**A Surprisingly Impressive EV: The Toyota Prius Prime**

The moment you drop the hammer on the accelerator, watch as your miles disappear right before your eyes. That's left on the battery and you can see it right there - just 3 miles and just a couple seconds of mashing on the gas, and it's something you know you're going to have to deal with with modern EVs. A modern electric car, if you drive hard, is losing battery efficiency extremely quick.

Driving the Prius Prime is still slow even when you dial in the gasoline motor and you're in power mode. You turn up the juice and you drive like a madman, it just as slow. Even with the torque of the electric motor, you never feel a sense of raw acceleration. There is a lot of torque from the start, but that's about it.

The e-CVT in this car is about as good as you can make it, but it does feel like a single-speed transmission. It's not going to bring out any type of passion in you when you're driving it. Now, Toyota has made up for the fact that it's a little bit slower by making this a so much better platform in terms of driving. From the chassis to the steering, it really is good. The braking is solid. It feels like a great car to drive.

The only downside to driving the Prius Prime is that you're losing battery efficiency extremely quick when you drive hard. That's something that you get with a pure EV that has a bigger electric motor and a bigger battery pack - you get a lot more juice, that you can just use to pound around and lose that a lot.

The conclusion of the Toyota Prius Prime is one of extreme surprise and impression. Toyota has turned it completely around. This is nothing like it was before from a car that I honestly hated driving to a car that I enjoyed almost every minute on the inside of it - that's because they have sorted out the chassis, the steering is excellent, and the way that it drives feels like a lightweight compact car.

This is something that Toyota has perfected with this hybrid model. They've licensed it out to other people, and they've nearly perfected it. It's not a pet project like some other car manufacturers that have just made cars so they can fund their mission to Mars - This is a big deal to Toyota and the support is there. The supply chain is there, the parts are there, the pedigree is there, and you know it's going to work.

However, there is one major negative aspect of the Prius Prime that may turn some people off entirely. It just isn't attractive - the looks, the interior personality - it's way too off the deep end for some people. I think a lot of people who are looking for this specific car will get over it and appreciate it, but it's a big negative that honestly and same thing with the slowness of the car - it's just not as fast as a regular EV and it's not as quick as a regular compact either.

The overall package is really good. The pros far outweigh the cons, and I think that if you get to drive this car, you're going to be extremely surprised by it. It might even sell you away from just a traditional four-door compact car altogether.

**The Verdict**

If you get the chance to drive the Toyota Prius Prime, do it. You won't regret it. Despite its flaws, the Prius Prime is an impressive vehicle that has turned the brand around for Toyota. If you're looking for an eco-friendly ride that's easy on your wallet and great on gas mileage, this might be the car for you.

But if you're a car enthusiast who wants raw power or speed, then you might want to keep looking. The Prius Prime is not for you. However, if you value driving dynamics, comfort, and overall package - then this is a great choice.

Ultimately, it comes down to what you're looking for in a vehicle. If you can look past the slowness of acceleration, then the Prius Prime is an incredible ride that will surprise you with its capabilities and performance.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: entoday we are going to take a more Grassroots Approach at looking at the new Prius Prime now the frontal area of the Prius Prime is one of its best attributes and Toyota has been kind enough to give us two colors that kind of stand out this blue or ocean blue or teal or whatever the hell you want to call it and they're red which looks really good on here and of course every other color is about three different Shades of Gray or you know silver now the frontal area specifically these quad LED headlamps is something that is kind of borrowed from their Lexus lineup and you have to pay more money to get them on the Lexus here they're just kind of included and the light output is amazing when you turn on the brights I'm sure you could see these things from space they're really good now this is a slippery car in terms of aerodynamics but there are some strange things here that you could argue that are form or function I'm not too sure but they have blocked off this air Inlet here this does not flow air through the bumper along the side of the wheels like a lot of other manufacturers are doing for aerodynamics also this the side mirrors are not mounted on the door which kind of creates more road noise uh and there's I mean you could have this argument what would be better versus looks versus Style versus aerodynamics and I think they they're trying to find some balance here the side profile it's not that out of the box and that's because they stuck with the Prius name so if you're going to stick with a branding you have to make it somewhat recognizable to people and that's what they've done along the side you have accents these little aerodynamic uh nodules that helped to flow air the back trim piece has a little bit of black around it to give it you know just break up the color I like some of the accents that they put on here that move all the way to the back again you have the nodules in the back that flow along the tail lights it's a smooth looking car and I think it would look a lot better as a coupe but you know it is what it is now it's time to slide my way into the pooper of the Prius prime or the back end if you are a rump man this there's a lot to talk about here the first thing you're going to notice that is very unique is the curvature in this glass and the glass curvature follows right into this rear deck lid it's extremely unique the whole tail light design is unique it's it's what you would think a futuristic car would look like when you were a kid and here it is now one of the coolest Parts about this and one of the reasons why I like the first generation Honda Insight so much is they they focus so much on function functional aerodynamics and that's what this is about being slippery moving the air over the top part of the car along the side and underneath the second most important part of this hatch is it's a manual manually operated liftgate there's no Motors or Electronics here they also have used a carbon composite entire rear lift gate and you can see it's unfinished unpainted and it is extremely lightweight now that's the whole point right you want to reduce weight you get better fuel efficiency or you know more electric power now the negative part about this hatch is the cost if somebody happens to rear end you in this this hatch is going to cost you $3,000 to $3,600 just for this liftgate that's excluding the glass which I didn't look up the cost but I'm sure it's more than a normal car so if you or your loved ones is trying to do a j turn into the McDonald's parking lot and you ball this thing up in the back you're