No. They should have changed the shape. A large number of these early adopters of electric cars/plug ins WANT people to know that their car is an electric car/plug in so they can brag about it or whatever. If it looks like a normal prius it will likely not fare so well unless they have exclusive colors or something.
It's a very popular car with a top auto manufacturer. If it's close to what they say it is I think it'll be a winner.
It's a good price, but they don't mention charge time. My guess is that is still going to be a hard selling point. But there are many, many people trying to improve charge transfer times. When that happens, when it takes only about twice as long as to fill up a gas tank, then they will sell.
I disagree. I don't really care that it takes 6 hours for the icemaker in my freezer to fill with ice. This is because it happens automatically. All I care about is that when I walk to my fridge I get ice every time. Similarly, EV's will take off when you can park one just like any other car and it begins charging automatically. If just about every time you hop in your car there's a full charge (and you didn't have to physically do anything to make it so), suddenly you've got a massive advantage over gas cars. Every week I carve 15 minutes out of my life to stand around like a dipshit waiting for dinosaur juice to pour into my car. It's still more convenient though than plugging shit in every time. We're living now in an era where you have to fill the ice tray with water every time so you can plan for the ice three hours from now. When the ice is just there, always, the debate will be over.
Good luck convincing everyone to install wireless charging stations everywhere. What are you going to do when you go off-roading?
Basically I'm against full-on plug-ins because all you are doing is shifting your fossil fuel energy consumption from Oil to (mostly) coal. Add to the fact that the country's electrical grid is currently woefully inadequate to handle an influx of millions of high-amperage consuming vehicles to it. A massive infrastructure investment would be needed to do this, and I see as much change of that happening in today's political climate as I have of teabagging HCP's wife while nutting all over Ann Romney's nappy dugout.
lol. What percent of cars on any given day are used off road? I'm an avid hunter/fisherman/hiker, and I probably only put 2-5k/year on dirt roads (and maybe 400 miles on true 4x4 roads). People buy 4x4 SUV's/trucks largely for the image. I'd keep my xterra if EV went mainstream, but it'd be relegated to that 2-5k/year driving only. It's just too much hassle, too expensive, and not going to be "cool" anymore when EV eventually takes off. Why is it people will spend $25k on a car, but not a couple grand on an automated charging system (wireless or wired)? You sound like somebody arguing that people will never buy an ice machine for their fridge when they can just stick the tray in themselves.
Look, I like the idea of electric cars. But I think the idea of also having charging stations everywhere is unrealistic. Do you want them in grocery store parking lots? Do you want them in your work parking lot? On street parking? If it's just at your house, sure that's realistic and convenient. But it's not the great scenario you described. You still have to always charge your car overnight.
From what I read, this model of Prius still has a gasoline engine. It just _can_ run on battery only for short trips.
My dad almost bought the Nissan Leaf a little while ago. 100% electric, up to 100 miles a charge. He ended up getting an Inifiniti that gets 16 MPG in the city instead. My dad makes no sense.
I just read the specs on this...only 11 miles in EV mode. 3 hrs to charge on a 120v, 1.5 on 240v. I know it takes steps but 11 miles!!! Not so good. Leaf gets about 100. I saw a video of a company that is trying to make battery changing stations so you don't fill your battery just swap it out for a full one. Best solution I have heard of for the charge issue. They work in the cost of the battery to the price for a swap and it still comes out cheaper in the cost per mile then gas. Also lowers the cost of the vehicles because the battery cost is taken off the price tag.
I had noticed the 11 miles too and considered that either it was a misprint, or that I don't know Jack about electric cars. I determined that 11 was so low that both theories would be needed.
11 miles is pretty good, when taken in the context of what the Prius does. The Prius does (or at least used to) fire up the gas engine to heat up the catalytic converter. The cost of that gas isn't well amortized over lots of short trips. If you can use EV mode for those short trips, you get an impressive bump in MPG.
A bicycle will accomplish pretty much the same thing any electric car will, with zero pollution. As an expensive and highly-polluting alternate to in-city bus travel, electric cars are nice.
No, I'm not. Bikes need no charging and recharging, and also have no trip limits. They can cover far more miles in less time than an electric car.
