My long journey to a Prime-Advanced

I only purchased my Prius C (used, 16k miles) last spring. I was quite pleased with the car, getting mileage as high as 60 mpg a tank. Nevertheless, after seeing what a Gen4 was capable of, I started thinking about a 2016 Prius 2 Eco, particularly considering the advertised $1000 dealer discount and $2000 Toyota rebate that started in October. Right about that time, however, Toyota announced its pricing for the Prime. Starting at only $2-3,000 more than the Eco, and adding in the tax benefits, my gaze rapidly shifted to the Prime.

That starting price however soon became lost amid the lure of the features of the higher trim levels. The Premium became attractive because of the 3 door SKS. Then it turned coooold, and that heated steering wheel on the Advanced looked very, very attractive. So, from a ~$22,000 car I ended up settling on a $34,000 car.

But that is not the end of the journey, because there was an actual physical journey as well! Apparently there is an invisible fence that prevents Prime from being delivered more that 150 miles from either coast. So on Sunday I went to Maryland from western Ohio to visit several dealerships. The Prius C was certainly not meant for highway driving in mountainous terrain. It struggled and screamed going up 6% grades at 70 mph. And while cruise control is nice, I had to constantly turn in on and off as traffic conditions changed. But finally I made it to Maryland.

First stop was Jim Coleman Toyota. Unfortunately, they were completely sold out, even though they had 10 Primes listed on their web site on Saturday. Then I called another dealer where I had set up a Sunday appointment, but they informed me the car I was interested in had been sold. So then I drove to a dealer Gaithersburg and they had a Advanced model. White/Moonstone/10 spoke alloy wheels. They valued my trade ($9,700, Prius C, 2014, 30k miles), named a price for the Prime ($34,500 after rebate I think?), and quoted me a very steep price for a Platinum service contract ($2,100 for 7 years or 100k miles). I told them I was going to another dealer in the morning and I would get back to them.

Next morning I went to Younger Toyota in Haegerstown MD where I had an appointment with Brian Fearnow. They had a Titanium/Black/10 spoke alloy wheels for $35,411. When I asked about exchanging the wheels or providing a $1000 discount (the car also had an aero splitter I didn't want) they agreed. Their price was then $34,411 to which we added the $1000 Toyota rebate for a final price of $33,411. As far as the other stuff, they valued my trade at $10,000. At that point I said "let's do this." Finally, the finance person (Tony) priced a Platinum service contract, 5 years/125k miles, at $1,600. I was pleased with this offer and accepted it.

They filled the gas tank, pumped up the tires, turned off the rear backing beep, connected my phone to the car, and detailed it. I was quite pleased with my experience there. Brian did a very good job and seems to know the Prime fairly well. Now it was time (1 pm) to go home (9 hour trip, 444 miles).

Driving experience.

My journey was basically all interstate at 70 mph. It was through mountainous terrain through Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania. Not until I got past Wheeling did the terrain start to flatten out. MPG for the entire trip came out to around 48 mpg. When I left the dealership the car had 4 miles EV range. By the time I got to eastern Ohio that had increased to 9 miles. Unfortunately, after my a short pit stop at a rest stop I forgot to put the car into HV mode until I got up to highway speed and I lost 2 miles. The acceleration and noise in EV mode, at least to this novice, was not different enough from HV mode for me to notice. Good, smooth acceleration in EV, very quite in HV.

The car did well tackling 6% upgrades. It was not noticeably straining, unlike my Prius C. Another cool feature was that even under cruise control at 70 mph it would turn off the ICE on downgrades. My Prius C unconditionally turned on the ICE at anything past 46 mph.