going to be hurting now it's time to talk about the cargo space when we lift up this hatch you're going to see immediately in the prus Prime you lose some of the cargo space because of the battery pack it's larger it needs to propel you in EV mode farther and that's the trade-off you're losing some of the space now Barry called me he said his ex-wife needed a ride to rehab she was kind of just way into plastic surgery so she had a lot of luggage and suitcases here uh little cases for her Trinkets and uh massagers and all that and I could fit one large carryon in here uh and and maybe two you know smaller carry-ons and a couple backpacks but you're losing so much height here that you don't have a lot of stackability now the rear seats go down so that saves you a little bit but that is also not a flat cargo space so it's something that you're going to have to be aware of again get in here play around with it see what you can fit or can't fit uh and make your determination on whether you can deal with this daily it's time to get inside the prime and when you get in here if you're not somebody that's used to this you're going to want to throw up in your mouth because I have no idea what they're doing in here with this white dashboard with this strange Tupperware like Plastics and the center console uh this is such a quirky oddly designed interior for essentially no other reason than just to make it different now the side part of that is if you're somebody that can appreciate this which I appreciate it I get what they're trying to do here and it doesn't feel like every other car and that is the Counterpoint to it and I think once you get used to some of the weird elements to it it gives it personality and I talk about that a lot with modern cars they keep continuing to strip away the personality of vehicles and Toyota has been on that bandwagon before and I think they're trying to they're trying to break away from it and that's what the Prius Prime gives you it gives you a little bit of that the next thing to talk about is the instrument cluster and this is nothing new for the Prius but it is weird when you look at it for the first time instrument cluster is here in the center of the dashboard there is nothing here like traditional Vehicles now the benefit is I'm sure when you do a leftand drive or a right-and drive version of this car it makes configuring the interior much easier but the second part is all your informations here your speedometer your fuel gauge your parking indicator from Park reverse to drive and all the other idiot lights that they put up here including the clock now the other thing they put up here is all the menu system for this vehicle and it is just honestly there is too much going on here you can cycle through your fuel consumption record your drive monitor your drive monitor 2 your Eco diary which tells you how much you've used the air conditioning your energy monitor system which is a graphic of the car that shows you where the battery power is going or the engine power is going and then of course the most usable screen is the HV system indicator which tells you your ecos score and then also what your throttle position is how much battery are you're sucking up in the amount of miles you have left for driving in EV mode and I wish that they would allow you to kind of customize this screen because I I really want to know when the battery's charging the gasoline Motors on I wish there was just better ways to consolidate it in one thing but whatever that's neither here than there you're going to play around with this there's so many options for setting up the car in here it's all there next thing to talk about is interior comfort and a lot of that has to do directly with the seating design and I think many people are going to be very pleased with these seats because they are designed for a lot of different body types let's just be straight about that there's a lot of give in the bolsters uh you there's plenty of compression you can give into the padding into the sides into the rib cage area I think you're going to get comfortable in here very fast the other thing they've done is they've opted for cloth and this is a disappearing act in cars in favor of fake leather leathered or leather seating surface that people are obsessed with and the best part about cloth Interiors is you don't you're not subjected to extremes and temperature you don't get burned alive on a hot seat uh and you don't turn into you you know you don't have to clench up so much with the cold it just always feels right next thing to talk about is interior ergonomics and this is where the prime starts to fall apart for me it is a real mix bag let's talk about the pros first the buttons and switches and control stocks on the steering wheel are standard Toyota stuff they work easy to use no drama your gear selector stick uh it is straightforward you can easily read it here and you can see what gear you're up here there's not a lot of fussing around with it it's easy to figure out your Park buttons easy to get to and your drive mode buttons are very legible simple I like how they Consolidated into this one space huge huge plus where it gets really crappy is this center console area uh the lower console has this slippery white plastic great for storage until you put in here and then you're driving and stuff flies out of it so if you put your key in here expect it to fly out into your lab or on the floors the cup holder design is compromised the center arm rust only opens towards the passenger which means the passenger can't get here easily and then you don't have you know the padding on here for your arms socks there's no knee padding for either sides of your knee just a lot of like weird stuff but the thing I can't forgive and this is where designers start to go off the deep end to make it cute instead of functional is the seat heater design and the buttons are buried behind this center console and it's about as bad as the Mitsubishi IM which is one of the worst cars ever made released into the US and they follow it it here and it's completely unforgivable if you're going to make this quirky figure out how to make it usable now it's time to talk about electronics and infotainment and now this is the middle trim level and there's a huge reason to choose this over the maxed out one and that is you get physical HV vac controls here buttons to push and rocker switches to adjust your fan speed and temperature that is a massive Pro something that you lose when you go to the upper level with the tablet Dash because all that gets moved to the top touchscreen and out of all the touchscreen cars I've been in that move the HVAC controls there they all suck so I really like this I would opt for it just because of that now you do have a touchscreen based infotainment in here that's pretty much in every other Toyota if you've ever seen it before it's the same thing you have physical rotary knobs for your tuning and your volume uh the nice thing is is if you do have a problem where it freezes up you just hold in the volume button you push it in hold it for 5 seconds and it reboots the system everything else the user interface is just average it's kind of quirky and slow but it does work I haven't had any weird stuff with Bluetooth it always seems to work pretty well it just doesn't look pretty the sound system in the middle trim is pretty average now since this is a pretty isolated cabin you get good bass response tight base but I found for most of my music it does sound a little bit muddy and then you try to screw with the EQ a little bit the mids and the highs and it gets really tiny really fast so it's something you're going to want to test on your own and see what if your music sounds you know doable in here one of the last few things about the frontal interior space is the visibility there is a lot of glass in here the windshield has kind of this reverse rake and you always feel this level of command over the road in front of you something that typically you need an SUV for in modern vehicles I don't feel like I'm constantly triple checking around me in here and it's a it's just really nice for a change but the negative attribute of having this huge window is this visor barely covers your VIs visibility here so on my commute home from work I'm constantly blinded by the Sun so I have to pull myself forward or move the seat up there's no extension it's just something they need to fix it would be a simple fix lastly is this piano gloss black plastic all over this dashboard it's something designers are infatuated with in modern vehicles now let me ask you the most simple question if you were designing a home with a single point of entry would you install White carpet in a high trffic area where you're going in and out of it all the time no you wouldn't you know why because it would look like somebody took a dump on it it would be absolutely destroyed you'd put something more suitable there like hardwood or some composite or a carpet that was designed for that that's the equivalent of putting black shiny plastic all over an area that you're constantly interacting with your HVAC controls are all shiny plastic your volume knobs this whole thing is always Dusty full of oils and then to pound that of course you're interacting with the touch screen so you're constantly having to clean this and it's just annoying why are they doing this well I don't know maybe someday somebody will give me a straight answer now the back seat of the Prius Prime and my driver's seats pretty much moved all the way back and reclined uh this is a comfortable space um you're you're going to have to watch your head getting in but for the most part the back seats are about as good as the front they're a little bit more flat uh but you're going to hold four passengers and four passengers alone in the back of this car because the center console area is just an armrest and cup holders you really unless it's you know an some type of small kid you can put a bungee cord around him to tie him down but this really is again a four passenger car now Scott is on vacation this week he's doing a full 50 state tour of all the iPhone stores uh to find the right set of wireless headphones so he's not available so we're going to do this the old school way now next we're going to be moving into our own shop space but until then let's take a look at some of the underneath this is Toyota's new Global architecture which means that chassis is going to be reused and recycled from multiple vehicles but one of the reasons why they develop this new architecture is to improve the Aging platforms of the past so in the front you have a new strut based front suspension there is heavy utilization of Arrow underneath of course up to Modern standards they changed the rigidity of control arms the hubs and Knuckles are more robust the center of the car has more Arrow panels and as you get to the back this is where a lot of the changes happened they went to a full multi-link suspension in the back something that is tuned extremely well now all you have to do is get into the old Prius 2014 2015 and get in here and you realize how much of a massive difference all these underpinnings have done for the car the next biggest thing to talk about with this new Prius or the Prius Prime is their new transaxle the p610 this is their next Generation Now fundamentally everything is very similar how it works but internally there are some massive changes here not only from a weight perspective this is 70 lbs lighter than the first generation transaxle and the Prius when it first launched everything is designed around efficiency lightweight uh and for the first time mg1 which is your motor generator unit that used to only do regeneration basically engine braking regeneration recharging the battery packs mg1 can now also act as a Drive Unit to power the wheels much like mg2 so they can work in conjunction to give this car more power and they do that with a new clutch or a flywheel design that only rotates in One Direction which enables that mg1 to be used in that fashion really the last thing to talk about with batteries is efficiency now in laboratory conditions perfect temperature conditions cells can last forever almost if you're within that window and in real world conditions that's not possible batteries lose efficiency it doesn't matter what additives they put in the cells it doesn't matter what the computer controls are the temperature monitoring the temperature controls all the systems they keep the the state of charge and the battery health good in a car like this the air cooling the monitoring it it can do all these tricks to keep the longevity of these packs high but if you're in extreme cold or Extreme Hot these batteries do take a hit and over time they lose efficiency most manufacturers will not say this flat out but most of the time you're going to lose 10 to 20% battery efficiency over the course of 100,000 miles which means you know you take a look at the range that you have on an EV when it's new of course it's great it's always consistent but the more miles you put on it the more you uh get that that pack cycled the more heat and cold you get into it outside of the controllable range you lose efficiency and it's something to note if you're living in an extreme climate your battery pack may not last as long as somebody else and when you have to replace this out of warranty generally it's anywhere from $4 to $10,000 depending on the vehicle and that's kind of the fine print of these cars and a full EV is even worse than that so keep that in mind mind in terms of you're going to keep this forever the running costs can be more expensive from here on out all are in the shop segments when we get back into the real shop is going to have full vehicle curb weights via our new Longacre hybrid scale system and these scales are hybrid because well the scale pads are still wired to a combox but the nice part is the combox is now Wireless which enables us to look at this the data on our phone or a tablet so we can be mobile and I'm going to be setting up a car pretty soon it's going to be so helpful to get you know the corner balance right I don't have to keep looking back it just makes it simple now for in the shop stuff with the uh press Cars and Cars in general we can see curb weights we can see cross weights and we can see the individual weight for each side of the car which is really nice in the case of the Prius Prime this vehicle weighs 346 lb with a full tank of fuel so every car we do is going to have a f full tank of fuel the cross weight which is left to right percentage wise it's 49.4% balanced which means the left side is 50% the right side is 49.0 two% and that is really good for a production car typically you want your cross weight kind of 50/50 left and right so it's set up really well and I think that's about it for the in the shoy segment and next week we will be back in