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2021 Prius Prime informal review vs. a "vanilla" Gen4

Discussion in 'Prime Main Forum (2017-2022)' started by pakitt, Apr 1, 2021.

  1. PiPLosAngeles

    PiPLosAngeles Senior Member

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    OFF TOPIC WARNING

    I don't know about you, but my insurance rates have increased over 30% this year. Even my pet food costs about 25% more than last year. Gas prices are up 19% from pre-COVID prices. Lumber is out of control at 193% higher than a year ago.

    The number of dollars in the economy increased 26% between March 1, 2020, and March 1, 2021. You can't increase the money supply by 26% without creating massive inflation. In other words, given that fiscal policy's effects on inflation can take up to a year,* you ain't seen nothin' yet.

    [​IMG]
    M2 Money Stock (WM2NS) | FRED | St. Louis Fed

    * Batini, Nicoletta, and Edward Nelson. "The lag from monetary policy actions to inflation: Friedman revisited." International Finance 4, no. 3 (2001): 381-400.
     
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  2. pakitt

    pakitt Senior Member

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    Solved, sort of.
    I bought the car in Utah.
    The registrations stickers there are on the top corners of the plate. Of course in Colorado, they are at the bottom. So the rear license plate holder is useless here. I need to get a new one.
    The front license plate holder was actually in the trunk, completely forgotten about it.
    Problem is though that it came with only 2 screws, not 4. So I can screw the holder into the front bumper correctly and safely, but I cannot screw the license to it, because I don’t have the right screws.
    Trip tomorrow to Lowe’s.
     
  3. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
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    Well that part is correct - they do only provide the two screws to attach to the bumper. The screws for the licence plate is usually dealer-supplied.
     
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  4. pakitt

    pakitt Senior Member

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    A short update for you all, after driving around 2100 mi these past two months.

    The overall energy cost for driving my Prime is currently at $4.3/100mi. Regular gas contributes to 80% of this value. This includes ONLY electricity and gas costs. The price for 100 mi went down 30% in just two months. Excited to see how that will change in the future.

    For comparison, the lifetime energy costs for my previous Gen4 was $6.9/100mi (assuming I will use the Prime in the same way as I did with my Gen4). I am considering a current EUR/USD X-rate of 1.2, fuel price at $3.239/gal, and a lifetime MPG of 47. I am already running 40% cheaper as it is.
    If I assumed what I actually paid in fuel in Europe (lifetime average cost of about 1.3€/L, that is, $6/gal at today's X-rate), that number becomes 3x higher vs the Prime's current costs to drive 100 mi.

    If I include ALL costs I have had so far (e.g. loan payments, insurance for 2021, car washes, accessories, etc.) the cost for driving the Prime is currently around $820/100mi.
    To drive my Gen4 (at European gas prices) cost me $204/100mi. But I owned it for only 2.5 years and drove only 20.000 miles. To little distance over too short of a time period to offset initial acquisition costs.
    In comparison, to drive my Gen3, using the same calculations, cost me less than half, at $77/100mi. I owned this Prius for 7 years and drove it 63.000 miles.
    I wonder how long it will take me to reach similar, or lower costs, with my Prime.

    Driving around Denver's suburbia to do errands (50-80 miles at a time), using EV Auto and driving at posted speed limits I usually get 100+ MPG. The rare times I drive in HV mode ONLY, I easily get the EPA's 54, reaching often 60+ mpg.

    One thing I really despise (literally!) in my Prime is the waste of screen space for the useless navigation system with 1990's graphics and obscene costs to update the maps. It is utterly awful to use, and I end up using 100% of the time Apple Car Play instead (either Waze or Apple Maps.)
    Is there any way to disable/remove/do not display the navigation onscreen and any way yo expand the Apple Car Play screen size to use most, if not all, of the available screen space?

