A 5-seat Toyota Prius Prime is on the way

They did while increasing battery capacity, and increase car performance and efficiency, while reducing weight and cost.

 

Volt lost tiny bit of headroom in back, which surprised everyone.

The ultimate "it" though is sales.

Half of mainstream minimum by the end of year 2 is an appropriate goal for any plug-in going to actually be competitive. So, don't get distracted by the tangents.

 

It's clear from their actions that they chose not to be the flag bearer of plug-ins like they were hybrids. That has understandably upset some enthusiasts. It's hard to say what Toyota's reasoning is behind this.

Toyota led and cornered the market on hybrids and made a profit doing so. Fan boys will trumpet their favorite manufacturer's green credentials, but there is little compelling evidence that vehicle manufacturers put green before profits.

The Prius is the first to use the new TNGA platform so this presented stiff new engineering challenges as drash noted. However, once these challenges are met, it would be a small step to work the Prius Prime's battery into every TNGA platform vehicle rolling off the lines in the next few years. That would allow the creation of Prime models of all TNGA vehicles and then the ability to share a unified battery design. These new Prime plug-in models could be built with the lowest additional battery costs possible and present a large marketing opportunity and profit center.

Maybe Toyota is not looking at making a killing selling one or two custom platform built plug-ins, but instead planned the slow and steady approach to plugging-in a large swath of their line in an affordable way with TNGA and broadening their market in this way.

 

that would be great, but not if they all lose space to battery pack.
the ultimate winners will offer plug ins with as much space as non plug ins.
maybe i was spoiled with the pip, but that is how it should be done.

to say, asking for more ev miles without losing space is like asking for more seating without losing space is a fallacious argument. a new platform 'could' have made room for a larger battery, and 5 years of battery advancement should make it smaller. but that was not toyota's mission.

so they put everything into an enhanced prius, and i would be happy to own one if i were still interested in hybrids. but they wound up down 25% to date year over year. apparently, the public does not reflect their 'focus groups'.
if tgna creates engineering problems instead of solving them, perhaps it's only to enhance toyota's bottom line.

 

volt lost a tiny bit of headroom? in a 50 mile vehicle? and that compares to a 3" ledge in the prime hatch and loss of a whole seat?
it's not a matter of what can be done, but what toyota wants to do. and they haven't shown any desire to do plug ins. the question i keep asking myself is, 'why do they even bother'? is it just to keep their hand in the engineering game, incase they actually catch on?

 

agreed. and volt sales reflect the market, not the car. there's nothing about prime that will make it sell better than volt.
now maybe after tax credits are gone, if gm can't reduce volt cost enough. but with 8 years of hillary, they will probably create more. and who knows what toyota will be able to do with cost.

 

As they say, "you can't please everyone all of the time". With TNGA sacrifices on this specific issue had to be made. Neither Toyota or any manufacturer can capture all of any financially lucrative market. And to this point, except for Tesla, it has not been a particularly lucrative market. The Prime won't appeal to everyone, but it doesn't need to.

But how is that possible? A PHEV could be built first with PHEV in mind and non-PHEV ICE trim an afterthought (if there is any of regular ICE variant). But there is always space to be gained by removing a PHEV battery.

Take the Volt 2nd gen for example. Get rid of the battery and there is now a real 5th seat and much more cargo space. Sacrifices were made there too, but since there is no direct Volt non-PHEV ICE trim to compare to, it's less obvious but just as real. One could make an argument they did a better job with the 2nd gen Volt in working the battery around the cabin space and seating and cargo space. Others would and have also disagreed and there were other compromises noted in other threads.

Could have, and the battery is probably 'smaller' (higher density even if not lower in total volume) but at the loss of other important things. With TNGA, there were many other engineering considerations that had to be shared across several Toyota TNGA models, most of these models yet to be released. Toyota could have made room for a larger battery in this TNGA platform. And if we could run a parallel experiment in alternate universes and see how things played out in a few years, maybe that would have been the right thing to do. But maybe not. In that case, Toyota would have to have built a bigger TNGA platform to get more battery into the Prius, but that would have introduced other negatives such as decreased ICE efficiency, decreased handling, lack of room for E-4wd, etc..

Toyota has already noted that separate platforms will be developed for their compact cars and larger models. The latter could be built to accommodate larger batteries.

Maybe I'm giving Toyota too much credit, but suspect they are going for the long game here. One could invoke a little Steve Jobs in this case. The public may not know what it wants until Toyota shows it to them . We know what we want, because we are enthusiasts, but we are not the general market.

Still, it's far too early to call this a loss. Battery prices and density continue to improve significantly and the Prius Prime is only the first model to work off TNGA. At this rate of battery improvement, adding back a 5th seat and/or getting the flush cargo floor is doable at the mid-cycle 3 year mark. Call it a work in progress, but let's see who will play to get in on the action now. Like you mentioned before, price will be the key.

