New Prius PHEV first impressions

[Paul john]

Basically. Not that impressed by specs.

Feels to me like an inferior spec’d car compared to the 2022 model it replaced. 
plus Why oh why have we not been offered the HEV. 

although it is simple to choose you model. LOL.

You ONLY have the choice of exterior Colour (£40k+ for pearlescent paint variant) and Fabric or Leather seats (17 or 19 inch wheels).

and No JBL sound system

Waiting for the next instalment... Perhaps sept 2024 to include a HEV and towing pack?

 
 

[Cyker]

To be fair, it's not really for the typical current Prius owners; They weren't going to bring it here at all originally, as there was so little interest in the previous ones, and they feared responses like yours would be the majority.

They only brought it here because there was so much interest from other parties, people that wouldn't normally buy a Prius.

The new one is much more driving-dynamics focused, which seems to be a trend in most of their new models - My Mk4 has easily the best driving dynamics of any model of Yaris, and although it has sacrificed a lot of Yarissy things, which started with the Mk3 to be fair, it's added enough that I can overlook all of that because it's damned fun to drive, and I think the new Prius is also more in that vein.

I think they decided not to bring the HEV as it enroaches too much on the Corolla; On paper there's already very little between the two, which is also why they originally decided not to bring it here. As a PHEV it has more USPs to differentiate it from the Corolla.

They already consider the Prius a big gamble, as sales were so poor before, esp. compared to the Corolla, so I can understand it. The HEV will be very unlikely to come here unless they see a lot of interest in the PHEV.

I think the PHEV is the better of the two anyway - From what I've seen in reviews it feels more powerful and has useful electric range, and will help owners get into more of an EV mindset. It's unfortunate it pushes it into the Premium Car classification though, but I don't think Toyota UK expect to sell a huge number so they're probably aiming it at people who really want one and thus are willing to put down more money to get one...

 

[Paul john]

On 3/5/2024 at 8:22 PM, Cyker said:

To be fair, it's not really for the typical current Prius owners; They weren't going to bring it here at all originally, as there was so little interest in the previous ones, and they feared responses like yours would be the majority.

They only brought it here because there was so much interest from other parties, people that wouldn't normally buy a Prius.

The new one is much more driving-dynamics focused, which seems to be a trend in most of their new models - My Mk4 has easily the best driving dynamics of any model of Yaris, and although it has sacrificed a lot of Yarissy things, which started with the Mk3 to be fair, it's added enough that I can overlook all of that because it's damned fun to drive, and I think the new Prius is also more in that vein.

I think they decided not to bring the HEV as it enroaches too much on the Corolla; On paper there's already very little between the two, which is also why they originally decided not to bring it here. As a PHEV it has more USPs to differentiate it from the Corolla.

They already consider the Prius a big gamble, as sales were so poor before, esp. compared to the Corolla, so I can understand it. The HEV will be very unlikely to come here unless they see a lot of interest in the PHEV.

I think the PHEV is the better of the two anyway - From what I've seen in reviews it feels more powerful and has useful electric range, and will help owners get into more of an EV mindset. It's unfortunate it pushes it into the Premium Car classification though, but I don't think Toyota UK expect to sell a huge number so they're probably aiming it at people who really want one and thus are willing to put down more money to get one...

 

sales aside as it was during covid and chipaggedon in the later years. So sales were  non existant as there were no prius available. 

more a lacklustre approach to customers. i waited 18month from order to delivery…

”oh the japanese factories have stopped prius production Again! Was common during that time “

I enjoy the driving dynamics of my mk4 esp in sport mode. I am not a typical prius driver (mpg is not my only concern i dont drive 50mph on motorway)

I drive my car like a normal car. 

it is a family car , which tows and on the odd occasion has the roof box filled with  holiday stuff or transposed with 3 bikes on the roof instead. Or the volumous boot filled with bags for the dump.

the mk5 should be an uplift , not a downgrade at all levels.!!!

