It’s easy to forget that the Prius has been sold in the US for 22 years now, starting back in 2000. And Eugene had plenty of early adopters; there’s several of these NHW11 Prii around; several in my neighborhood. But this one had to give up the prime spot in the driveway for something a bit more technologically advanced, a Chevy Bolt EV. It’ll be interesting to come back in twenty years to see if the Bolt is still in there.
Related reading:
Interesting but logical swap. The owner definitely wants to remain cutting edge.
Took delivery of my first Bolt this weekend. Two immediate thoughts: 1. The car is very impressive, drives nice, and I can get used to a vehicle that demands way less driver input than my former Civic Si (I’ve still got three motorcycles in the garage for when I really want to get into it). 2. Level 1 charging sucks. Can’t wait for my Level 2 charger to arrive. There is a free Level 2 station two miles from home, and my Damon folding bike is a perfect fit in the back.
Which Level 2? It’s a little late, but you can use the Bolt’s OEM EVSE as a 16a Level 2 with an adapter for the type of 220v outlet you have. Not as fast as the 32a you’re getting, but cuts the regular 110v time to charge in half, and it’s the most cost effective way to lower charge times.
Congratulations on your new Bolt and going electric! You will love driving past gas stations, as well as, never again go out to your car in the morning to find that you need to stop for gas. That used to happen to me when I was already running late for work.
I’m sure you’ve done your research, but there are several apps to help find charging stations. My personal favorite is ABRP, A Better Route Planner. It’s a bit clunky to learn, but will route you through Level 3 charging stations on a road trip. It seems to be extremely accurate.
Enjoy the car!
How is ABRP compared to Plugshare?
In my opinion, PlugShare is best for finding charging stations in a city, especially one that’s unfamiliar. ABRP routes your road trip through charging stations, predicts what your battery state of charge will be when you get there, how long to stay, what your state of charge will be when you leave, and how much it will cost. You can also add waypoints which also makes it superior to the navigation in my model 3.
ABRP routing
I’ve tried other EV-oriented apps and they were all lacking in comparison to Plugshare. They all seemed to be copies with a big omission: the ability to add comments to specific stations.
Regardless, thanks for the suggestion. I’ll give ABRP a try.
You’re welcome. ABRP also doesn’t have a way to add comments about the individual station. While I never leave comments, I can definitely appreciate how the EV community can benefit by giving station owners suggestions for improvement, as well as, other drivers insight on if they should go to or avoid that station.
Congratulations on the new car! I’m excited to hear more, and think you’ll end up really liking it and electric car ownership in general, especially the filling up part once you’re able do it at home 99% of the time. The Bolt is plenty roomy when you’re not downsizing from a CrewCab pickup and the tech seems good. And if you want to drive across the country in 48hours flat, you have your touring bike.
Don’t fret about uninformed naysayers, those are the same people that were for years predicting the Prius’ battery would need to be replaced every 3 years. And now say it about BEV’s as well without ever doing any basic research. Hahahaha! It’s a new golden age, glad you’re onboard and I can see your next motorcycle being electric too, that space is rapidly expanding with some very interesting offerings.
I wonder about the future for the Prius. It’s defining feature – the hybrid powertrain and resultant excellent fuel economy – is fast becoming commonplace. Without even leaving the Toyota showroom you’ll find hybrid Corollas, Camrys, and RAV4s, not to mention Siennas and Venzas that are now exclusively hybrids.
I tip my hat to Toyota. They are the gasoline/electric hybrid leader, and the more people who get used to getting 30-40 mpg in a hybrid Toyota Camry, vs 10mpg less in a gasoline Accord/Fusion/Sonata/Malibu, the more people will want one.
As to the Bolt in 20 years… how long will the battery pack last, and how cost effective will it be to replace?
Battery technology and chemistry is increasing at an insanely high rate, as well as getting less expensive as time goes on. Battery packs, battery management, and cooling now, are much better than even just 10 years ago. Electric car batteries are made of thousands of cells. If the pack has a problem, usually the individual bad cells are replaced within the pack. If the problem is bad enough that it’s best to replace the whole pack, the price is usually offset by proration of the good cells, recyclable materials, and precious metals within the pack. Good cells from a bad pack or totaled car are often refurbished and placed in building or residential solar storage battery packs. Therefore it’s rare for an electric car owner to have to pay full price for a battery pack.
There is an Accord Hybrid and there was a Fusion Hybrid, and in everyday driving you’ll see a much bigger gap than 10mpg when you compare the hybrid and base ICE only versions of the Camcordion.