The radar cruise control was a GREAT feature. Made the driving experience much less busy. I will say, though that I wish the car would look further ahead to anticipate developing situations. I was on one down grade with heavy merging traffic up ahead and I could see we would need to slow down, but the car kept on its merry way until it suddenly had to brake rather hard. I had my foot hovering over the brake pedal the whole time wondering if the car was going to slow down. It finally did, but if it had just been me deciding, I would have let off the gas much sooner and would not have needed to brake at all. Passing slower moving vehicles, even in traffic is pretty good. If behind someone who is traveling 5 mph slower than your set speed, pull into the left lane and the car will accelerate back up to your speed and allow you to pass. Occasionally, however, I would feel like the car was getting out of control as it accelerated at points where I would not have. Again, I am anticipating things further out than the car is.

The LDA/steering assist was not good the one time I tested it. I actually drifted off to the right and could here the road noise from the shoulder before the car steered back into my lane. I also didn't get any beeps until I actually started crossing into the left lane. There may be a sensitivity setting for this, but for now it is only beeping after you are already intruding into another lane.

I was pleased to see the headlights provided some side lighting. My Prius C did not provide any lighting to the side, so making turns at night I would swing wide to make sure I missed any curbs. I think the Prime should allow me so see to the side enough where turning at night will not be such a gamble.

The tablet display can be hard to see during the day. It would do better if it was angled toward the driver rather than facing straight back. It is too bright at night, though there may be a way to shift it to night time brightness.

The back up camera had too much glare at night, though there may be a way to change this as well.

Seating seemed fine for such a long trip. My butt did not get as sore as it sometimes does, though I would occasionally still shift position to redistribute my weight.

I look forward to discovering more about this car. I have a road trip to Texas coming up next week. This week I am going to see how it does in-town as far as MPG. My Prius C had dropped all the way down to 50 mpg with the arrival of the cold weather last week. We'll see if the Prime does better. Right now I don't have a place to plug it in overnight, so it will be operating mostly in HV mode. Going through the manual is going to take some time, but should be interesting.

 

I lived in Germantown for 2 years (worked in Gaithersburg) and would often go to Haegerstown for short visits on the weekends just to get away from DC and up into the mountains.

I forgot to mention the blind spot monitoring. Great feature. I hope to quickly adjust to checking not just the mirror, but the yellow warning light as well. I was already starting to develop the habit of checking the monitor when preparing to pass last night. Hopefully, this will become second nature.

A dislike I had: when moving into a new speed zone, like exiting off a highway, the new speed limit will show up in the HUD. That's fine as far as it goes, but my HV monitor disappears just as I need it to judge whether I am braking too hard to get the best regeneration. So I have to shift my gaze the MID.

The HV monitor in the HUD does not indicate if the car has gone into EV mode. You need to check the MID for that. Also, it is too hard to tell if you have applied the accelerator enough to get out of regen and stop the car from its natural deceleration. They should have had a different color for when the car is in charge mode. (A common technique for getting better mileage is to get up to speed, let go the accelerator so the ICE turns off, then reapply the accelerator just enough so that no regen is occurring. That way the car can maintain its speed rather than being slowed down by the generator.)

 

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I-68 through Cumberland MD - Morgantown WV - Washington PA (highest elevation 2880 ft.)

 

I found a way to get the display to go into "night" mode tonight. I had thought it would just do it automatically based on lighting conditions like my Garmin GPS does. Instead, I hit the switch to dim the dashboard which also dimmed the display and changed the color scheme in a way similar to the way the Garmin does.

Here's a pic. It looks better on my phone. The rain tonight made it sparkle under some very bright lighting so I had to take a picture.

 

Yet another pic of my car. Cold, sunny day Kentucky.

Tried out the LDA again. Set the sensitivity to "high" and had better results. The car did not leave the lane before the warning sounded. I let it steer itself for a while. It actually took the car around a mild bend. But it started ping-ponging back and forth to the point where the sway warning kicked in and advised me I should rest. "Hey, that was the car, not me!" I would not recommend LDA for self steering. Instead, it seems designed to help the driver steer back into the lane with greater ease and to stay in the lane with less effort. At least that was my impression after having it on for a 1,200 mile trip. I originally didn't think I would like it, but I think it serves it limited purpose well enough.

 

This picture was taken somewhere in western Kentucky during my trip from Ohio to Texas.