[DanB]

My wife and I picked up our new Prius last Saturday and find the car to be a wonderful experience. The fit and finish is superb and the paint job is beautiful. The cabin with the instrument panel and the energy monitor provides a neat driving experience. The seats could use a lumbar support and height adjustments but we like the cloth feel and color (grey/burgundy) that Toyota selcted for the interior. I did have a problem with the location of the windshield wiper lever - on numerous occasion I turned on the windshield wipers when reaching for the P button. It is kind of cramped in that area.

The ride is pleasant and has a "big car" feel.

For the first 150 miles (60 highway/40 city) we averaged (according to the energy monitor consumption display) 50MPG. Has anybody checked the accuracy of the trip computer relative to the MPG calculation? I was pleasantly surprised to have achieved such good gas mileage on a brand new car.

One thing that I think Toyota should have done is to not energize the ICE shortly after Ready status. I took my car out of the garage to wash it and there was no need for the ICE to be started. I know there is an EV kit and I am seriously thinking of installing it but I am concerned about the possibility of voiding the warranty. Any thoughts on this matter?

Well, we are very pleased to own this awsome car.

 

[An04Prius]

Congratulations, you made a great choice.

There is a lot of opinion on that question on this site. Just look for posts with EV in title...which are running currently. Look at post "EV Switch Explanation"

When "mrv" comes by, she can give you chapter & verse. She quoted their position in a recent post, if you crawl thru the EV posts you'll probably find it as well.

I find that when I Power down, my car puts itself in Park automatically, so not normally necessary to push Park button first, unless I am keeping Power up and parking.

Nevertheless, agree on the windshield wiper arm...I wipe a dry windshield at least once a week. Dust on dry windshield might scratch the glass so I have gotten in habit of wiping it with a wet cloth when I remember.

 

[DanMan32]

The reason the ICE comes on right away is because it needs to warm itself and the catalytic converter. There is a 7 second delay. One reason for the delay is to allow the ability to engage EV, the other is to allow time for the hot coolant to be transferred from the storage canister to the ICE to help warm it up faster. Yes, EV is not available officially here in NA, but the programming is still there.

Besides having to warm up the catalytic, the ICE also has to heat up the O2 sensor. Until the O2 sensor is properly heated, the ECM can only guess the best fuel/air mixture for proper burn. As a matter of fact, the guess leans on the side of a rich mixture to speed up the warmup process. Once O2 is sufficiently warmed, then the ECM can 'sniff' the exhaust, and can tell if the burn is too rich (not enough O2, it is all used up), or if it is too lean (too much O2. All fuel is burned, but much of the mixture is air that provides no power).

 

[DanB]

Thanks for the feedback. There is a lot of knowledge in this Forum.
I would not want for Toyota to find an excuse for not honoring the warranty if the battery power system were to mafunction. So I will have to live with this annoyance and forego the EV modification. Hopefully Toyota will release a kit at a later time.

 

[An04Prius]

Thanks for the feedback. There is a lot of knowledge in this Forum.
I would not want for Toyota to find an excuse for not honoring the warranty if the battery power system were to mafunction. So I will have to live with this annoyance and forego the EV modification. Hopefully Toyota will release a kit at a later time.

I would buy the EV if it was a dealer/factory installed option covered by warranty. It would be mainly for the "fun" of being able to drive all electric at times.

But there does not appear to be any significant advantage to the EV mode. Eventually, the ICE has to run on gas to recharge the battery, so it appears there is no mpg or cost advantage.

 

[Tideland Prius]

Unless you're EV-ing at the top of a hill and are going back down

or like me, I'll go into EV mode inside the university, then charge on the short highway out of the U and have it ready to use EV again on the road back home.