Honest question. How is a simple BEV that is a refinement of an idea that has been obsolete for over a century more technologically advanced than an efficient hybrid that also represents a hybridization of parallel and series hybrids? It’s like saying that a passenger train is more technologically advanced than a jumbo jet because the government encourages the construction of passenger rail.
Yeah, a well done Hybrid is far more technologically advanced than the Bolt or any other EV.
Replacement hybrid batteries are NLA from Toyota for the first generation cars. It’s a chicken-and-egg situation, because how many people want to put a $2500 battery into a car that’s only worth a couple grand?
Yes, there are aftermarket and DIY solutions available, but either is like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound.
What’s the price on a low mileage used battery? You know, the same way you’d put a low mileage used engine or transmission into a car where a new one from the factory is cost prohibitive? Why is an aftermarket or DIY solution a bandaid, that’s like saying half the people here should be taking their Corvair, Torino, Crown Vic, or whatever else they are driving and is out of warranty to the dealer rather than fixing them themselves.
Edit: I googled it, the first ad that popped up offers a reconditioned Gen 1 Prius battery with lifetime warranty AND installation for under $2k. It’s only $1450 for second gen cars and $1650 for third gen cars. That seems cheap to me. With some looking around those prices can surely be beaten. If the car is good otherwise and it’s 20 years old or whatever and you like it then this seems like quite a reasonable proposition. Good luck finding a decent running, clean replacement car these days that almost assuredly won’t need much else fixed for under $2500.
https://greenbeanbattery.com/prius-hybrid-battery-replacement-colorado/?gclid=CjwKCAiAxp-ABhALEiwAXm6Iycu8bhoDGrDs00JvrvgVtETAwtNKSi-Um_oe4iIZQzCgzvvFWLJ4xxoCoHsQAvD_BwE
If your Prius runs great and is in otherwise good condition it’s worth far more than $2,000, at least around here.
Green Bean Battery has a worse-than-horrible reputation on the Prius forum. You can recondition a gasoline engine to virtually new, but Nickel-Cadmium batteries simply have a finite life. The “reconditioning” process will give more life to an old battery, but it will never be “like new” like you can do with a combustion engine.
And if a 1G Prius is worth >$2K in your area, let me ship my ’08 2G to you to sell. I’ve had mine for sale for over a month and no valid offers.
Post a link to your ad.
Here’s a Craigslist search of all the private owner 2008’s in my general area. Sure, asking prices are likely higher than actual selling prices but the spread is from $3,900 to $6,000 over five cars.
https://fortcollins.craigslist.org/search/cto?query=2008+prius&purveyor-input=all
That’s the same range I’m in, Jim. And all of my “competitors'” ads have also been up for a month or more.
Agreed, and depending upon your options, a DIY replacement requires little more than a few hand tools, some caution around the high voltage terminals, and a little bit of youtube. Certainly much easier than replacing an engine or transmission on an older vehicle.
https://www.greentecauto.com/toyota-hybrid/how-to-change-prius-battery
Granted as a retired factory-trained tech, the R&R is rather simple to my eyes, but it clearly doesn’t require torches for corroded beyond belief fasteners, an engine hoist, jacks and stands, an engine hoist, air tools and a lift if you are fortunate to have them, etc. Never mind the grease and filth, broken exhaust fasteners that wouldn’t budge, fluids to dispose of, gaskets and other sundries to replace, etc.
How are you price quoting a supposed unavailable battery pack?
I like my Bolt, but I also have an ICE vehicle for when I need a bigger circle than the Bolt can offer. I love that color, but I’m not sure I would’ve gone for that. Mine is Cajun Red Tintcoat. I love driving it, but I’d still call myself an EV novice as I’ve mostly just used Level 1 at home. Level 1 is fine for work at home/pandemic driving.
That first Prius set the tone of the model standing out and looking interesting, which has served that market well. Prius will probably evolve into something more like the Prius V, and maybe eventually die. I feel like the brand is strong, but doesn’t have a future when all models have hybrids available.
It almost makes you wonder if the very polarizing shape of the current Prius was in some part an attempt to get more people to consider the other Hybrid options in the Toyota lineup rather than just the Prius itself. In Japan it seems that the vast majority of the lineup can be had (and is popular) in Hybrid form, over the last few years it is starting to be that way over here as well. Besides the hatchback form factor the Prius doesn’t seem to offer all that much over a Corolla or Camry Hybrid on the sedan side and the RAV4/Venza/Highlander on the more utilitarian and potentially AWD side, to say nothing of the various small Lexus Hybrid vehicles. Most of those are produced in higher volumes and if the Hybrid componentry can just be an option or another assembly line module to plug in (oversimplifying but you know), then that could be a more efficient and cheaper way to produce overall while getting a similar end effect. So yes, Prius may very well end up as a (discarded) stepping stone, one at which it has succeeded brilliantly. Once you experience a good Hybrid and are happy with the experience it becomes more difficult to go back to the old ways.
