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Are short errands "bad" in electric mode?

Discussion in 'Gen 5 Prius Main Forum' started by Will B, Oct 15, 2023.

  1. Will B

    Will B Active Member

    Joined:
    Aug 22, 2023
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    Location:
    Denver
    Vehicle:
    2023 Prius Prime
    Model:
    XSE Premium
    Thanks all for the good points!

    For me EV efficiency (miles/KWh) is dominated by altitude change. I happen to live on top of a local hill, it is really downhill for at least 3 miles in *every* direction and downhill for 10's of miles in most directions I usually drive. So, for me the first part of any errand or group of errands is in the 5-8 miles/KWh. Hence hard for me to do any decent segment comparisons. It needs to be round trips before I give numbers any credence.

    Daisy555: I'm a homeowner who uses the garage for cars (maybe a minority nowadays??), so level 1 charging at home is totally the way to go. It would be weird circumstances I'd ever benefit from Level 2. As practice for an upcoming road trip I have tried out a few public chargers, some paid, some free. Even at level 2 speeds, I agree with the others that public charging doesn't make much sense unless it is opportunistic while doing something else. Sitting in a car (even a nice one!!) for two hours to get enough charging for 15 minutes of EV driving doesn't make sense to me. I did exactly that on the first day of a trip where I had some spare time and realized that just wasn't a remotely good use of my time. The reason I wanted the PPPXP is to use electric for 99% of my city driving but have gas for the multi-thousand mile road trips. EV folk for good reason care about charge rates in miles per hour of charging, a different kind of MPH. For our PPPs it is 4MPH at level 1, 10MPH for level 2. Pure EVs at DC Fastcharging stations are about 10x that I belive. But, a pit stop at a gas station is around 9,000MPH! For my upcoming road trip I'll be ready for charging, but not expecting I'll get much--and OK with that, it's why I got the car I did.

    Tovli and Trollbait: I wasn't expecting a purely binary answer. A supportable generalized answer with caveats is what I was expecting. At a high level, it seems to not matter much. On AC I can see that being a noticeable secondary effect. Heating up parked outside at my destinations will be the same either way, but in my garage at home hopefully will be mitigated at least a bit. That is an interesting point on battery temperature though. I can see it cycling a lot more with spaced out errands vs consolidated ones. Is that a big deal?

    will
     
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