    The difference between driving with electric and with the gas engine is quite marked. As much as I know this car is actually working like a Gen4 in hybrid mode (i.e., same performance), it is still, unsurprisingly?, quite sluggish compared to driving electric only.

    The headlights have a "boxed" pattern that I am not too fond of, but they still do a good job, and the automatic headlights work markedly better than in the Gen4 with TSS1.0.

    I am appreciating more and more the color and the ride comfort.

    The few times I didn't plug the phone in via USB, I had a few instances of BT audio scratching during playback.
    I wonder what the issue is and if it can be fixed. Though, I usually tend to "enjoy the silence" :)

    Registration in Colorado was very expensive (around 800$ for 2 years), and I am surprised that these taxes are based off of the MSRP, rather than CO2 emissions, overall engine displacement, and/or powertrain technology. In Germany you pay based on the CO2 emitted and engine displacement. I paid 36€/year for my Gen4 (similar for the Gen3).
    In Italy it is still (stupidly) based on kWh produced by the engine (regardless of powertrain type, and there lies the stupidity), with the assumption that the higher the kWH, the more powerful/luxury a vehicle is. It is still, somehow, related to fuel consumption (more power, more gas) but it doesn't work at all for hybrid and electric vehicles. But better than MSRP based registration!
    I find registration fees based on MSRP antiquated and not reflecting the need to reduce pollution. It doesn't promote the purchase of low MPG vehicles or electric/hybrid drivetrains. There is clearly no interest, at least in Colorado, to promote less polluting driving. No wonder I am surrounded by SUVs and pick-up trucks. Sure, there are Federal and Colorado Tax credits for purchasing an EV/Hybrid vehicles, but they are already got reduced this year (thanks Trump?) and for cars produced by some manufacturers, even finished (they sold too many cars).

    Gas prices don't help (very low, even at $3.2/gal!).

    I am still wondering how all these people, living around me, manage to purchase huge pickup trucks and fill them up, very often, with gallons and gallons of gas. Let alone pay all the registration costs, and insurance, for what are, in fact, really expensive vehicles.
    I feel I already pay too much for the Prime, as it is!

    Overall I am very satisfied with my Prime and I hope to keep it for a very long time, and drive it for many many miles. :)
     
    #24 pakitt, May 6, 2021
    Last edited: May 6, 2021
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  5. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    Good review!!

    Yeah. I've pondered that for two years now. It does the same at sea level, so that's not it, although it might be a tiny bit more pronounced up there. When we visited CO in our Prime, it felt the same as it did here. All I can come up with is a mismatch in throttle mapping between HV & EV. Using one device (accelerator pedal) to control the power of two different machines (electric motor and gas engine) is almost guaranteed to be a mismatch.

    There is no conversion. One is a measure of gas efficiency and the other of electricity efficiency. MPGe has nothing to do with gas. It's a convoluted way of expressing miles/kWh. It only applies in EV mode when the ICE is off.

    Yes. At Denver's elevation 85 octane has the same preignition tendency as 87 does at sea level. Regular there is 85. Regular most everywhere else is 87.

    Same here. EV/Auto just uses up the battery exactly like EV. But I keep hearing of people who get completely different results. <scrating head icon here>

    There is an advantage if the highway trip is short enough that the battery can do it. It's a real shame to use 5 cents/mile gas instead of 2 cents/mile electricity. If it's a long trip, then by all means use the gas at higher speeds. You just don't want to get home from a long drive with range still left in the battery.

    Attachment points are here. I think there's supposed to be some sort of fixture for drilling the holes. Unfortunately, I have a car that came from up north and now has ugly scars on my bumper.
    IMG_1614.jpg

    WOW!!!!! That's even worse than when we used to live there in the 70s. We just renewed ours here in FL. One year for a 2017 Prius and a 2017 Prime came to $79 combined.

    Me too!! The thing is amazing.
     
