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Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles are Amazing

Fishking

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So we recently bought a new minivan (yes...I'm kinda a wild child, I know) that is a plug-in hybrid. What is the difference between this and a regular hybrid? Well, you plug it in, just like a battery car, and it has a certain range on the battery power alone. We got the Chrysler Pacifica, which has a range of 33 miles on the battery charge.

My biggest beef with full-on battery vehicles is they just aren't energy efficient. A regular gas-powered car will reliably get a certain distance and then fill it up in 5 minutes and hit the road again. A full battery-powered vehicle can vary widely and once it's empty of juice, you have to wait hours to get going again, meaning you still need another vehicle for longer drives. It's never been an issue of power, electric actually provides more efficient power than gas.

So we have this plug-in hybrid minivan now and just driving around town we use almost solely battery power. We put over 500 miles on it with only using a quarter of a tank of gas and some of that was because is missed plugging it in the first night. We are on track to get around 2,000 miles on a tank of gas...yes, 2K miles and we are pulling about 150 mpg.

Now, for longer drives it quickly goes to regular hybrid mode as you are doing straight pushing on the gas and it still gets around 33 mpg, which is great for a minivan. We estimated that we are using about $50/month more in our electric bill but saving $250-$275/month on gas. We are at 21 days of ownership, and around 650 miles and have only used a little over a quarter of a tank, meaning we'll go months without filling up at this rate we'll go over 2 months without filling up.

I think this is actually the real future of cars and I'm really enjoying it and hope to see this form of hybrid spread across all platforms and it will really knock down emissions from vehicles. Maybe I'm a big dork for being all stoked about this but here I am.


 
Love it!

I just bought a used 2016 Prius, and I feel weird if a day goes by where I get less than 55 mpg. I wanted the plug in, but $$$$$. Next car, for sure!


(as for your electric bill.....get an extension cord, and plug into the neighbors over night....)
 
Well it is still early yet and I will want to talk about when those batteries need to be replaced and we will of course need to make sure that you are right that this is better for the Planet....there is some extreme doubt on that just now....maybe we got sold another bill of goods like ethanol we Americans have so much trouble wising up you know....but I am happy that you are happy.

EDIT: I noticed a piece somewhere on how the Germans never saw this battery car thing happening like this....maybe it is a fad.
 
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Hawkeye10 said:
I am talking about the companies being caught flat footed, behind on battery tech and producing E Cars.
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I'm googled out. You do it.
 

My mechanic who works at a Toyota shop says that the prius batteries last for over 200,000 miles.

They work, damned well.
 

It will also smoke a BMW 325i and leave it in the dust, by the way.
It might be a minivan but it rides like a Lexus and accelerates like a beast.
We have one too, only ours is a wheelchair accessible version.



PS: Google has chosen the Pacifica as the test bed for the Waymo fully autonomous vehicle platform.
That's because the Pacifica is 85% there already. Wait till you get used to the Advanced Cruise Control.
Rush hour traffic will become stress-free because all you have to do is "man the tiller" (steering) and the van does the rest.
No matter how bunched up traffic gets, you'll never need to touch the brake or gas.

The Pacifica is a corporate jet on wheels.
 
beefheart said:
My mechanic who works at a Toyota shop says that the prius batteries last for over 200,000 miles.

They work, damned well.
Click to expand...

I have a 2007 with 103,000 and still going strong. A remanned battery is less than 1200 bucks, big deal.
Most Prius taxis still have their original battery after 300,000 miles.
 

I'm not even getting to into the "better for the planet thing" but lower emissions is definitely better for breathing air. As for the battery life...it's supposed to be about an 8-10 year life-span, which at that point it should still be fine just running off of the gas engine and it would be time to get a new vehicle as well.
 

Also, for anyone that's really good with cars, I'm wondering if this will also extend the life of the engine. The gas engine is a very kinetic force that is based off of controlling explosions into a confined area, which has to be much harder on a vehicle. So will this type of vehicle see a significant extension on the life of the engine? I don't think we know that answer yet but maybe some people have some ideas about it that know more than me.
 
Grand Mal said:
I'm googled out. You do it.
Click to expand...

There is an app my wife has that shows charger locations and it also is how you pay for your charge time while hooking up.
 

Yeah...it's has pretty good pickup and I was looking into the subject and electric actually provides more instant horsepower and torque than gas vehicles, who only max out in a certain RPM range. Power was never really the problem with electric vehicles, with the advent of modern batteries, it's always been that downtime between charges, which this platform solves beautifully.
 
Fishking said:
There is an app my wife has that shows charger locations and it also is how you pay for your charge time while hooking up.
Click to expand...