Interestingly, I just yesterday responded to a Honda consumer survey seeking my input and preferences on EVs, hybrids, and ICE systems in the same model vehicle. Essentially, Honda appeared to be trying to suss out how much extra (if at all) I would be willing to pay for an EV or hybrid versus an ICE in a mid-size CUV. They also inquired about preferences regarding combinations of drivetrains, such as an EV with 4WD or AWD versus FWD only. This would seem to be in line with the Toyota strategy of offering alternate powertrains in most models in its lineup.
I don’t see a long term future for the Prius, at one point it had a mpg advantage over the Camry but now the Camry and Corolla match it.
To be fair, there is some validity to concern about EV battery longevity. The Prius is quite long-lived but the original Insight needs regular battery replacement, due to the way it operates, giving greater fuel mileage than the Prius. That was the trade-off.
Then there are the relatively recent vehicles that can operate solely on battery power, alone, that have been around since 2011. The Chevy Volt’s battery seems to retain much of its original capacity, but the Leaf has had issues with battery degradation over time, particularly those Leaf that are located in warmer, 3-season climates. Unlike the Volt (and most other EVs), this can be attributed to the Leaf’s passive air-cooled battery (the others have active cooling systems). Excessive heat kills batteries.
EV batteries don’t usuall completely fail or brick, they simply lose capacity over time. I think the original Leaf had a range of something like 89 miles. It’s quite common for the oldest Leafs that still have their original battery to now have a range of 50 miles (or less).
With all that, ICE vehicles certainly need routine maintenance and will all have major components that eventually wear out.
In addition to excessive heat, frequent charging to 100% or nearly fully depleting the batteries is also a killer. The sweet spot for longevity is to keep most batteries between 20%-80%. Charging to 100% for a road trip once in a while is OK as long as you leave right away. The Volt might read 0-100% on the instrument screen, however, the car doesn’t allow access to the true upper and lower percentages to protect the battery. Keep in mind, the Volt is a plug-in hybrid, not a full electric. I watched a lot of YouTube videos on the Volt before I leased one in 2014. Fun fact, one from GM said that the Volt has more lines of code than a 747.
What about speed of charge. You explained percent of charge, but how much heat is generated at high amperage charge levels. Does that have more of an influence on battery life.
I cannot answer the question directly, other than to point out that the latest ‘1000mph’ Tesla Superchargers use a charge cord thick enough to allow liquid coolant to around the wiring, as well as remote ‘conditioning’ of the vehicle’s battery as it approaches the station to allow it to charge as quickly as possible (~450 miles in ~15 minutes).
It’s unlikely that many Teslas will need the whole 450 mile charge; it’s probably closer to half that. So, most will be in and out of a Supercharger in around 10 minutes. That’s quite impressive, any way you look at it.
Speed of charge does heat up the battery. This is where the vastly improved battery management comes in. Tesla and other manufacturers with water cooled batteries actively cool while charging. You can hear the pumps and radiator fans of a Tesla while it’s at the Supercharger. As Rudiger mentioned, you can be in and out fairly quickly. The vast majority of electric car owners charge at home on either Level 1 (120V 12A), or Level 2 (240V 32A), and fast charge at Level 3 on the occasional road trip. Tesla Superchargers can do that up to 250A depending on the version and the car. Other fast chargers seem to be around 50-100A and constantly improving. Occasional use of high speed charging shouldn’t noticeably degrade the battery.
Our household’s first gen. Only complaint is cheap dash parts. Almost 258k Minnesota miles and still going strong:
Not sure why the photo did not load:
I don’t think I’ve ever thought of the first Prius being that old before. Wow. These will probably always remind me of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” as the fictional Davids’ ride.
How long do the batteries in that first Prius last? That’s obviously the most expensive replacement item in an older car. A friend had the 05 Civic Hybrid and when the batteries died, the cost to replace was more than the car. And Toyota did Hybrid much better than Honda.
Toyota attempted to turn the Prius into a family of cars, but that has failed. I think the Toyota hybrid system has a few more years in it because not everyone can handle the long charging times and lack of charging stations in many areas that an all electric car demands. When the chargers get into the suburbs of the big cities and into the farmlands of the Midwest, and when total charging times get down to a half hour or less, the people will give up on internal combustion engines. Until then, both have a place.