The Prius Prime won't be my next vehicle either, but that's because I'm not mainstream and like cool eco toys as many here on PriusChat do. I'm waiting for a 300+ mile affordable BEV, but not Toyota nor anyone else makes one of these - yet.

 

if you make a separate model, (like volt) there's nothing to compare it to. so instead of building prius prime, they should have built just prime. 22 miles ev, 5 seats, flat hatch, 45? mpg. most phev drivers are looking at it more as a rex than an enhanced hybrid.

 

if you make a separate model, (like volt) there's nothing to compare it to. so instead of building prius prime, they should have built just prime. 22 miles ev, 5 seats, flat hatch, 45? mpg. most phev drivers are looking at it more as a rex than an enhanced hybrid.

 

They could have made a separate model with no shared platform. But it would certainly have cost a significant amount more. That's why they went with TNGA.

That might've left you and me out in the cold, as we may have been willing pony up more money for the features and range we want.
But that doesn't mean it would sell well or appeal to a wide enough audience to be profitable/sustainable. Time and Prime sales across all of TNGA will tell if Toyota made the right decision.

 

Well they tried to put everything into an enhanced Prius. They literally went for the sky in this one because this will also be sold worldwide not just in the US. I can see why they had design decisions particularly with the Solar Roof. Where were they going to put the NiMH buffer battery and ECU? They had to make room for that as well as the traction battery. But make a whole new platform just for one segment of their sales? Yeah not gonna happen. To Toyota the Prius is still the platform to test their primary technical goals first. It's good that you want to wait for the model that fits your needs best. Everything you see being tried out now on the Prime will be made smaller, more efficient, more compact, and with the added bonus of being cheaper from working within the TNGA frame. Particularly when the tax credits expire.


Unsupervised!

 

IMO, the multimedia system is the least important part of the car to consider. Used to be they came with a radio. Then there was a cassette tape option. Then a CD. Then multi-CDs. Now we have bluetooth and/or SD/USB input. In a couple years that could change too. Android and apple gets new features and updates often, can cell phone features/operating systems change and cause compatibility issues with the car later? My 04 never got any updates, it was running the same old bluetooth untill it got totalled. I couldn't get music info of any kind on my screen. So after 10 years or more from now, how much will today's MM system matter?

 

agreed. nice to have a good one, but one of the least important features. more marketing hype than anything else. and no matter how big they make the screen, entune and gps will still be terrible.

 

With the intergration going on between the mutlimedia and other systems, swapping out the radio isn't as straight forward anymore. Going after market on the Sonic means losing the blinker clicks. Yep, there is no longer a separate clicker to let you know the blinker is blinking. The car now makes the noise through the speakers with the factory head unit. The seat belt and other warning tones might also be generated that way.

TNGA is supposedly a modular platform. that should allow changes to be more readily made to the various subframes. Sticking with stereo systems, non-modular ones are a one piece boom box, while a modular platform is a component system. Modularity should make changes like going from a sedan to a wagon/crossover, to a convertible, or a two door coupe cheaper and easier by only requiring changes to the sections involved instead of the whole car.

From comments here, it sounds like TNGA is one size fits all, and not flexible. Are Toyota's with a torsion beam rear going to have the same loss of space as if they had an independent rear suspension, because TNGA had to accommodate an IRS for those models that have it. Is the Yaris or its replacement going to have the same wheelbase as the Prius?

The Bolt shares the platform with the Trax. It has a flat battery under the floor that the case forms part of the structure. So the belly is going to be different than the one on the Trax. The bones to the front, rear, and sides are likely the same between the two. That is how a modular system is suppose to work.

 

Trollbait - Would you look at the I'm Looking a the 2016/2017 Touring thread where I asked if you would offer a comment?

 

Maybe I was looking at this all wrong. Now I'm thinking this... Prius Prime is to Prius as a Dodge Challenger Hellcat is to a Dodge Challenger. Same car, just on steroids. Souped up and full of muscle (electrically speaking).

It's not a Tesla obviously. Nor is it a Volt. It is simply the top of the line Prius, designed to maximize efficiency, both gasoline and electricity. If Toyota wants to sell a true plug-in like the volt or bolt or whatever, or a full BEV, they would design a car specifically for those purposes. Until Toyota gets past the idea of fuel cells being the future, we probably won't get one of those.

 

maybe not, but it's not even a top of the line prius, unless you buy the best of the three available packages.

 

I believe that's the plan. I'm too old to continue with bare-bones stripped-down cars. I want the best of the best, of the best, Sir!

- 4 vs 5 seats means nothing to me.
- EV range matters more to those of us in more rural areas with longer distances to travel and less possibility of recharge.
- Usable cargo space matters.
- No rear windshield wiper matters. How do I see out the back when it's snowing or raining? I can't throw it in reverse and use the camera, can I? Unless that's part of the deal, I just read that Japan is dropping mirrors in favor of cameras in the next few years.