action with a new vehicle the Prius Prime hybrid we are in EV mode and we're going to take a look at the acceleration and we're going to put it in power mode so we get the full monty whatever that means that was 60 M an hour and immediately I can tell you right away there's no point of driving this vehicle like a complete Maniac because it's not about that it's obviously not about that so we're not going to spend too much time talking about it but what I will spend some time talking about is how they've improved this car's chassi and handling let's take a look at that the first thing you're going to notice about the prime really is this is not like any other Prius ever made this is on their new architecture it handles like a Nimble compact car it doesn't float around everywhere like the old car used to the steering's not totally numb the body control is good everything that you would expect from a small compact car from the modern age is here and the best part about it is if you're driving for efficiency no longer do you have to slow up for every single turn because you feel like this thing's going to roll over on its tires it grips really well it handles well so now you can keep up the momentum when you're driving this the other great part about the Prius is it's ride quality solidity and just overall sound isolation this feels I mean this feels really good compared to the previous generation and I've said this already you know when I drove the previous generation Prius it's one of the reasons a lot of people hated it it just really wasn't that good of a car to drive this makes up for so much that was wrong wrong before this when you are in eco mode this thing is just buttery smooth it's buttery smooth as long as the electric motor is the only thing running but the the best part about it is even when that gasoline motor kicks on and you're above 25 mph they have it so isolated they have it so well dampened that you can't even feel the gasoline motor kick on and you barely hear it I I think they've just mastered the art of not only hybridization for this car they've also turned it into kind of a true EV as well I'm not going to lie this has really surprised me I think this is one of the biggest surprises of the year and it shouldn't be but it is and I think from talking to the Toyota reps to the people that I know Toyota was serious about taking this car to the next level they kind of they rode the hybrid train as long as they possibly could and now they are ready to kind of take the next step towards EVS uh and they've done this in a realistic way they've improved all the driving Dynamics to the point where a real car person could drive this every day and get some enjoyment out of it when you see the level of fuel efficiency the economy and just smoothness of the entire car it it's such a major change from the previous generation Prius to now that I don't know you don't see this too often in the Auto industry but they've done it with this car now there's a couple things to talk about that are pretty important with this car there's three Drive modes you have Eco normal and power now power enables the gasoline motor to start it gives you all the power it sharpens the throttle response it gives you the full powerder of the the electric motors and battery pack normal is a mix between both the throttle pedal is not as sensitive it kind of balances Eco and it just balances the whole thing most people are going to drive in that mode on like most cars I drive I always drive this in eco mode and it is largely because it gives you the best efficiency it runs in EV mode almost exclusively so those are the three modes uh the next mode is you have hybrid mode and full EV mode you can run this in pure EV mode and that's one of the best parts about it so a full charge from zero is 5 and 1 half hours and that gives you about 28 to 29 miles now in my driving leaving in an eco mode and E mode only I can pretty much do my entire commute on EV mode and never fire up the gasoline motor which means for my driving I get about 1,000 mil to the tank and I'm also getting about 90 m per gallon now you can argue the validity of that number but the truth is is it the the math adds up uh and that's one of the best parts about this car is really I can drive it around all the time in EV mode now you can tell that you're in EV mode because it's telling you that it's an EV mode and how much uh how many miles you have until the batter is depleted when that gets down to zero it just switches over to hybrid mode automatically and it drives like a regular car you get a balance of uh a little bit of electric assistance and you also get uh the gasoline motor to run and help recharge the battery from its lowest State and either way you drive it it's very smooth regardless the one thing that you have to be careful about in EV mode is you have to be really ginger on the throttle and it tells you kind of where you're at as soon as you drop the hammer you watch your miles disappear that's left on the battery and you can see it right there just drop like3 miles and just a couple seconds of just mashing on the gas and it's something you know that you're going to have to deal with with modern EVS a modern electric cars if you drive hard you're losing battery efficiency extremely quick now there are some negatives to driving it it is still slow even when you dial in the gasoline motor and you're in power mode and uh you know you you turn up the juice and you drive like a madman it just as slow uh even with the torque of the electric motor you never feel a sense of just raw acceleration there is a lot of torque from the start but that's about it now the ecvt in this car is about as good as you can make it but it does feel just like that single speeed transmission this is not going to bring out any type of passion in you when you're driving it now now they have made up for the fact that it's a little bit slower by totally again like I said making this a so much better platform in terms of driving from the chassis to the steering is really good to the braking is solid it feels like a great car to drive to handle to break the wind noise is low but you know again you're losing it all with acceleration and that's something that you get with a pure EV that has a bigger electric motor a bigger battery pack you get a lot more juice that you can just use to pound around and you lose that a lot with the Prius Prime the conclusion of the Prius Prime I am extremely surprised and impressed with the way this car was designed and the way that it drives for how much the Prius brand has been demonized by the Enthusiast what Toyota has done here is turned it completely around this is nothing like it was before from a car that I honestly hated driving to a car that I enjoyed almost every minute on the inside of it and that is because they have a sorted chassis the steering is excellent the way that it drives feels like a lightweight compact car and it makes up for the fact that yes this is still a slow putter of a car the next part is you can operate it as a true EV you can drive it up to 85 M an hour you get 25 to 28 miles of range or EVR depending on how you drive it and I really like that I think most people are going to really enjoy that for their daily commute never having to operate the gasoline part of the motor but yes you can operate it as a normal car you don't have range anxiety I can drive it forever if I wanted to and just drive it as a normal