Three Plug-Ins: The Cost to Drive - cars.com

It's a good article. These things need to be sold and used. I'm sure the 2nd gen PHV converts enjoy the benefits. Cut gas bill nearly in half off reg. Prius based on this. The other two, not so much. Buy them because you want them.

 

The Leaf electricity consumption is much higher than the EPA rating. They must have been driving very inefficiently.

 

They admitted as much in the article. Drove illegally (over psl) with lots of gas/brake/gas/brake.

 

they drove all 3 cars the same.

 

Wow, they weren't kind to the Prius in the review on the ride, comfort, interior & driving characteristics.

 

When have car enthusiast reviews ever kind to Prius? For that matter, any mainstream family car... like Camry or Corolla. Many like to cover Prius simply because it draws attention to their publication.

Since the plug will be offered as a package option, wouldn't the differences between it and the cordless version be what people are interested in?
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I don't see how and judgments can be made, based on a pre-production car.

 

Yes but they gave a lot of kudos to the Leaf & Volt, at least in some areas like braking & acceleration, and suspension.

The only one they gave the Prius was for rear passenger leg room & sitting position.

Basically they compared the three and they concluded the Prius was not the best, nor second best.

 

Oh John, there you go ... being rational again.

What I found entertaining was the skipped data. A large contingent of EV drivers run grid tied PV. That bit of data never seems to get factored in ... and I never have figured out why. Our 2 year old PV system, for example will "break even" in less than 4 years. In addition, we have "free" (to the users) charge plugs where I park every day ... as do several locations in our area. All that to say, the charts don't account for such deviances from the norm. As it is, when we get our Leaf (Monday March 25) - transportation costs will be going down a bunch ... way more than the charts are guessing. I wish they'd at least show how much MORE folks could cut their transportation costs by investing in PV. And ... it helps stabilize the grid, to boot!

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What the article is missing is the cost per mile of the battery pack replacement in the pure EV Leaf. How many deep charge/discharge cycles can the battery pack take before it's toast? It's a very different situation than the hybrid batteries in the Prius where the charge/discharge during use is much shallower and the battery pack life has been proven in the field.

How many deep cycles can be expected? Is it about 1000, like in a laptop Li-ion battery pack? Or do they have some magical power management system which doubles that? Does a mid-day top-up charge help or hurt the overall pack lifetime? How about the hybrid use of the pack while driving: while that surely increases the range, does it help or hurt the battery pack charge cycle life? And how much range do you have left after 1000 cycles? If that's not enough to get me to work during cold weather, I'd be reluctant to buy one. And given that I'd need to see at least 8 years of commuting life out of a vehicle costing that much, I'd need to factor in the cost of a replacement battery pack into my capital cost estimate for the thing.

 

Good article showing some real world chicago in winter numbers. The plug ins should look even better in moderate temperatures, and ofcourse worse in bellow 0 temps.

Or they might have included it because it will have a plug and is the gasoline fuel economy champ in north america.

Or maybe the cordless hummer? I think cordless is really a dumb marketing thing, most cars are cordless. If you wanted to do that the cruze should be included too, but that would have made it extra long.

They did include figures for free pluging in. I don't think PV is ever free, with subsidies it might be less expensive than the 11 cents per kwh they were using, but not really in the chicago winter. The point should have been made in explanation though.

Umm, because this is not a speculative techincal article. They did say the reliability needed to be proved, the prius is proven. Toyota has said the life of their batteries wasn't good enough for commercial release. Nissan and Gm are standing behind theirs. Where would you get the technical details of phv prius longevity when toyota is mum on whether they are close to viable longevity in development.

 

yikes. So Toyota cant make long lasting battery but Nissan and GM can?
I very much doubt that... I think what Toyota considers acceptable vastly differs from what Nissan and GM consider acceptable.

Besides, this test is really really reflecting bad on Volt.
I bet they choise distance of 47.1miles as distance where Volt should be able to drive 80%-90% in EV mode and hence show cheaper than Prius but worse than Leaf. Oops.

 

Yikes is right. Toyota is the one that said the phv batteries were not ready, I did not. I also did not say that toyota can't, just that they were still working on it. If they thought they were done, we should have prius phvs shipping.

Why do you think Toyota has higher standards for batteries than those other two. GM bought the best technology available. Nissan partnered with a company that had leading edge techology. Toyota is developing it in a majority owned subsidery. These things often fall behind. I was countering the other posters point that the toyota battery should be much better. That is pure speculation and counter to toyota's own PR relating to lithium technology. Toyota's PR also says their batteries are more expensive.

It is what it is. I don't think anyone thought the volt would do it at those high levels in ev in cold temperatures. 25 miles would favor the volt, 100 the prius, and in between the leaf. They kind of spelled everything out. Different temperatures and driving conditions make these vary. This is a much more fair test in the same conditions than say CR where they compared volt in winter to prius doing epa.

 

Agreed.

Those who commute 50 or over miles to work can save more gas/electricity per mile in a Prius PHV (about to be released) over a Volt.

However, if they can reduce their commute distance by moving closer, that's a win win overall.

 

Moving closer to work often means being farther away from other stuff.

Family, shopping, recreation, entertainment, food, etc. are within speed & range of the PHV... making that 50 MPG + BOOST for work commuting a nice choice for my needs & budget.
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They said durablity and reliability were verified. It was the cost that was not ready.

 

On their current faq. Toyota is still saying reliability is a reason they are not yet ready for market. Since they did not evaluate the leaf or volt battery, we can only assume they mean the batteries they are working on. I hope they now have gotten over this problem, and see no technical reason why they have not. I fully expect toyota to ship in 2012, and the we will know that the reliability problems from last year have been solved.

Prius PHV FAQ

 

With phev batteries it seems like you can have TWO of the four:

Low weight
High capacity
Low cost
Reliabilty

Nissan took low cost high capacity
Toyota took high reliability low cost
Gm took high reliability high capacity

Each has it's merits.

 

Current lithium-ion battery is not reliable in cold temp and perhaps hot temp also. However, it can be durable. We know the Volt and Leaf battery are not reliable in cold weather. We have yet to see them in hot weather.

Here is an answer from the same FAQ: