wyoming (I-80), and Colorado, including a nice scenic portion of our winter ski trip last year.

Could we get from Point A to Point B without exceeding 100 miles between those chargers? Certainly. But it requires detours, and skipping numerous interesting and scenic segments and waypoints of our journeys. Wonderful portions of rural Americana are not yet available on that 100-mile criteria.

 

Does it, with a continuously variable CVT hunting for best efficiency?

Or is that only on fixed-gear traditional transmissions, especially those geared only for performance, not for efficiency. I'd think that the HSD-eCVT would automatically compensate for non-ideal gear ratios, within a reasonable range, so tire diameter changes would have nothing left to reach for.

 

The gear ratio change from larger diameter tires is in the final ratio of the differential between the wheels and transmission. It's fixed. The larger tires means more distance traveled per rotation of the differential. The trade off is going to be in torque applied to the pavement, but likely of little value to those looking for the efficiency gain.

Maybe a CVT could compensate. It comes down to where in the engine's efficiency curve the transmission ends up putting it. With smaller tires, a little less torque is needed from the engine, but it probably needs to spin slightly faster. At steady speeds, that higher engine speed likely has a bigger impact. Examples of CVTs with shorter final gear ratios do result in lower fuel economy ratings.

The Prius v had the same drive train as the gen3, except it needed a different final gear to compensate for the increased weight. With the same differential as the gen3, it could have had better fuel economy, but would have been even slower than the Prius. For a more like to like, the Outback Wilderness is near identical to the other trims equipped with the turbo engine. Being 20 to 30 pounds lighter with smaller wheels would be an efficiency advantage. The all terrain tread would have to be very aggressive over the all seasons to result in a 4mpg lower highway rating.The difference is mostly in the different final ratio. https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=35782&id=35556&id=43867&id=43866

 

I am not sure where the larger tire size come from. My 2017 Prime has 15" wheels and P215 tires. The optional 17" wheels take P195 tires. Both have close to the same circumference to keep the speedometer correct. Oddly enough the 15" in a Bridgestone Grand Touring is 833 revolutions per mile while the same tire for the 17" wheel is 845 revs per mile. So the 17" is actually slightly smaller!

Until the detailed tire specs are available I am unsure if the new 17 & 19" tires are really any larger overall diameter than the current generation. Tire Rack doesn't list any 195/60/17 tires yet to look at the Rev per mile number.

 

OK, I found the tire calculator. The 15" on my 2017 Prime are 25" in diameter. A 195/60/17 on an LX G5 is 26.2" in diameter, an increase of 1.2". It's all in the aspect ratio.

 

Question - Do smaller size tires reduce road noise versus larger size? Seems if we're talking 17" versus 19" tires, there might not be that much difference (noise wise) and maybe even driving wise. But it seems many here prefer the size 17" tire over the larger.

 

pretty sure he said the hatch was smaller, i'll have to read again

 

yeah, post #6 here:2022-bolt-euv-initial-impressions.235733

for my purposes, floor area is all important. and, i don't like stacking things to block the rear view, i consider it a safety issue

 

Fair enough, although for the record, the 2013 SL Nissan Leaf I had did indeed have a heat pump.

Although, you are right, because the heat pump wouldn't come on at temperatures below 0°F. So it was resistive. Still, I didn't have the heater running and it still would lose that much range.

 

The factory size I finding for your Prime is 195/65R15. It didn't have a 17in option, but the Prius did with 215/45R17.

The smaller wheel preference is for the better efficiency. The wheel and tire combo will be lighter, in a place where weight has a big impact for a car.

The 17in have aero covers, so likely have less wind noise compared to the 19in. I think most tire noise depends on the tread, and that will change with the pavement and speed.

 

Build and price tool is up and running at Toyota.com. I wanted a prime, but the regular Prius XLE I built, in red with just three of the cheapest options comes out to $33,795. That’s a tough pill to swallow.

My addons were red paint, $495, 12.3 inch screen at $735, dash cam at $375 and a cat shield at $200. 34k seems a lot to me and I really wanted a prime which I assume will be about 38k in a similar spec. Yikes.

 

So I stopped by my dealer today and, man, new vehicles are SLIM PICKINGS! They did have a sweet red barely-used Toyota Supra in the lobby. Rear-wheel drive so not practical here in the winter.
Anyway, I asked a salesman about the 2023 Prius and he said they are pre-ordering them now for folks and any coming in are pre-sold even before they arrive. (I didn't ask about mark-ups but don't think they are doing that here.)

 

I was building the same XLE except silver, no dash cam and AWD since CT typically only gets AWD. I’m guessing Prime to be about $38k too.

Since body style and tire size will be the same for Prius XLE and Prime XSE I’m guessing ground clearance will be the same…probably the only advantage to 19” tires. Ground clearance is really becoming an issue for me. Speed bumps around here are deceiving. They make them really wide and no matter how slow I go my 2009 gets scraped.