Test driving a Prius PHV... a dream come true

The date 19 Oct 2009 will always be special for me. I was invited by Toyota Motor Europe to visit their R&D Center in Brussels, and meet one of the great minds behind the design of almost every Toyota power train, and most noticeably the Prius - Eng. Gerald Killmann himself.

From all the things I learned and experienced that day, I got permission to share one of the most memorable moments of that day:

The driving experience of one Toyota's Prius PHV lab car! :rockon:

From the outside it was just like any other 2G Prius, if it was not for the well known paint job and extra plug socket, it looked just like this one:



However, the inside was a bit special. It was obviously a lab test car, a so-called "mule". Things would get interesting, that much was obvious. That car was obviously a working bench for the Prius 3G PHV.

When we first started, and for the next hundred meters, my mind was in shock, I was always with that feeling that the ICE would start at any given moment. Well, it didn't.

The MFD had a couple of extra special bars on top, that showed the amount of power available in the battery, and the ammount of pedal you could go before prehempting the ICE to start. There is a demo movie of this on toyota.co.jp which shows it quite well.

Then on the main road the ICE was starting after pressing the accelerator pedal a bit too much. The chief scientist that was driving at that time said something was not as expected. The ICE was starting a bit earlier than he wanted.

Pulled over for a moment, pull over a pile of notes, very very space age style, pressed a few buttons here and there, and that's it: The maximum power drawn from the battery was set too low. He changed it there, right there, on the fly, to a decent value (sorry, don't ask, can't tell) and off we went.

The sensation of pressing the gas pedal hard and feeling the car take off with no ICE at all is something that I find it hard to explain. Rolling at over 90 km/h on EV mode is simply superb, I have no words for it.

The response was smooth as ever, the braking was regenerative as usual, and if you still pressed the gas pedal for more than the battery was programmed to give you, the ICE would kick in just like on a regular Prius.

The main difference was that on a regular Prius you are normally out of EV mode, and if you push it too hard you'll exit EV and have to slow down and press the EV button again to get back to EV mode.

Not on this one. As long as it has charge, the car is on charge depletion mode, and although you can press hard to overtake with the help of the ICE if necessary, the car will get back to EV mode as soon as it can. What a joy.

At the end of the round finally the battery gave in, the usual 2 beeps warned us that the EV mode had been canceled, and I was back driving a regular HEV Prius.

Oh what a day!

Note: I wish to thank publicly to the marvelous TME team, both Marketing and R&D, who offered me one of the most memorable days of my life. And now on top of it they gave permission to share this driving experience story. TME Team, you're special, you know it! :welcome:

 

Thanks everyone.

The car was trully wonderful to drive, and knowing that the final version will be even better makes us all grow on impatience.

I'm convinced that once everyone has the opportunity to try it out at their dealer, they won't get out of the parking lot without one.

Driving around on EV mode without the range anxiety is really something special, you can enjoy the ride much more relaxed and without worrying of not getting to your destination.

 

Yeah, visiting the R&D department was really amazing, but the thing I liked the most was the human side of it.

R&D engineers there really LOVE what they do. They are not just the best crop on their area, they really live their work. The words came out of their mouths full of pride (in the good sense), they know they are making history, and they are striving to do it the best way possible. It's amazing how they don't brag about it though, there was no sense of smug whatsoever. Truly amazing.

All of the technical explanations had that glow in their eyes, and my face was (I'm sure) in awe all the time listening to all of that. I was entirely overwhelmed by the amount of information received there. If there could be a shred of doubt that Toyota is in the front leading the PHV/HEV/EV paradigm, that little doubt would have been smacked down in the first 10 minutes of talks.

In several occasions I had the distinct notion that Toyota has not gone further yet because they really want to be sure they have the safest and more reliable solution. Their technology is amazing, they are working already in models that will see the light of day in some years ahead, their advance is staggering.

Like one of them told me: "It is one thing to achieve a goal in the lab, it is quite another story to port that technology to an industrial car production line. Some times this porting is the hardest part.". I had never thought of that, and it certainly changed my reaction to news about "this" or "that" having been achieved in some lab.

Those guys are in the cutting edge of car technology, they create the technology themselves, and they get to ride it and see the world driving it around them. It must be quite a feeling, seeing a Prius passing by and be able to say "There is a part of me in that car".

Kudos for all of Toyota's R&D centers around the world.

The visit was kept under wraps for some time, and I could not bring anyone else, sorry FD.

This chance was given to me as the founder of Prius-PT.com Portuguese Prius forum, a kind of PC brother if you like. Toyota Europe wanted to thank us for our dedicated work educating people here and sharing our experiences with the Portuguese talking world. You know exactly what I'm talking about, you do exactly the same here on PriusChat.com

Yeah, but you're a lot braver than I am.

I don't have the guts to mess around with my Prius.

I prefer to wait for the official Toyota version, which is soon to start rolling... on a street near you...

 

There are lots of other threads here in this site about the so called brake problem where you can play this game of yours. Please do so, go there, have fun.

 

Many studies have proved already that in the worst case scenario (coal generated electricity) there is no gain at all pollution wise, but there is no loss too, i.e. things remain the same, you gain nothing in terms of pollution for using an PHV or EV.

The bottom line is that there are few countries where this happens. And most importantly, even if that happens, you never loose, so it's a deal you have to make.

Obviously the most important and most efficient solution is to make your own electricity, that will be the future IMHO. More and more you see photovoltaic systems, and the batteries in those island systems are getting better and better. You can discharge your island PV system batteries to charge your car, or you can simply plug your car to your PV inverter/controler if it is during the daytime and you have sun.

For me this latest argument wins all prizes. It is the fact that YOU CAN drive literally emission free that makes the EV and PHV solution the best one available. You simply CAN NOT drill for oil on your backyard, and even if you could, no car takes crude oil, so...

If you look at countries like Germany, where the grid energy is mainly obtained from coal, even if they take and replace all cars by EVs, to feed from the grid they won't win much. But the very same country is very famous for using a lot of self-generated PV electricity. So you can easily go-around the grid problem.

I have done the math for my particular case, and here in Portugal according to the sustainability report from my utility company EDP, the amount of pollutants emitted by my 2G Prius is about the same as it would be done by an EV feeding from the grid. This happens because we have a large renewable chunk of electricity in the grid.

For me it becomes a cost/benefit issue. I won't save much the environment by using the grid to feed my PHV, but I will save a lot of money in doing so, buying each kWh at 6 cents of Euro during night time. Or... I can expand my 3.68 kWp PV system to handle the charge for me, and truly become a zero emissions driver, since I now work at 7 km from home.

There is really no way to loose this game. EV and PHV are the future. The EVs can become a solution for city traffic, but as long as battery technology does not evolve greatly, energy density has to increase by 10 fold at least, I can't see people using EVs outside the city scope. You have to buy a PHV to toss back that range anxiety issue.

PLEASE NOTE: All of this post statements represent my own ideas, not TOYOTA's, who may or may not agree with them.