Featured Tested: 2022 Toyota Prius Prime's Time Has Come and Gone

That is exactly why Toyota ignores enthusiasts. It's just rhetoric noise, not constructive.

 

Applying your EV profile for my 10 hours ~700miles trip would need at least 1 stop en route and the destination must have a charger. Again, that scenario even for Tesla requires some advanced planning. With a PP, I can fill a tank before the trip and just drive. No warry to refuel at any point until I am back home.

 

In college I regularly drove from Colorado State to Los Angeles in a straight go. No stops except to fill up and use the restroom, and I used the restroom while the pump was running to economize on time. The trip usually took about 15 hours 45 minutes straight through. Not too bad if you leave at 5:00 am. I had my waypoints, too. Vegas was dead-on 12 hours. Got gas in Thompson, UT, St. George, and Victorville. There was no such thing as a Prius back then, unfortunately. Then again, gas was under $2.

 

Right now they have a fair number of singed feathers, from my perspective. Not that any of the competition are any nobler.

Maybe their "audience" is thinning out, and they're none the wiser.

 

From photos of the area, the spare wheel well in the back is shallower than the wheel's thickness. Maybe the depth matches a temporary wheel, or even that might sit above the well lip. Either way, there is space extending from the well edge to the sides of the cargo area, that are likely filled with foam in the non-plug models.

You got more than the volume of a tire and wheel for battery without intruding into cargo space. The PiP managed a 4.4kWh pack in that spot.

 

Yep. I recently did the rear quarter panel ventilation hole cover to prevent mice from entering the cabin. In the process, I had to expose the entire traction battery assembly. There is no way this battery pack would fit in the "spare wheel well". It is much larger than a temp tire.

 

uhh... you mean the pressure vent? The one that lets air out of the car at the right rate to ensure proper airbag inflation timing?

 

Nop. I believe this is fresh air ventilation for cooling the battery space under the deck. About 3.75"x6" in size, flimsy plastic flaps covers the slats, but a mouse can easily enter through it.

 

Oh well either way it's fine with hardware cloth over it like that. I thought you were talking about blocking the thing off altogether.

 

There is something like 3 inches of empty void under the battery before you get the space of the spare well. If Toyota had more time to do more than a square box for the battery case, they could have done a much better job of saving cargo space with what is under the pack now. The C-max Energi, a model designed without even a hybrid in mind, manages to lose only about have the space the PP does to the battery.

Use liquid cooling, and more space is saved.

Was the vent you caged off just on one side? If so, that was the one for equalizing cabin pressure. I'm pretty sure the air exhaust for the battery's cooling is ducted to the outside on each side.

 

Yeah, but after finishing the R and L side vents, I learned there is another drain hole on the bottom of the trunk supposed to be a ~2" hole. I did not know about it, so I did not cover it. I also learned that there are two more vent holes on the top of the front wheel wells. So, my attempt to seal off my car is not yet complete.

 

It is on both sides. And those two holes exist on regular Gen4 as well, so it is not specific to PP.
See the video 15:25 for the vent on the 2016 Gen4 Prius.

The photo in my previous comment was left side. This is the right side. The deflector is only on the right side. I had to remove it to cover it with a cage. I did not put buck the deflector... Not sure if that will affect the airflow and battery cooling characteristics.

 

Sure, in the Tesla that would require pushing the voice button and saying "Navigate to XYZ" and a few seconds later the NAV would show you the route and popup a message saying it was finding Superchargers...and off you go.
If you were really OCD about it you could use Google maps on a PC which would be a good idea anyway for such a trip to check for road conditions, weather etc.

Mike

 

gen 3 still has the storage space under the deck. pip battery is there, and i think the charger is in the former wheel well.
gen 4 got rear independent suspension, and messed up all the space i think. and while they were very proud of it, and many here were happy with the results, it didn't sell any prius.

 

Thanks for the tip, but no need for pushing a button even if I had a Tesla. There is only one SuperCharger station within 150 miles of my home. I have no other alternate route or alternate SuperCharger.

 

The only problem that I saw with the Gen3 PIP was that there was no program to educate the public as to how much you can do with a 12 mile range. Most days I travel less than 6 miles. If I were to charge the car after every trip I'd be able to live with an older design PIP quite easily.

But there was no education program, so I looked only at the use of the car during a 35 mile commute. That made the payback period for the PiP quite long.

Unfortunately, they've made the same mistake with the Primes. They should educate people about how much can be accomplished with a battery range of 25 to 30 miles per charge.

 

that's because they never wanted to sell them. why bother spending money on education?

just the fact that they were berated into making the pip by public demand must have caused some serious angst in the board room.

 

One of the PiP's goals might have been to shut down the third party converters.

Some of those conversions kept the spare tire.

 

At least in the US prius family of car sales peaked in 2012 at 236,655. Worldwide it was 2013, but either way it is almost a decade ago. They shed the prius c and prius v, leaving prius sales @ 59,010 in the US last last year. Prius C and Prius V combined for 76,432 making the prime and prius @ 160,223 - regular prius sales peaked in 2007 @ 181,221 about 3x higher than Prius and Prius prime sales last year.
Toyota Prius Family Sales Figures | GCBC

What happened? competition from other efficient vehicles that buyers preferred. This includes Toyota's other vehicles.

In the first quarter of this year Rav4 prime sales were double the Prius prime despite dealers charging a big premium on the Rav4 primes. The artificial shortage in rav4 primes was based on Toyota building a vehicle there customers wanted but thinking they really wanted a Prius prime, so had little manufacturing capacity to do it.

Rav4 prime and other models that are built like it could be what toyota's phev buyers really want. On the hybrid end the Camry hybrid and corolla hybrid are as popular as the non plug-in prius. Rav4 hybrid grew by more than total us sales of the Prius.

 

So Thursday:

• left 9:30 AM to 1:15 PM - 160 miles, using slower direct route, one pee break.
• 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM - 205 miles cumulative, $11 SuperCharger session. One 20 minute Blink for 5 mile reserve to the 30 miles needed.
• 3:45 PM to 7:15 PM - 354 miles cumulative, home.

The in-car, Tesla route planner wanted to route me to SuperChargers on the way up. But I wanted to try 100% SO with a slower, direct route. I needed a 20 minute Blink session to add 5 miles reserve to the 30 miles to the SuperCharger. Had I kept my speed at the posted on the way up, I might have avoided the Blink session but the total trip time would not have changed. Here is the direct route:


Pick two:

• GOOD
• FAST
• CHEAP (this experiment)

Bob Wilson