1 £7k more expensive for the same paint

2 slower top speed

3 less luggage space

4 more expensive to run (non ev mpg as i drive more than 47 miles on typical journeys)

5 smaller petrol tank

6 more expensive tyres in both versions

7 no jbl stereo

8 no spare tyre 

 

 

[wass]

It strikes me that Toyota have most likely cost engineered the latest prius PHEV in order to avoid buyers getting stung £2K by the UK government during the first 6 years of ownership. Who wants to go to work for a couple of months in order to give the government all of their "spending money"? ( spending money being defined as what is left in your pocket after tax, NI , mortgage, food, clothes, council tax , house bills and annual holiday) So the base model is well and truly below £40K.  What value does the driver get for this £2K? erm... bragging rights? Silly as it sounds, it is actually better to buy your car and then  buy the extras a month later because as far as I can see, the new cost of the car includes the extras? So.. wide wheels, metalic paint and seats which burn your bottom when the sun has been shining on them will end up costing you your weekly pint of beer for six years in addition to the extra cost of the extras themselves.

[Paul john]

3 minutes ago, wass said:

It strikes me that Toyota have most likely cost engineered the latest prius PHEV in order to avoid buyers getting stung £2K by the UK government during the first 6 years of ownership. Who wants to go to work for a couple of months in order to give the government all of their "spending money"? ( spending money being defined as what is left in your pocket after tax, NI , mortgage, food, clothes, council tax , house bills and annual holiday) So the base model is well and truly below £40K.  What value does the driver get for this £2K? erm... bragging rights? Silly as it sounds, it is actually better to buy your car and then  buy the extras a month later because as far as I can see, the new cost of the car includes the extras? So.. wide wheels, metalic paint and seats which burn your bottom when the sun has been shining on them will end up costing you your weekly pint of beer for six years in addition to the extra cost of the extras themselves.

Not sure what your point is as there are no “wide wheel” options available an on the road cost with metalic paint will take you past 40k once vat is calculated

[Cyker]

It wasn't cost engineered - They weren't even going to bring the car here originally so the UK's stupid tax rules wasn't even in their mind when they designed it.

I think Toyota UK have deliberately set the cost just below the threshold for the top spec and kept the lower spec under specifically to keep it under the premium tax, but that's nothing to do with how the car was engineered.

Also, this is a PHEV - It's a bargain at that price! If I didn't need a small car I'd have seriously considered one.

 

On a slight tangent, has the new Prius even been delivered to the UK yet?

If not, what's the rough delivery date?

If yes, this may be the final nail in its coffin in the UK, as I've not seen a single one on the roads which does not bode well for the model if they're already shipping to customers...

They only changed their minds and brought it here because of customer interest, but if that isn't reflected in sales I think that will be it for the name Prius...

[wass]

14 hours ago, Paul john said:

Not sure what your point is as there are no “wide wheel” options available an on the road cost with metalic paint will take you past 40k once vat is calculated

larger diameter wheels are lower profile but wide wider aspect ...so yes , there are "wide wheel" options

[wass]

14 hours ago, Cyker said:

On a slight tangent, has the new Prius even been delivered to the UK yet?

If not, what's the rough delivery date?

If yes, this may be the final nail in its coffin in the UK, as I've not seen a single one on the roads which does not bode well for the model if they're already shipping to customers...

Toyota have also introduced a PHEV CH-R which also has seemingly yet to make an appearance on the UK roads but I have seen  one garage advertising the sale of an ex demonstrator CH-R so maybe numbers are very limited. I would keep in mind that Toyota have their home market, Australia and UK who drive on the left... seemingly all of their other markets will drive on the right. Not being an auomotive engineering expert I dont know  but I would suspect that the production line for RHD would feature differing programming parameters to the LHD production line and therefore the production resource would be very limited especially if Toyota had already given up on selling the line in UK. mistakenly thinking that we were all sold on 100%EV. Maybe the factory production line for RHD is just to reflect the home market expectations? Ordinarily , we expect Toyota  to be so big that they would have thought of everything but sometimes even the biggest and best get caught out.