hybrid and they've found that balance somehow the next biggest part of this vehicle is the price point the plus model is $28,000 and for what you get carbon composite hatch lightweight the bulletproof reliability from Toyota investing so much into this hybrid model uh they've licensed it out to other people they've nearly perfected it with this car and it's something you don't even have to think about even when you get to the 100,000 mile range it's not like oh my God what's going to break and for Toyota this is something they've invested so much money in they're dedicated to it's not a pet project like some other car manufacturers that have just made cars so he can fund his mission to Mars This is a big deal to Toyota and the support is there the supply change there the parts are there the pedigree is there and you know it's going to work huge Pro for it now the negative part about it is you're not going to convert somebody over that is looking for is that is a car person or not a hybrid person this isn't going to attract them it's not going to attract them because of the looks and the interior personality it is way too off the deep end now I can get over it I think a lot of people that are looking for this specific car are going to get over it and appreciate it but it's a big negative honestly and same thing with the slowness of the car it's it's just not as fast as a regular EV and it's not as quick as a regular compact either and I think you know the the overall package is really good but there's some negatives here that are going to turn some people off and completely turn people away from ever even considering it despite its price point and some of the pros so I think that's something you're going to have to look at if you're you definitely go drive this car and I say this a lot drive it I think you're going to be extremely surprised by it it might even sell you away from just a traditional four-door compact that's about ittoday we are going to take a more Grassroots Approach at looking at the new Prius Prime now the frontal area of the Prius Prime is one of its best attributes and Toyota has been kind enough to give us two colors that kind of stand out this blue or ocean blue or teal or whatever the hell you want to call it and they're red which looks really good on here and of course every other color is about three different Shades of Gray or you know silver now the frontal area specifically these quad LED headlamps is something that is kind of borrowed from their Lexus lineup and you have to pay more money to get them on the Lexus here they're just kind of included and the light output is amazing when you turn on the brights I'm sure you could see these things from space they're really good now this is a slippery car in terms of aerodynamics but there are some strange things here that you could argue that are form or function I'm not too sure but they have blocked off this air Inlet here this does not flow air through the bumper along the side of the wheels like a lot of other manufacturers are doing for aerodynamics also this the side mirrors are not mounted on the door which kind of creates more road noise uh and there's I mean you could have this argument what would be better versus looks versus Style versus aerodynamics and I think they they're trying to find some balance here the side profile it's not that out of the box and that's because they stuck with the Prius name so if you're going to stick with a branding you have to make it somewhat recognizable to people and that's what they've done along the side you have accents these little aerodynamic uh nodules that helped to flow air the back trim piece has a little bit of black around it to give it you know just break up the color I like some of the accents that they put on here that move all the way to the back again you have the nodules in the back that flow along the tail lights it's a smooth looking car and I think it would look a lot better as a coupe but you know it is what it is now it's time to slide my way into the pooper of the Prius prime or the back end if you are a rump man this there's a lot to talk about here the first thing you're going to notice that is very unique is the curvature in this glass and the glass curvature follows right into this rear deck lid it's extremely unique the whole tail light design is unique it's it's what you would think a futuristic car would look like when you were a kid and here it is now one of the coolest Parts about this and one of the reasons why I like the first generation Honda Insight so much is they they focus so much on function functional aerodynamics and that's what this is about being slippery moving the air over the top part of the car along the side and underneath the second most important part of this hatch is it's a manual manually operated liftgate there's no Motors or Electronics here they also have used a carbon composite entire rear lift gate and you can see it's unfinished unpainted and it is extremely lightweight now that's the whole point right you want to reduce weight you get better fuel efficiency or you know more electric power now the negative part about this hatch is the cost if somebody happens to rear end you in this this hatch is going to cost you $3,000 to $3,600 just for this liftgate that's excluding the glass which I didn't look up the cost but I'm sure it's more than a normal car so if you or your loved ones is trying to do a j turn into the McDonald's parking lot and you ball this thing up in the back you're going to be hurting now it's time to talk about the cargo space when we lift up this hatch you're going to see immediately in the prus Prime you lose some of the cargo space because of the battery pack it's larger it needs to propel you in EV mode farther and that's the trade-off you're losing some of the space now Barry called me he said his ex-wife needed a ride to rehab she was kind of just way into plastic surgery so she had a lot of luggage and suitcases here uh little cases for her Trinkets and uh massagers and all that and I could fit one large carryon in here uh and and maybe two you know smaller carry-ons and a couple backpacks but you're losing so much height here that you don't have a lot of stackability now the rear seats go down so that saves you a little bit but that is also not a flat cargo space so it's something that you're going to have to be aware of again get in here play around with it see what you can fit or can't fit uh and make your determination on whether you can deal with this daily it's time to get inside the prime and when you get in here if you're not somebody that's used to this you're going to want to throw up in your mouth because I have no idea what they're doing in here with this white dashboard with this strange Tupperware like Plastics and the center console uh this is such a quirky oddly designed interior for essentially no other reason than just to make it different now the side part of that is if you're somebody that can appreciate this which I appreciate it I get what they're trying to do here and it doesn't feel like every other car and that is the Counterpoint to it and I think once you get used to some of the weird elements to it it gives it personality and I talk about that a lot with modern cars they keep continuing to strip away the personality of vehicles and Toyota has been on that bandwagon before and I think they're trying to they're trying to break away from it and that's what the Prius