Professional reviewers keep repeating that the PIP only get 6 miles of Pure EV range!

Len, I agree. With over 700 EV miles logged, I consistently get over 13 EV miles to a charge. My high distance on a single charge is 16.7 EV miles. I don't know where these reviewers are getting "6 miles". They obviously don't have and don't have access to a Prius Plug-In.

You can see from my daily spreadsheet log, over the last 900 miles, I've used 5 gal of gas.

 

Since the very beginning back in 2000, there has always been a dead giveaway to confirm that the reviewer has no clue how the system actually works. When you come across one, don't let it bother you.

Until recently, it was always the fastest speed you could travel with the engine off. They'd notice acceleration from a stop, then never do any further observation. So, you'd get a quote stating the maximum is around 12 MPH. There was no effort to find out if it was different for other circumstances. They simply didn't bother. In fact, you'd sometimes wonder if they even drove the car at all.

Now, the claim with 6 miles of EV for the PHV is just as brainless. That's why most of the writers are only called reporters, not journalists. There's lots of disappointment on the way if you're expecting well researched reviews. Those that convey accurate & thorough information will be extremely rare. Cherish them.

 

A simpler explanation is that Toyota marketing was targeting a lower price-point and decided to repurpose the existing gen 3 Prius by sticking in a battery pack that would fit under the hatchback storage area and have a large enough storage capacity to qualify for the U.S. Federal tax credit.

Batteries with those size characteristics today cannot output enough kW on demand to accelerate the car in the EPA test cycle without firing up the gas engine.

The PHV design makes good marketing and engineering tradeoffs to deliver a plugin vehicle with excellent overall efficiency. It has a lower price because it has a smaller battery. Because it has a smaller battery it has a blended powertrain design. The PHV is not the most efficient vehicle in all possible scenarios although it is an excellent overall design. It is also not the lowest CO2 emitting vehicle or the lowest gasoline consuming vehicle in all possible scenarios.

 

It's great that the PiP is working out well for you. I did a 77 mile drive on highway 101 yesterday to San Francisco and back including some driving on hilly streets there and got 99 mpg. I wasn't able to do any extra charging during the day. And I was driving an American car (Volt).

 

Tideland Prius explanation is simpler and much better one

 

Yes!

A lot of "reporting" is just thin rewriting of press releases or articles from other media sites. Many car reviews are just lazy drivel in which attitude drives the writing more than careful research about the actual car. A lot of general reporting is "he said, she said" quotes cherry picked to reflect "balanced" conventional wisdom. Anything more than that is often called "investigative journalism" but that is often a fancy label for over-hyped and misleading advocacy.

Doing good journalism is hard and most of it is done by poorly paid writers waiting for the next layoff notice as their newspapers and magazines shrivel up from lack of advertising dollars. More and more people get all their "news" from watching TV which largely consists of confused detail-free do-overs of stories taken from those shrinking local newspapers plus the day's fires and car crashes that happened while video cameras were nearby.

So, yes, cherish the quality journalism when you find it. Savor it!

 

Ever checked the domestic content percentage?

 

Really?

His explanation is that Toyota engineers have to do careful calculations before ultimately deciding to fire up the gas engine under various situations in order to achieve optimal efficiency under all possible scenarios.

My explanation is that the battery is too small to output the required kW so they must start the gas engine.

 

It used to be 40% in 2011 because they imported the engine from Austria where they make it for some of their European cars. The transmission was also imported along with the battery cells.

I haven't gone to a local dealer to check the window sticker myself recently, but Google shows someone claiming that they saw a domestic content of 74% on a 2012 Volt window sticker in January.

GM started production based on existing supply lines but invested in moving production of the engine (for Cruze as well) and transmission to U.S. plants closer to the assembly factory (as well as presumably bypassing import tariffs).

LG Chem has also finished building a new battery cell factory in Michigan although I doubt they are in production yet. My vague memory is that cell production there for the Volt is planned for later this year. They are actively hiring for the battery factory now.

 

Are you sure the acceleration and speed limits are about max efficiency? Has that been published? In pure EV mode the car is powered ONLY by MG2, and I though the power/speed limits were because of limits of MG2 in terms of max speed and max power. MG2 is only
80 hp with a t 13000rpm limit, so there is just so much one can get it to do. If its just MG2, there is no way to vary the gearing, and so to reduce the speed at which it must spin, one needs the ICE to change the effective drive ratio and keep MG2 in range.

I know there have been hacks to get Gen II prius's up to 70 in a ultra-stealth EV mode, but that does not mean its not pushing the motors beyond their limits (i.e. taking the EV MG2 and MG1 motors beyond what would be a redline in a ICE.)

The primary EV motor in the Volt is 149 hp which is why it can power the car through all speeds.

So it may not be "max efficiency", but rather focusing on long-term reliability, without increasing the motor size/cost over that in a regular Prius, that is the limiting factor.


:focus:
Reporters are just restating the EPA test results.. probably a mix of them being ignorant and lacking any real experience. At least there don't seem to be near as many reporters attacking the PiP as the Volt had, though that is probably because it does not come with a political bull-eye. There will be lots of negative articles, from why its not cost justified, to why its too late , to why its too limited. Don't listen to them, do your own analysis and take some test drives and get into a PHEV or BEV.. and then tell your friends. People are used to bad reporting, so it won't surprise them.

 

I am in the database profession, where often tweaks are done to a product specifically to get good numbers on particular standardized database performance benchmarks, that the marketing and sales team can then proclaim to potential customers. That this has little or no bearing on how the product will perform with the customer's workload is apparently irrelevant; the numbers make the sale.

Sounds like Toyota was willing to take the hit on these EV performance benchmarks to meet other objectives.

 

It's the dilemma of the egg and the chicken.

As I see it, Toyota had the most efficient mass produced ICE in the industry and decided to use it where needed (high loads), the result of this was a smaller battery with all the advantages of it and eliminating the disadvantages. And yes, focusing on long term reliability as well.
And, as Tideland Prius stated, the result is the most efficient PHEV in essentially all possible scenarios and a PHEV that emits the least of GHGs in almost all US states.

 

I am quite sure they are about max efficiency.
As far as I understand, in gen3 and PHV MG2 is not directly connected to the wheels but through second planetary gearing (on the same ring gear). If it was needed, the gear ratio for the PHV MG2 could have been set different to eliminate the limitation.
I agree to your perception of long term reliability though, this was always Toyota strength.

 

Gearing is not trivial, it always has a tradeoff. The gearing is between MG2 and the road is fixed. If they changed the ratio so they could have more road speed at a given RPM, they would have to give up power. But giving up the torque/power of MG2 could have hurt them in HV mode, where the power of MG2 is part of what allows them to keep efficiently use the atkison cycle.

I'm betting they are about max profit, and reusing the same parts as the Prius helps with that, both in production and in service.