'Course there is.
This technology is going to move ahead so fast, it's gonna be geometry instead of arithmetic. Predictions of when it (electric vehicle technology) makes internal combustion obsolete will have to be revised monthly.
In one way it's bad news for a country like Canada that makes a fair chunck of it's GDP off fossil fuels, but at least out west we have an abundance of hydro electricity, which is basically solar power (the sun lifts all those water droplets and they fall on the mountains).
 

Well...I'll push back on making combustion engines obsolete as I believe this plug-in hybrid model is the actual future because you still get the sustainability of the gas engine for longer trips, which is the big short-fall of full EVs. If you have an EV you really end up needing another car for those instances where you have to drive past the distance of the EV, which is limited and has high variability on how far you get on a charge, depending on how/where you're driving.

This will still represent a huge reduction on fossil fuel usage, though, as basically 90% of driving will be off of battery.
 

Thanks for (the all be it early) real life review. I've been looking for someone that can review and then report back after a few months with an extended review, such as range with AC or Heat on etc....This exact product is what I'm looking into for my next ride as the family grows and we need more room.

If you start out driving on the highway with ZERO charge, what would the MPG's be doing a steady 65 MPH or whatever speed you normally drive? (assuming you don't mind finding out.)

PS, Congratulations on the new ride.
 

Thanks.

I'll get back to you on that but from what I've read it's about 33 MPG for sustained gas/electric hybrid mode on highway, once the straight battery power has run out. This is still about 10 MPG more than regular gas powered minivans. We run the AC constantly because I'm currently in San Antonio, TX, which is about 95 degrees + every day. The energy usage app shows it using 4 kilowatts when we first get in and the AC is fighting the blazing heat inside the vehicle. Once it has cooled down it drops to 1 kilowatt power usage.

The battery on a full charge has a range of 33 miles but that can vary, depending on the type of driving you're doing. Stop and go traffic it does pretty good as anytime you coast or use the break it uses the inertia of the vehicle to throw energy back into the batter pretty efficiently.

There is an app on the center screen console that you can pull up and it shows what's using power. So when we are running off of straight battery the engine is putting out 0 kilowatts and the battery will be pushing out a certain amount of kilowatts, depending on how much you're mashing the battery...I mean "gas" peddle :wink: When you coast or hit the break it will show how many kilowatts are being thrown back into the battery. Finally, once you hit hybrid mode, at the end of the battery life, the engine will start putting out kilowatts that goes into the battery a little. You combine that with a few uses of the break and coasting and you'll intermittently switch to using just battery as you go.

I'll post more on it as we use it. So far no long trips though, so I can't confirm the MPG accounts for that past what I've read of other's reviews.

I'm not even particularly an environmental nut but just the mechanics/operation of the vehicle is really fun to me, how it runs super quiet while on battery, how we'll be saving over $200/month, even accounting for the small increase in our electric bill.
 

If you can't keep her in a garage or under cover try getting a sun screen for the front windshield, it will help some. How is the transition between battery and gas, is there a shutter of sorts or is it seamless? A friend has a BMW and when he let's off the brake you feel the engine kick on and it's annoying, something maybe you get used to, not sure.
 
One cool thing about the Prius, it has 2 modes of A/C, the eco mode does pretty good. Unfortunately on Sunday, when I got into the car, the temp gauge said 122 degrees, such is life in the desert...
 

You can feel it a little when the gas kicks on, but it's not extreme. You also hear a sound difference because on battery it's basically silent but on gas power it isn't.
 

YOU FILTHY COMMIE!!!

lolz...glad you're enjoying it, bud. :lol:
 
I found this review online, sounds very real in that it's not some car mag trying to push or knock a particular car brand.

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/07/0...a-hybrid-a-little-bit-of-chevy-bolt-mixed-in/



On the highway, the van has great pickup and cruises easily with the electric motor only until the battery is empty. Then the ICE will come on without you even noticing, except that your MPG will go down a bit. We are averaging about 47.3 MPG currently. That is with a total of 7,209 miles driven — 2,973 electric and 4,236 ICE, as per the dash computer. This total includes the reduction in efficiency caused by driving with studded Hakkapeliitta 8 snow tires all winter (see below).

If you wind up getting 40+ MPG on the highway I'll be all over that product. I get 34 highway now in my Lincoln and think it's great. 40+ will make me smile for sure.
 

Congrats! Sounds great and I hope to follow suit one day. Out of my price range right now. Soon though...soon!
 
OlNate said:
YOU FILTHY COMMIE!!!

lolz...glad you're enjoying it, bud. :lol:
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I know...I think I mixed in some reds with my underwear wash as they came out a little pink. I feel filthy, lol. Actually, it's just so much more fun to drive as well. I can't really explain why I find it so enjoyable. I know saving over $200/month doesn't hurt.
 

What was the price difference between the hybrid and regular Pacifica's?
 




Congrats!
 
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