Car and Driver Volt/Prime

my lawn mower manual recommends regular grade, but warns not to use anything over a month old.
i learned this the hard way and had to pay 50 bucks for the dealer to clean the carb, which i would have done myself, but thought i was taking it in for a warranty no start.

 

Gasoline "combusts" anytime it's exposed to oxygen. It just does it at a slow rate (vapors) but add a match or a spark(plug) and boom. Engineers design plug-in gas tanks to seal better than most to keep oxygenation to a minimum but for folks who drive almost entirely in EV mode, they add a FMM (fuel maintenance mode) to the operating software that will force them to use up all the fuel before it goes bad; typically a tank/yr.

 

One of the reasons I like electric lawn mowers

 

I just sat in the back of my Prime. I'm 5'10" with long upper body. Plenty of knee room, but my head brushes the headliner; disappointed, thought there was more headroom back there.

Rear headroom from Toyota and Kelly Blue Book:

Prime: 37.2"
2013 liftback: 37.6"
2017 liftback: 37.4"
2017 Volt: 35.8"

 

yup, that was a design error to help make up for the atrocious front end.

 

i had one at the cape house, great for the 5,000' lot. but with an acre here, they just don't 'cut it'.

 

Yeah, huge lots can be an issue.
We had a riding electric we used for our lot. Not including the wild are behind or the house, the rest of the lot was about a half acre.
They are getting better and better though. I'd like to buy a newer one, but the electric push mower is still running great after 10 years

 

We test drove a Volt last year and didn't buy it because there was no accessory roof rack available for it. The oddly curved roof and high satellite antenna meant it was unlikely there would be a good roof rack for the volt any time soon. We were looking for a car to replace both our car and our truck with the only truck requirement of being able to carry two kayaks. The Prime had roof rails listed in the accessories and claimed 110LB weight limit. This matched up.

The Volt was faster (something I stopped caring about probably 15 years ago) and has longer EV range (something that isn't as important to me given my daily commute is 10 miles round trip) but the Prius just fit our needs better.

Doing some quick back of the envelope math though given the statements in the article they averaged 45 MPG on gas in the Prius and 40 MPG in the Volt. The Prius did better on HV mode than the Volt did, just they hadn't covered enough miles to hide the EV only range advantage.

 

Many won't do enough miles on their daily drive to hide that EV range advantage.
I'd use about 4.45 gallons of gas a week in a Prime on my 60 mile round trip commute. It would be under a gallon with a Volt.

 

there is some point at which a phev might as well be a bev, but it's different for everyone. if i buy a prime my 65/35 ev/hv ratio won't change much. a volt? maybe 80/20? at some point, the engine is a waste of money.
but a 200 mile bolt won't get much use most of the time either. the gasoline energy advantage is still a big factor.

 

Most people who buy a PHEV won't drive it hard enough to drop 25% off its fuel economy numbers either. Toyota is right that a fair number of people have a commute small enough to fit within the EV range of the Prime, but there is a large enough group out there that the added range is a big benefit. For me the 3 or 4 long roadtrips we do a year make the Prime a better fit given I can fit my entire daily commute inside the EV range anyway. (If only I could figure out how to force EV when it is below 32F out).

 

well said. your ice is firing below 32 degrees?

 

Depending on what you pay for power, the Prius would cost you less to do so due to its much higher efficiency and the low price of gas. Costs me more more to plug in than run on gas.

 

Which is why a range of choices is better for consumers and for adoption of plug ins.

Yes, that is a factor if cost is a concern.
Local stations are at $2.55 a gallon, and my electric was 16 cents for all costs last time I checked, if anyone feels like doing the math for a 60 mile round trip commute with no employer charging.

 

The Prime has slightly longer front and the hatch is much thicker to shield the battery, but besides from that the 2017 liftback and the Prime share the exact same body,so why should there be less headroom in the Prime ?
I am 6.10 and i couldn't tell much difference of headroom between my gen. 3 with the solar roof (has less headroom than without solar roof) and the 2017 Prius .
I do touch the ceiling if I try to in both cars but If I just normally sit there it's fine for me .

 

I think you're right. I just sat in the back of my Gen 3 liftback (no solar roof) and my head still hit the headliner. As far as I can tell, rear headroom is the same as the Prime.

 

First thing in the morning it came on both yesterday and today. It was on for about 3 miles today, went off for 3 miles on the highway then came back on when I reached the end of my 3 mile drive on the highway for half of the last mile to the parking structure. I did not have climate prep set for the charging although I did turn on the remote climate 10 minutes before leaving and the interior was at least warm though not toasty yet. Next week I will try to set my charging with departure time and climate prep to see how that works out since it is currently forecast to be about the same as today. Left home it was 28F, not real cold. I know in my Camry Hybrid I used to just turn off the climate control and it would go into ICE off mode when stopped and even drive short stints on just battery. I can't seem to fool the Prius that way, even while fully stopped the ICE was running even though EV Mode was selected.

But if we want to go into this more, I would suggest we move to a new topic not to pollute this one further.

 

I would love to discus this in more detail. Do you mind copying and pasting your post into a new thread?

 

is it measured from the seat cushion to the ceiling?