World Premiere of 2023 Prius Prime in Japan

75% increase in range, I thought it was 50%

450 units per month, low expectations for a reason?

 

The way Toyota delivers hyrbid and electric cars in the US these days you'd thing they're downsizing as a company... Back in the early 2000's they flooded their dealerships with Prius and dominated all their competition in huge ways. These days they act like a high school drop out who "can't find a job."

Meanwhile for the past 8 years every time I drive down the I-5 from Washington to California every 15 minutes you see a fully loaded truck hauling Tesla North and not a single one of those vehicles will ever require a tank of gasoline to go anywhere. And all those vehicles were built at Tesla's California facotry that used to be owned by Toyota.

Toyota has become a hollow shell of its former self... You just can't sustain your popular appeal when you care more about doing what the fossil fool industry wants than what the customers want. It's just a matter of time before investors bail on Toyota and they can no longer compete with all the other automakers who are already many, many years ahead of them when it come to ramping up EV production.

 

Compare the stupidity in terms of number of parts and cost of production between Tesla drivetrain and newest Prius drivetrain... These two photos are a perfect example of what happens when you try to advance technology and reduce the number of parts and failure points, rather than just kick back and live in the past while pretending to be more advanced even though you've lost touch with sustaining your business into future decades.

 

Yet EVs cost a lot more because batteries are too expensive.

 

Not really.
Batteries are getting cheaper and cheaper. What tends to cost more is long ranges.
Now, if a company is building a small number of EVs, the advantages of scale don't really come into play.

When considering the cost of fuel, the advantage ICE cars have really disappear in many cases.
My electric Mini came in at about 30k after rebate. A Mini Cooper that is ICE runs about 37k.

 

The electric mini has a 115 mile range. I wouldn't even consider a vehicle that has such a short range.

Electricity rates have gone up dramatically, depending on where you live. I think my peak rates are 45 cents/kwh. Public charger rates are rediculous. Gasoline may indeed be cheaper in comparison.

 

Gas is a lot cheaper for me, but I still drive electric for many other reasons

 

That’s fine, there are others that wouldn’t consider such a car either. However, there are those that would. So your blanket statement about EVs being more expensive is false.
Yes, it is true in some cases, but certainly not all.

I am sorry you have such expensive electricity. Mine is about 14 cents/kWh.
My actual cost, due to solar panels, is about 1.5 cents/kWh
The average cost in the USA is 17 cents/kWh

 

On Edmunds.com you can compare vehicles and get their total cost of ownership. Compare a Civic to a Bolt or an Accord to a Tesla Model 3.

You also have to add in the cost of a L2 charger and electrical wiring. Solar systems ain't free either and some portion of the cost should be factored into the cost of charging.

Electricity rates always go up whereas gasoline goes up and down. I think it reasonable to assume gasoline will go down if the political winds blow in another direction. It has many times.

I'm not against EVs, but I'm trying to look at this objectively. I might even buy one or the new Prime next year once the supply problems get sorted out and prices come down.

 

This was already posted in the Gen 5 forum.

Administrators, please merge to the existing thread in the Gen 5 forum.

 

What's more is the accounting for battery costs is never fairly compared to Gas... As in a vehicle like an ICE Mini-Cooper gets 35mpg and will require 5,714 gallons of gas to get to 200K miles. And if gas is $4 a gallon you're looking at an addition $23K dollars, meanwhile an EV costs less than $0.05 a mile in electricity and virtually free if you already paid off the cost of home solar with a power wall.

 

Fake news. Where's the power steering, electronics, air-conditioning, etc.?

 

The Bolt and Civic are around the same for me. 2023 Accord data isn't available, but it isn't exactly the same segment as a Model 3. The BMW 3 series is closer, and it runs almost $20k more over five years.

You do not have to get a Level 2 EVSE. Most EVs will regain 40 miles charging at Level 1 overnight. That is plenty for most people. Most people also aren't driving the car everyday in a week, so there are times for longer charging if needed.

Electric rates don't always go up. More importantly, they are less volatile than gas, which has had immense spikes upwards.

 

I think it's rather dumb to buy an EV with a large battery/range and have to rely on a puny L1 charger. The cheap EV charging rate where I live is 12 pm to 6 am.

Yeah, electric rates pretty much always go up. 18% in Norcal this year.


iPhone ? Pro

 

USA averages:
1993 Electricity was 9 cents/kWh vs Gas at $1.08/Gal
2023 Electricity was 17 cents/kWh vs Gas at $3.44/Gal

U.S. All Grades All Formulations Retail Gasoline Prices (Dollars per Gallon)

Bureau of Labor Statistics Data

(On this second link, change the ‘from’ year to 1993 to get the full span. I apologize but I was unable to link it.)

Over the long term, gasoline is much more volatile and goes up in price faster.
And while you may find it necessary to add a level two charger, some of us either already have one, or don’t need it.

I get that you don’t think the numbers work for you. All I ask is that you stop making blanket statements that apply to everyone/all EVs, when it only applies to you.

 

Our electric rates seemingly only go up

 

The natural gas more than doubled here, and I was shocked with my heating bill. And I live in Southern California with my thermostat set at 68 ℉.

 

Lol... You don't know much about vehicle design & engineering do you?

"For starters, there are over 2,000 moving parts in a gas engine, whereas an EV only has 18." How do an EV's components compare - EnergyRight

 

That's an interesting way to look at it. After all, the Toyota rendering shows the running gear including steering, brakes, cooling. The Tesla rendering shows a couple of wheels and a big metal envelope that should be hiding over 2100 batteries, a whole bunch of plumbing and a lot of wiring. But those are not represented in the image.

If the cost of production is so much lower for the Tesla, why is it double the cost of the Prius?

That's a really dumb source to use as authoritative. It claims that the EV's charging port is one of only 18 moving parts. They forgot all the relays, the pumps to push coolant through the battery pack, the radiators, and on and on and on. To say that its disingenuous is an extreme understatement.

On top of that, they are wrong. According to Tesla ( https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/tesla-model-s.pdf Page 2 of 14 )
Tesla's advanced electric powertrain delivers exhilarating performance. Unlike a gasoline internal combustion engine with hundreds of moving parts, Tesla electric motors have only one moving piece: the rotor

While technically true, it, too is misleading. The electric motors have to be connected to other moving parts in order to be useful.

And then there is the claim that a ICE engine has 2100 moving parts in the engine alone. How in the heck do they come up with that number, when amateurs can make a 4 cylinder ICE in their garage?

 

Good point about the complexity of the Tesla battery. Moving parts is not a good metric. Make some of those thousands of cells wrong, the car goes up in flames. Witness the Chevy Bolt where every one made up until recent production has been recalled to have their batteries replaced, and how many of those with unsafe batteries are still out there being driven and parked in garages? The Prius is one of the most reliable vehicles, EVs included.

EVs have a lot of issues that the zealots seem to gloss over. They need safer batteries, longer range, faster charging, lower cost, much better charging infrastructure. These issues have existed for a long time and progress has been slow in solving them. I would not want to take a long road trip in an EV and have to rely on public charging. In five minutes I can refuel my Prius and drive it for 500 miles.