[Joseph D]

The home market (Japan) drives on the left as well as a few other countries you didn't mention that make up ~25% of the globe that drives on the left, so I don't think that's it.

[Paul john]

1 hour ago, wass said:

larger diameter wheels are lower profile but wide wider aspect ...so yes , there are "wide wheel" options

Totally wrong in this case. Both grades are the same width as the current Gen4

my tyres are 195/65/15

the two options on the Gen5 are 195/50/19 and 195/60/17

so as i said no “wide wheel” options

[wass]

23 hours ago, Paul john said:

Totally wrong in this case. Both grades are the same width as the current Gen4

my tyres are 195/65/15

the two options on the Gen5 are 195/50/19 and 195/60/17

so as i said no “wide wheel” options

Oh , I've learnt something. I hadnt realised that Toyota had revised their design thinking  on tyre sizes from previous generations... It took them long enough to realise that the drag from the top spec model tyres made them less economical than the base model tyres. Thank you for your information, the latest Toyota  online sales information is a bit sketchy and tells me very little technical information. Would you happen to know what grade of oil is used in the transmission and is the transmission totally sealed? Because it appears to me that the motors run in the transmission oil and use it to disipate heat from what little information I can find.

[Paul john]

4 hours ago, wass said:

Oh , I've learnt something. I hadnt realised that Toyota had revised their design thinking  on tyre sizes from previous generations... It took them long enough to realise that the drag from the top spec model tyres made them less economical than the base model tyres. Thank you for your information, the latest Toyota  online sales information is a bit sketchy and tells me very little technical information. Would you happen to know what grade of oil is used in the transmission and is the transmission totally sealed? Because it appears to me that the motors run in the transmission oil and use it to disipate heat from what little information I can find.

The Trans oil for your 2011 is probably detailed in the manual here if you enter your vin https://www.toyota.co.uk/customer/manuals

Transmission fluid can be changed (150,000 miles i think) but it is totally not recommended you do it yourself as it is very nasty poisonous to everything stuff. Toyota garages suck it into a sealed system and everyone must wear haz suits tbh…

for info i drove my gen2 to 153k and never changed the trans fluid.  I did enquire at a toyo and non toyo garage and both mechanics said “i,m not going any where near that s###”

 

[wass]

3 hours ago, Paul john said:

The Trans oil for your 2011 is probably detailed in the manual here if you enter your vin https://www.toyota.co.uk/customer/manuals

Transmission fluid can be changed (150,000 miles i think) but it is totally not recommended you do it yourself as it is very nasty poisonous to everything stuff. Toyota garages suck it into a sealed system and everyone must wear haz suits tbh…

for info i drove my gen2 to 153k and never changed the trans fluid.  I did enquire at a toyo and non toyo garage and both mechanics said “i,m not going any where near that s###”

 

I am interested in the gen 5  thanks , I already know about the cars I have owned or own. I was trying to find out things about the gen 5 which Toyota dont tell me in their sales blurb. I am interested because refrigertions systems run the electric motors in the refrigerant along with lubricant which I do understand however, running electric motors in gear oil ( and the Toyota does use planetary gears  in its cvt) seems a bit iffy since the sheer forces in the  gears dont go well with the lubricating polymers of oil. Therefore the oil has to be very very special stuff which I am curious about.

[Paul john]

17 minutes ago, wass said:

I am interested in the gen 5  thanks , I already know about the cars I have owned or own. I was trying to find out things about the gen 5 which Toyota dont tell me in their sales blurb. I am interested because refrigertions systems run the electric motors in the refrigerant along with lubricant which I do understand however, running electric motors in gear oil ( and the Toyota does use planetary gears  in its cvt) seems a bit iffy since the sheer forces in the  gears dont go well with the lubricating polymers of oil. Therefore the oil has to be very very special stuff which I am curious about.