Prime gives you it gives you a little bit of that the next thing to talk about is the instrument cluster and this is nothing new for the Prius but it is weird when you look at it for the first time instrument cluster is here in the center of the dashboard there is nothing here like traditional Vehicles now the benefit is I'm sure when you do a leftand drive or a right-and drive version of this car it makes configuring the interior much easier but the second part is all your informations here your speedometer your fuel gauge your parking indicator from Park reverse to drive and all the other idiot lights that they put up here including the clock now the other thing they put up here is all the menu system for this vehicle and it is just honestly there is too much going on here you can cycle through your fuel consumption record your drive monitor your drive monitor 2 your Eco diary which tells you how much you've used the air conditioning your energy monitor system which is a graphic of the car that shows you where the battery power is going or the engine power is going and then of course the most usable screen is the HV system indicator which tells you your ecos score and then also what your throttle position is how much battery are you're sucking up in the amount of miles you have left for driving in EV mode and I wish that they would allow you to kind of customize this screen because I I really want to know when the battery's charging the gasoline Motors on I wish there was just better ways to consolidate it in one thing but whatever that's neither here than there you're going to play around with this there's so many options for setting up the car in here it's all there next thing to talk about is interior comfort and a lot of that has to do directly with the seating design and I think many people are going to be very pleased with these seats because they are designed for a lot of different body types let's just be straight about that there's a lot of give in the bolsters uh you there's plenty of compression you can give into the padding into the sides into the rib cage area I think you're going to get comfortable in here very fast the other thing they've done is they've opted for cloth and this is a disappearing act in cars in favor of fake leather leathered or leather seating surface that people are obsessed with and the best part about cloth Interiors is you don't you're not subjected to extremes and temperature you don't get burned alive on a hot seat uh and you don't turn into you you know you don't have to clench up so much with the cold it just always feels right next thing to talk about is interior ergonomics and this is where the prime starts to fall apart for me it is a real mix bag let's talk about the pros first the buttons and switches and control stocks on the steering wheel are standard Toyota stuff they work easy to use no drama your gear selector stick uh it is straightforward you can easily read it here and you can see what gear you're up here there's not a lot of fussing around with it it's easy to figure out your Park buttons easy to get to and your drive mode buttons are very legible simple I like how they Consolidated into this one space huge huge plus where it gets really crappy is this center console area uh the lower console has this slippery white plastic great for storage until you put in here and then you're driving and stuff flies out of it so if you put your key in here expect it to fly out into your lab or on the floors the cup holder design is compromised the center arm rust only opens towards the passenger which means the passenger can't get here easily and then you don't have you know the padding on here for your arms socks there's no knee padding for either sides of your knee just a lot of like weird stuff but the thing I can't forgive and this is where designers start to go off the deep end to make it cute instead of functional is the seat heater design and the buttons are buried behind this center console and it's about as bad as the Mitsubishi IM which is one of the worst cars ever made released into the US and they follow it it here and it's completely unforgivable if you're going to make this quirky figure out how to make it usable now it's time to talk about electronics and infotainment and now this is the middle trim level and there's a huge reason to choose this over the maxed out one and that is you get physical HV vac controls here buttons to push and rocker switches to adjust your fan speed and temperature that is a massive Pro something that you lose when you go to the upper level with the tablet Dash because all that gets moved to the top touchscreen and out of all the touchscreen cars I've been in that move the HVAC controls there they all suck so I really like this I would opt for it just because of that now you do have a touchscreen based infotainment in here that's pretty much in every other Toyota if you've ever seen it before it's the same thing you have physical rotary knobs for your tuning and your volume uh the nice thing is is if you do have a problem where it freezes up you just hold in the volume button you push it in hold it for 5 seconds and it reboots the system everything else the user interface is just average it's kind of quirky and slow but it does work I haven't had any weird stuff with Bluetooth it always seems to work pretty well it just doesn't look pretty the sound system in the middle trim is pretty average now since this is a pretty isolated cabin you get good bass response tight base but I found for most of my music it does sound a little bit muddy and then you try to screw with the EQ a little bit the mids and the highs and it gets really tiny really fast so it's something you're going to want to test on your own and see what if your music sounds you know doable in here one of the last few things about the frontal interior space is the visibility there is a lot of glass in here the windshield has kind of this reverse rake and you always feel this level of command over the road in front of you something that typically you need an SUV for in modern vehicles I don't feel like I'm constantly triple checking around me in here and it's a it's just really nice for a change but the negative attribute of having this huge window is this visor barely covers your VIs visibility here so on my commute home from work I'm constantly blinded by the Sun so I have to pull myself forward or move the seat up there's no extension it's just something they need to fix it would be a simple fix lastly is this piano gloss black plastic all over this dashboard it's something designers are infatuated with in modern vehicles now let me ask you the most simple question if you were designing a home with a single point of entry would you install White carpet in a high trffic area where you're going in and out of it all the time no you wouldn't you know why because it would look like somebody took a dump on it it would be absolutely destroyed you'd put something more suitable there like hardwood or some composite or a carpet that was designed for that that's the equivalent of putting black shiny plastic all over an area that you're constantly interacting with your HVAC controls are all shiny plastic your volume knobs this whole thing is always Dusty full of oils and then to pound that of course you're interacting with the touch screen so you're constantly having to clean this and it's just annoying why are they doing this well I don't know maybe