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  6. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    MPGe is for converting any fuel, or mix of multiple ones, into a single value comparable to gasoline consumption. It can be used for diesel, CNG, or hydrogen, but it is only getting used for electricity. Early on, the Volt had a third EPA rating that was based on a trip using electricity and gasoline modes that was expressed in MPGe.

    If you want to convert fuel used on a trip to MPGe, Miles per gallon gasoline equivalent - Wikipedia
     
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  7. Gokhan

    Gokhan Senior Member

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    It's a huge upgrade from an older vanilla Gen 4 to a 2021 Prius Prime Limited!
     
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  8. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    Useful when shopping, but not for normal use. What messes up so many people is that they don't know this. It sure has generated a ton of people asking questions like, "What do I have to do to get 133 MPGe? Best I can manage is 102." Or some such number taken from their mpg readout on the dash.

    The user is expected to use a complex formula they discover in Wikipedia to try to make a comparison or notice the fine print on the EPA info on the Monroney sticker which says it means 25 kWh per 100 miles (or 4 miles/kWh to use the terminology the car itself uses). The big print says, "Electricity + Gasoline" while the big/small print says no gas was used (0.0 gallons per 100 miles).
    Screen Shot 2021-05-07 at 7.36.03 AM.png

    That's a lot of work to go through to eventually arrive at a number that affects me personally -- cost per mile. It's far simpler, knowing what I pay for gas and for electricity to measure what I use of each and add their costs to arrive at the effect on my bank balance.
     
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  9. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    Blame focus groups for the MPGe.

    If we wanted easier math, we wouldn't use MPG, but GPM.
     
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  10. Prodigyplace

    Prodigyplace Senior Member

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    How is gallons per minute useful??
     
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  11. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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  12. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    Well, we do litres per 100 km up here, sim to gallons per mile. Maybe it’s a case of grass-always-greener, but that calc never gets easier; when hand calc’ing I invariably need to lay it out as a ratio equation:

    liters pumped is to kms driven, as what is to 100? An example, with 20 litres pumped and 400 kms travelled:

    image.jpg
     
  13. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    It is generally easier to visualize fuel use in volume per distance as we think trips in terms of distance.

    If you wanted to get an average MPG from a set of figures, you'll need to convert MPG into a volume/distance, and then convert back.
     
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  14. PiPLosAngeles

    PiPLosAngeles Senior Member

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    I drive 97 miles and use 1.7 gallons of gas. How would 1.7 / 97 be easier than 97 / 1.7?
     
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  15. PiPLosAngeles

    PiPLosAngeles Senior Member

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    Or just add them together. If you drove 25 miles and used 0.5 gallons, then another 60 and used 1 gallon, you just add 25 / 0.6 + 60 / 1.
     
  16. Gokhan

    Gokhan Senior Member

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    There is no difference between the two. They are simply inverses of each other. I prefer mpg.
     
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  17. Gokhan

    Gokhan Senior Member

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    Wait, it's (25 + 60) / (0.5 + 1.0). ;)
     
  18. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    If you divide either mpg (US) or litres per 100 kms, into 235.2, it converts to the other value.
     
  19. PiPLosAngeles

    PiPLosAngeles Senior Member

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    Interesting. You made me exercise the old algebra noodle. Indeed, it is true because there are 3.7854 liters per gallon and 62.1371 miles in 100 kilometers. 3.7854 * 62.1371 = 235.2138
     
  20. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    My last tank calculated at the pump came to 408 mpg. The other way around, that's 0.00245 gpm. Kind of hard to visualize. I guess I could make it 0.245 gallons per 100 miles. Hmm. Not much better

    Or on a highway trip, I'd get like 55 mpg. That's 0.018 gpm.

    I'd go crazy in a metric country. Most each month my average on the eco history shows from 0.2 to 0.6 L/100km. One tenth of a liter per 100 km variance seems small, but it's a big difference in actual fuel economy.

    Granted, most of my miles are EV, but the mpg still gives me a fair idea of how much is EV.
     
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