2020 Toyota Prius Prime

Toyota’s Prius Prime plug-in hybrid is well built, has a superb touchscreen interface and suffers from the occasional re-charging woes.

I live in a waterfront community it’s a collection of mostly high-rises a few townhomes and all of them hard by burrard in that overlooking the city of vancouver in this neighborhood people walk they cycle often they just take public transit when they’re trying to get around which means they don’t use cars very much and a lot of the people who live around here

Have just one car this would seem to be the perfect place to be the owner of a toyota prius prime plug-in hybrid vehicle i mean after all if you live in this neighborhood you might drive 10 or 15 kilometres occasionally for a run to canadian tire to pick up some lawn furniture or to visit some friends in the suburbs but for the most part a plug-in hybrid allows

You to get all the driving you need on pure electrics but if you need to get around with a gasoline motor well you’ve got that – unfortunately for toyota the people around here they really can’t use a prius prime to its full effect a couple of reasons for that first of all electric plug-in outlets are rare in buildings like this there is a fast charger in my

Neighborhood but that’s another problem toyota has not equipped the prius prime with a connection capable of taking on a fast charger and this is the only community fast charging evie station around during prime time there is often a line up three four five cars long but remember it’s a fast charging station and that presents a problem for the prius prime let

Me explain to you my problem here i want to charge up this toyota prius prime that toyota’s hybrid plug-in hybrid gets about a 40 kilometer range and i’m here in the deepest darkest basement two parking lot underneath whole foods and i pulled in here to charge because there are some outlets here unfortunately they’re 50 amp outlets and what toyota supplies

Is a regular household plug-in which is no good even worse well i went to the fast charging outlet in my neighborhood and it only supplies handles for chatham oh and combo plugins and so if you live around here you have limited options to get juiced up day to day a plug-in hybrid is a useful all-purpose alternative for city dwellers like me all electric

For when you absolutely need a car for quick runs but also a gas engine for longer drive say to whistler what’s missing here and this is a story for many urban neighborhoods especially dense compact city neighborhoods like mine here in the shipyards well charging stations and convenient ones and that therefore presents a real problem for toyota trying to sell

A plug-in hybrid and that is a shame the prime is an excellent car for anyone who wants to limit fuel consumption and emissions but can’t go with a pure eevee i have a prius prime well my tester is about $41,000 as equipped with fees and levies and taxes and extras but the base model of well as you see here without all those extras is about $36,000 and that

Includes four thousand dollars in provincial and federal discounts the prius prime charges up relatively quickly because it’s battery pack delivers at best forty kilometers of range at least the battery has a ten year warranty and toyotas in general well they pretty much last forever you can plug the prime into a regular 110 volt outlet or a 240 volt station

The charge point is that the rear passenger side of the car it’s all quite simple except for one simple problem you cannot plug it into one of these excellent fast charging stations i’m with those who like its looks to in particular i admire the detailed lighting arrangement up front a four quad led headlamp array with a lower fog light setup standout design

The primes compact size belies a lot of hardware underneath this skin to powertrains an extensive battery pack all sorts of controllers to get all these different things to work together and room for 5 passengers but cargo space is quite limited that’s because the battery pack and all the other electronic gizmos and gadgets and goodies take up some space the

Useful hatchback design is good but it creates a problem no rear windshield wiper there’s a lot of glass back there and on a bad weather day seeing through that radically slanting glass rear hatch framed by rear led taillights well it’s a problem the cabin is terrific as you sit in the driver’s seat and look out well you see a strip of a pinnacle there where

You get the normal performance speed fuel economy range numbers that you would expect to find in a binnacle right in front of the driver there is none there by the way all in all very useful what you notice most though is a huge vertical infotainment screen an 11.6 inch high-definition touchscreen this comes only with more expensive primes the whole cabin is

Very well done very well put together refined the drive is fine for a compact runabout the engine in the gasoline engine is a 1.8 liter four-cylinder motor you’ve got your electric drive and then you’ve got an 8.8 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery and for the $41,000 here well toyota offers all sorts of standard features this is a luxury car for those first

40 kilometers in pure eevee mode the prius prime is just your everyday electric vehicle fuel economy combined will land you somewhere between 1.6 and 6 liters per 100 kilometers it’s not really fast there’s only a hundred and twenty one horsepower available here when there are bends in the road however you will notice the heft of it all there’s lots of stuff

Here and it adds up to fifteen hundred and thirty kilograms or about 3400 pounds if the prime isn’t for you you can consider hyundais ionic plus or honda’s clarity plug-in hybrid or you could save a few thousand and simply buy the standard prius hybrid and that might be my ultimate choice the prime is a good vehicle it’s well built and toyota has a terrific

Reputation for longevity i like the design i really really enjoyed using the center touchscreen they’re very modern very functional the problem is toyota has had this halting approach to plug-in vehicles until recently didn’t believe in him pure electric vehicles at all so what we’re left with here is something of a compromise and it’s a rig that i cannot park

It the only park in charge at the only fast charging station in my neighborhood that’s a problem for toyota it’s gonna be a problem for sales change very very high-tech at top at the cabins terrific at the find in a in a quality problem that is

Transcribed from video
2020 Toyota Prius Prime By Jeremy Cato