Fair enough… not sure what point you are making as a car is not a fridge and certainly not the same oil. Good luck with the Gen5. See my previous comments on first impressions. 

[wass]

20 hours ago, Paul john said:

Fair enough… not sure what point you are making as a car is not a fridge and certainly not the same oil. Good luck with the Gen5. See my previous comments on first impressions. 

Not making a point Paul, asking a question. I want to know more technical detail on this car and I really dont know where to find it. I learn very little by looking at glossy photos and listening to sales persons. I originally bought a gen 2 because I had read past all the scare mongering about mechanics electrocuting themselves and batteries wearing out and I knew that model to be vastly over-engineered after Toyota had learnt fro their venture into the market with the gen 1.

[Cyker]

21 hours ago, wass said:

... the sheer forces in the  gears dont go well with the lubricating polymers of oil. Therefore the oil has to be very very special stuff which I am curious about.

Can you explain this a bit more?

I would have thought this is a very mundane use of oil and it wouldn't need any special qualities beyond its normal baseline lubricity...

The biggest cause of oil deterioration in cars is usually the high heat cycling causing the polymer chains to break down, which is why e.g. gearbox oil lasts so much longer as it doesn't have to deal with any major heat...?

 

[AJones]

On 5/19/2024 at 8:49 PM, Cyker said:

They only changed their minds and brought it here because of customer interest, but if that isn't reflected in sales I think that will be it for the name Prius...

I expect that fleet sales played a big part, these are over 50% of all new car sales and people getting fleet cars are motivated by the tax savings to get plug-in cars. Regular hybrids are still relatively high emission and expensive in tax compared to BEVs and PHEVs.  Toyota have the BZ4x, the Rav4PHEV, the C-HR PHEV which are all SUV-ey, so the Prius PHEV gives them a saloon type model.

It also helps with the EV mandate because there's credits for vehicles with lower emissions, and the emissions ratings of PHEVs are a lot lower than regular hybrids.

[wass]

On 5/22/2024 at 7:03 PM, Cyker said:

Can you explain this a bit more?

I would have thought this is a very mundane use of oil and it wouldn't need any special qualities beyond its normal baseline lubricity...

The biggest cause of oil deterioration in cars is usually the high heat cycling causing the polymer chains to break down, which is why e.g. gearbox oil lasts so much longer as it doesn't have to deal with any major heat...?

 

No Cyker, I cant explain it more , I am looking for information which would explain things to me. What I do know is that gear oil is very special stuff because the oil which gets trapped between the intermeshing gears is subject to extremely high pressure which eventually disrupts the molecular structure of the oil. Add to that the very same oil in the latest  Toyota  gearbox oil also cools the electrical motors and very rarely gets replaced and it flies in the face of everything I thought I knew about oil. As I have said elsewhere, pretty pictures and sales people who know very little technical information about what they are selling aren't much use to me. What I do know is that the Toyota CV gearbox is very inovative and efficient  because it does its work using gears ( sun and planet) and electrical motors instead of clutches, belts and pulleys.

[Paul john]

30 minutes ago, wass said:

No Cyker, I cant explain it more , I am looking for information which would explain things to me. What I do know is that gear oil is very special stuff because the oil which gets trapped between the intermeshing gears is subject to extremely high pressure which eventually disrupts the molecular structure of the oil. Add to that the very same oil in the latest  Toyota  gearbox oil also cools the electrical motors and very rarely gets replaced and it flies in the face of everything I thought I knew about oil. As I have said elsewhere, pretty pictures and sales people who know very little technical information about what they are selling aren't much use to me. What I do know is that the Toyota CV gearbox is very inovative and efficient  because it does its work using gears ( sun and planet) and electrical motors instead of clutches, belts and pulleys.

 

 

 

[Cyker]

Sorry Paul; We weren't talking about how the HSD works, but specifically about the oil used to lubricate it and what's so special about it, if anything