someday somebody will give me a straight answer now the back seat of the Prius Prime and my driver's seats pretty much moved all the way back and reclined uh this is a comfortable space um you're you're going to have to watch your head getting in but for the most part the back seats are about as good as the front they're a little bit more flat uh but you're going to hold four passengers and four passengers alone in the back of this car because the center console area is just an armrest and cup holders you really unless it's you know an some type of small kid you can put a bungee cord around him to tie him down but this really is again a four passenger car now Scott is on vacation this week he's doing a full 50 state tour of all the iPhone stores uh to find the right set of wireless headphones so he's not available so we're going to do this the old school way now next we're going to be moving into our own shop space but until then let's take a look at some of the underneath this is Toyota's new Global architecture which means that chassis is going to be reused and recycled from multiple vehicles but one of the reasons why they develop this new architecture is to improve the Aging platforms of the past so in the front you have a new strut based front suspension there is heavy utilization of Arrow underneath of course up to Modern standards they changed the rigidity of control arms the hubs and Knuckles are more robust the center of the car has more Arrow panels and as you get to the back this is where a lot of the changes happened they went to a full multi-link suspension in the back something that is tuned extremely well now all you have to do is get into the old Prius 2014 2015 and get in here and you realize how much of a massive difference all these underpinnings have done for the car the next biggest thing to talk about with this new Prius or the Prius Prime is their new transaxle the p610 this is their next Generation Now fundamentally everything is very similar how it works but internally there are some massive changes here not only from a weight perspective this is 70 lbs lighter than the first generation transaxle and the Prius when it first launched everything is designed around efficiency lightweight uh and for the first time mg1 which is your motor generator unit that used to only do regeneration basically engine braking regeneration recharging the battery packs mg1 can now also act as a Drive Unit to power the wheels much like mg2 so they can work in conjunction to give this car more power and they do that with a new clutch or a flywheel design that only rotates in One Direction which enables that mg1 to be used in that fashion really the last thing to talk about with batteries is efficiency now in laboratory conditions perfect temperature conditions cells can last forever almost if you're within that window and in real world conditions that's not possible batteries lose efficiency it doesn't matter what additives they put in the cells it doesn't matter what the computer controls are the temperature monitoring the temperature controls all the systems they keep the the state of charge and the battery health good in a car like this the air cooling the monitoring it it can do all these tricks to keep the longevity of these packs high but if you're in extreme cold or Extreme Hot these batteries do take a hit and over time they lose efficiency most manufacturers will not say this flat out but most of the time you're going to lose 10 to 20% battery efficiency over the course of 100,000 miles which means you know you take a look at the range that you have on an EV when it's new of course it's great it's always consistent but the more miles you put on it the more you uh get that that pack cycled the more heat and cold you get into it outside of the controllable range you lose efficiency and it's something to note if you're living in an extreme climate your battery pack may not last as long as somebody else and when you have to replace this out of warranty generally it's anywhere from $4 to $10,000 depending on the vehicle and that's kind of the fine print of these cars and a full EV is even worse than that so keep that in mind mind in terms of you're going to keep this forever the running costs can be more expensive from here on out all are in the shop segments when we get back into the real shop is going to have full vehicle curb weights via our new Longacre hybrid scale system and these scales are hybrid because well the scale pads are still wired to a combox but the nice part is the combox is now Wireless which enables us to look at this the data on our phone or a tablet so we can be mobile and I'm going to be setting up a car pretty soon it's going to be so helpful to get you know the corner balance right I don't have to keep looking back it just makes it simple now for in the shop stuff with the uh press Cars and Cars in general we can see curb weights we can see cross weights and we can see the individual weight for each side of the car which is really nice in the case of the Prius Prime this vehicle weighs 346 lb with a full tank of fuel so every car we do is going to have a f full tank of fuel the cross weight which is left to right percentage wise it's 49.4% balanced which means the left side is 50% the right side is 49.0 two% and that is really good for a production car typically you want your cross weight kind of 50/50 left and right so it's set up really well and I think that's about it for the in the shoy segment and next week we will be back in action with a new vehicle the Prius Prime hybrid we are in EV mode and we're going to take a look at the acceleration and we're going to put it in power mode so we get the full monty whatever that means that was 60 M an hour and immediately I can tell you right away there's no point of driving this vehicle like a complete Maniac because it's not about that it's obviously not about that so we're not going to spend too much time talking about it but what I will spend some time talking about is how they've improved this car's chassi and handling let's take a look at that the first thing you're going to notice about the prime really is this is not like any other Prius ever made this is on their new architecture it handles like a Nimble compact car it doesn't float around everywhere like the old car used to the steering's not totally numb the body control is good everything that you would expect from a small compact car from the modern age is here and the best part about it is if you're driving for efficiency no longer do you have to slow up for every single turn because you feel like this thing's going to roll over on its tires it grips really well it handles well so now you can keep up the momentum when you're driving this the other great part about the Prius is it's ride quality solidity and just overall sound isolation this feels I mean this feels really good compared to the previous generation and I've said this already you know when I drove the previous generation Prius it's one of the reasons a lot of people hated it it just really wasn't that good of a car to drive this makes up for so much that was wrong wrong before this when you are in eco mode this thing is just buttery smooth it's buttery smooth as long as the electric motor is the only thing running but the the best part about it is even when that gasoline motor kicks on and you're above 25 mph they have it so isolated they have it so well dampened that you can't even feel