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The future is here!
- Thread starter goyogi
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- Electric Vehicles
CapitalistOppressor
Active Member
Not to piss folks off, but +1111.
To go further, I don't honestly understand a decision to purchase a PiP over a Volt. PiP is a bit more efficient if you drive a lot of miles every day, but if efficiency is your only goal under those conditions you might as well get a regular Prius and save ~$10k. Otherwise, the Volt is 2X the car while being only slightly more expensive.
In the case of a Leaf, you can at least make a pure E.V. statement. I would much, much rather own a Volt but I can understand folks who want a pure EV, and the Leaf is fairly competitive in its segment.
Ok, bashing of some plug-in's aside I see all of the usual suspects in the Riverside, CA area. A fair number of Volts, not so many PiP's or Leafs. Ton's of Prii (various flavors). A surprising number of Civic hybrids and Honda Insight hybrids also. In my own neighborhood, out of 41 homes there are 2 Prii, an Insight Hybrid, a Civic Hybrid, 2 Ford Escape Hybrids (owned by an electrical contractor who uses them for advertising) and a Lexus RX 450h.
Perhaps as long as you don't need any cargo room. The Prius has a lot of room. The Volt is tiny inside with little room for anything but four people.
As far as the PIP goes, it appears to me that it's not intended to compete with the Volt and if you drive it like a Volt you'll be disappointed. (Driving like a Volt means using the EV until the batteries are low, then running on gas.) The PiP, in my opinion, is there to overcome the shortcomings of the standard Prius. It's not intended to be any kind of EV. What the PiP helps with:
1. Driveway shuffle. The standard Prius starts the gas engine seven seconds after READY mode is engaged. This is a real gas waster if done regularly.
2. Short trips to the store. The standard Prius will never get warmed up and mpg drops like a stone.
3. Really bad stop-and-go commute. The standard Prius will run the engine just to charge the battery after ten or fifteen minutes (this is very annoying). With the PiP you can have quite a long stop-and-go session before the gas engine starts running.
4. Short steep low speed limit hills. The gas engine will use quite a bit of gas in a short distance.
So the plan for driving a PiP is to not use the EV mode unless there are one of those conditions, and then at the end of the driving day if there is charge left in the batteries, then finish off using EV mode. This is just the opposite of the Volt strategy. (Plugging in a car anywhere but home, except on trips or in very unusual circumstances is ludicrous in my opinion, which is why I'm reserving a Model S.)
Of course, if you seldom encounter the four conditions, then there is no point to getting more than a standard Prius, just like you say.
The Prius, including the PiP, are gas cars that do some clever tricks with motors and batteries. They are not any kind of an EV and really shouldn't be compared with them.
AustinPowers
Total Smeghead
The only "real" EV's I have ever seen around here in Germany were Tesla Roadsters and one or two E-Smarts.
I see an Opel Ampera every other day at our local charging station (my hometown is one of the first in the area to offer a public charging station) but as this still has the range extender gasoline engine I don't count it as pure EV.
Prii, including the PiP version, have become a rather common sight now, not the novelty items they were a couple of years ago around here.
I have never seen Leaf though, and quite glad about it, as imho that thing is even more of an eyesore than the Prius.
I see an Opel Ampera every other day at our local charging station (my hometown is one of the first in the area to offer a public charging station) but as this still has the range extender gasoline engine I don't count it as pure EV.
Prii, including the PiP version, have become a rather common sight now, not the novelty items they were a couple of years ago around here.
I have never seen Leaf though, and quite glad about it, as imho that thing is even more of an eyesore than the Prius.
