What I love about the Toyota Prius Prime 2020
The Research with a Green Purpose
After two months of research and preparation, I set my eyes on two cars. The 2019 Chevrolet Bolt EV and the 2020 Toyota Prius Prime (PHEV). In the end, I believe I’ve made the right choice for me.
Let’s start with the number one thought in my mind when getting a new car. Can I go full electric? Can I go green?
Here’s a ballpark estimate. Typically, one spends roughly 3000$ on gas per year. So any EV car priced at 10000$ more than its gasoline counterpart will be cheaper in less than 5 years. (Disclaimer: Don’t trust any of these numbers here. Do your own research/math and come to the conclusion yourself or you’ll have buyer’s remorse.)
So I had that to work with. I had several more questions: Can I charge at home/at work/abroad? How long does charging take at the EV charging stations abroad? When do I break even for paying more upfront for an EV? Is the incentive worth it?
The answer for charging at home/work is yes. However, anything that is full EV and has enough range must have an upgraded charger 240A at home. For the non-electrical minds out there, 120A is the typical outlet plug maximum for your standard dishwashers, laundry machines, stoves, and big home appliances. If you want more… you must upgrade your electrical panel, the breakers/fuses, and likely be looking at some 3000$ upgrade on your home electric system. If you are in a townhouse, condo, your options are delimited by the jurisdictions you live under (check… don’t just give up because it’s hard!) So if you upgrade your home to support 240A, you’re golden.
The next biggest problem is road trips. If you’re a road-tripper, you’ve likely been looking at Youtubers and seeing how those vloggers are doing at the stations and getting around their charging issues. Time is likely something illusive in those videos. They don’t show you truly the weight of waiting on charges, waiting for other cars charging in front of you. They just talk about range anxiety and how they got lucky at dealerships or nice people on the road. Don’t expect any of that luck to apply to you. The truth is, your washroom / lunch breaks are typically 10–15 mins to 1.5 hour. You need nearly 2 hours to make any dent in your EV’s charge. That’s way longer than the amount of time you typically take ‘breaks’ on the road. Unless you have kids who can sit still in cars, likely you’ll double your travel time and half your vacation is gone before you’re already halfway back to your office cubicle at work. That’s the conclusion I came to. Plus, in the winter, I just simply cannot make it there + back to my usual outskirt trips like snowboarding / winter hiking in Algonquin Park. So it seriously did not work for me. I don’t want to be in a line of 3 cars, waiting at Scotiabank in the boonies for a charge. Time is a resource I rather not give up today.
So having lost battles #1 & #2 I just highlighted (charging at home upgrades + road trip time wasted), I unfortunately, leaned towards the Prius. And there was lots of uncertainty going into it. I was upset I could not go 100% green, quite upset actually. I felt like Trudeau and his pipeline politics. We must invest in dirty in order to eventually upgrade to green. *rolling my eyes* not at him, but at the situation we’re in Planet Earth human-lings…
The Negotiated Purchase
When I finally showed up in the Toyota Showroom, I had already gone through a realistic attempt to buy a Bolt. I knew the Prius, no matter how I worked the numbers on the spreadsheet in a biased manner, it was still cheaper for me in the long run and was going to get me halfway to going green. It was seriously the best well-balanced option for me financially and environmentally. So why the Prime? Even the sales guy told me they were underselling because the general crowd opted for the standard hybrid Prius. The meager 2500$ federal incentive (Canada!) is not enough to lure them to plug in their cars. Another reason, I would discover later, it was the lack of additional EV range traded for a complete loss in trunk space (height to be exact. For going Prime vs standard, you lose more than half the cubic space of the trunk to the battery and all of that is lost in height. Now my dog’s safety crate is too high and won’t fit, something I didn’t check until I bought it.
By the way, to resolve my dog fur issues, I instead bought a dog hammock for the passenger cabin (I almost never drive more than 2 people anymore…, now that my general social group is older and getting driver licenses themselves). And put vent filters over the battery intakes in the passenger cabin. Yes, there’s battery intake vents in the passenger cabin! They will suck in all your pet’s fur/hair and overheat your poor EV battery! You’ve been warned. so I taped vent filters over the intakes (instead of ripping apart my trunk to get to the back of it…), and resolved that issue. I saw the Youtube video for how to take out those vent chambers from the trunk, it’s too much work and this filter is likely an annual maintenance chore, so I opted to tape over the front even those it’s prettier for the interior cabin to put them inside the back. Whatever, I have a dog. I saved time/money and got the Prius Prime and installed vent filters than if I bought a larger EV car.
Prius Prime also comes to more ‘upgrades’ like heated seats, smart key doors, and heated steering wheel, lane detection, and front collision warning. All these which you must upgrade to get in the Chev Bolt! You’ve been warned. And Prius has the 900K range on gas while the Bolt only offers that 384K~ on all EV. Which honestly is not enough for an Algonquin roundtrip. And Torontorians will know what I mean when I use the ‘Algonquin roundtrip’ to estimate my average road trip mileage.
Did I mention you pay like 45000 for the Bolt and 34000 for the Prius, MSRP?
And folks, use the online tools to get the invoice/dealer prices, it’s playing in the dealer’s ballpark to pay for these, but to not pay for them is to add additional thousands of dollars to your walk-out price. If you don’t have the car-buying experience or people connections, these some <50$ is worth it. Just play in their ballpark, let them make some money, and you’ll go home happy with a discounted car, even if it’s more than the minimal they can sell it for.
The Drive
Ok, enough about money. So how good is the drive?
It’s a great drive. 50 Kilometers is all I need for daily city use and commute to work. No joke, calculate it yourself, if you live in the city / suburban and your work commute is less than 20 Km, this is all you seriously need! PHEV is the way to go if you still want road trips. Truth be told, it fit me perfectly and it drives VERY well.
EV mode is great, Hybrid Mode is as budget driving (bad pickup/acceleration) as Prius-es have always been. But the EV mode is so good, you’ll be zooming down the road alongside luxury sedans and turn Tesla driver heads. And PHEV means in Ontario, you get the 2.5 K incentive and the green plate access to HOV lane privilege. I’d say it’s totally worth it. And all you lose is the extra 2 minutes you spend plugging and unplugging at home / work parking lot. Ask your parking management for the rules on plugging into outlets, as you may blow some fuses and upset the building management. I’ve always tripped a few outlets in my parking (guilty…) and I feel really bad not doing something about it and hoping an electrician will come along and flip them back on.
The scoring system, lane detection, heated steering wheels, heated seats, frontal collision detection are all built into the basic Prius Prime. I don’t have an EV charger lock and my trunk must be opened with internal unlock or keyfob and has no smart-key detection. Just slight inconvenience, otherwise it’s amazing!
The scoring system helps tell me how well I’m braking, speeding up, using the ‘EV’ pedal and even gives you an assessment for using the HVAC. Consider using the heated seats / steering wheel instead of your HVAC, as they use less energy. And all in all, you’ll find yourself driving around with zero emissions, there’s nothing more satisfying than that.
And if you are seriously thinking about buying a car today, consider this, any car manufactured has a price in carbon emissions. Before it hit the ground, the factory that created its materials or assembled it already did some carbon emissions of its own. But you can let those manufacturers know, you want a cleaner planet, by only buying their hybrids / EVs. And the price you see today is affordable and not visiting the gas station will have you feeling guilt-free. You’ve made a statement about where our society needs to go, one car at a time.