the gasoline motor kick on and you barely hear it I I think they've just mastered the art of not only hybridization for this car they've also turned it into kind of a true EV as well I'm not going to lie this has really surprised me I think this is one of the biggest surprises of the year and it shouldn't be but it is and I think from talking to the Toyota reps to the people that I know Toyota was serious about taking this car to the next level they kind of they rode the hybrid train as long as they possibly could and now they are ready to kind of take the next step towards EVS uh and they've done this in a realistic way they've improved all the driving Dynamics to the point where a real car person could drive this every day and get some enjoyment out of it when you see the level of fuel efficiency the economy and just smoothness of the entire car it it's such a major change from the previous generation Prius to now that I don't know you don't see this too often in the Auto industry but they've done it with this car now there's a couple things to talk about that are pretty important with this car there's three Drive modes you have Eco normal and power now power enables the gasoline motor to start it gives you all the power it sharpens the throttle response it gives you the full powerder of the the electric motors and battery pack normal is a mix between both the throttle pedal is not as sensitive it kind of balances Eco and it just balances the whole thing most people are going to drive in that mode on like most cars I drive I always drive this in eco mode and it is largely because it gives you the best efficiency it runs in EV mode almost exclusively so those are the three modes uh the next mode is you have hybrid mode and full EV mode you can run this in pure EV mode and that's one of the best parts about it so a full charge from zero is 5 and 1 half hours and that gives you about 28 to 29 miles now in my driving leaving in an eco mode and E mode only I can pretty much do my entire commute on EV mode and never fire up the gasoline motor which means for my driving I get about 1,000 mil to the tank and I'm also getting about 90 m per gallon now you can argue the validity of that number but the truth is is it the the math adds up uh and that's one of the best parts about this car is really I can drive it around all the time in EV mode now you can tell that you're in EV mode because it's telling you that it's an EV mode and how much uh how many miles you have until the batter is depleted when that gets down to zero it just switches over to hybrid mode automatically and it drives like a regular car you get a balance of uh a little bit of electric assistance and you also get uh the gasoline motor to run and help recharge the battery from its lowest State and either way you drive it it's very smooth regardless the one thing that you have to be careful about in EV mode is you have to be really ginger on the throttle and it tells you kind of where you're at as soon as you drop the hammer you watch your miles disappear that's left on the battery and you can see it right there just drop like3 miles and just a couple seconds of just mashing on the gas and it's something you know that you're going to have to deal with with modern EVS a modern electric cars if you drive hard you're losing battery efficiency extremely quick now there are some negatives to driving it it is still slow even when you dial in the gasoline motor and you're in power mode and uh you know you you turn up the juice and you drive like a madman it just as slow uh even with the torque of the electric motor you never feel a sense of just raw acceleration there is a lot of torque from the start but that's about it now the ecvt in this car is about as good as you can make it but it does feel just like that single speeed transmission this is not going to bring out any type of passion in you when you're driving it now now they have made up for the fact that it's a little bit slower by totally again like I said making this a so much better platform in terms of driving from the chassis to the steering is really good to the braking is solid it feels like a great car to drive to handle to break the wind noise is low but you know again you're losing it all with acceleration and that's something that you get with a pure EV that has a bigger electric motor a bigger battery pack you get a lot more juice that you can just use to pound around and you lose that a lot with the Prius Prime the conclusion of the Prius Prime I am extremely surprised and impressed with the way this car was designed and the way that it drives for how much the Prius brand has been demonized by the Enthusiast what Toyota has done here is turned it completely around this is nothing like it was before from a car that I honestly hated driving to a car that I enjoyed almost every minute on the inside of it and that is because they have a sorted chassis the steering is excellent the way that it drives feels like a lightweight compact car and it makes up for the fact that yes this is still a slow putter of a car the next part is you can operate it as a true EV you can drive it up to 85 M an hour you get 25 to 28 miles of range or EVR depending on how you drive it and I really like that I think most people are going to really enjoy that for their daily commute never having to operate the gasoline part of the motor but yes you can operate it as a normal car you don't have range anxiety I can drive it forever if I wanted to and just drive it as a normal hybrid and they've found that balance somehow the next biggest part of this vehicle is the price point the plus model is $28,000 and for what you get carbon composite hatch lightweight the bulletproof reliability from Toyota investing so much into this hybrid model uh they've licensed it out to other people they've nearly perfected it with this car and it's something you don't even have to think about even when you get to the 100,000 mile range it's not like oh my God what's going to break and for Toyota this is something they've invested so much money in they're dedicated to it's not a pet project like some other car manufacturers that have just made cars so he can fund his mission to Mars This is a big deal to Toyota and the support is there the supply change there the parts are there the pedigree is there and you know it's going to work huge Pro for it now the negative part about it is you're not going to convert somebody over that is looking for is that is a car person or not a hybrid person this isn't going to attract them it's not going to attract them because of the looks and the interior personality it is way too off the deep end now I can get over it I think a lot of people that are looking for this specific car are going to get over it and appreciate it but it's a big negative honestly and same thing with the slowness of the car it's it's just not as fast as a regular EV and it's not as quick as a regular compact either and I think you know the the overall package is really good but there's some negatives here that are going to turn some people off and completely turn people away from ever even considering it despite its price point and some of the pros so I think that's something you're going to have to look at if you're you definitely go drive this car and I say this a lot drive it I think you're going to be extremely surprised by it it might even sell you away from just a traditional four-door compact that's about it\n"