The prius stock battery is weak compared to my wifes Mercury Mariner battery. The Mariner acceleration on battery alone is excellent - she can get up to 30 mph in no time on just the battery. In my prius it has very slow acceleration at a dead stop while running only on battery. Is it possible to buy aftermarket (stronger) batteries for the prius so I can at least driver the car up to 30 mph only on battery?
Another battery will not improve the acceleration of the Prius in fact it will probably slow it down due to it's wieght, as it is not the main factor. The limiting factor is the maximum output of the HV inverter that I believe is 25KW "don't quote me" MG2 is rated at 50KW. The inverter converts the nominal 201v dc to 500ac 3phase variable frequency to drive the motor.
Simple answer, no. You could either ocnsider a 2012 Plug-in Prius or do a conversion to yours to Plug-in and get brisk all EV acceleration.
Hi Luke. Do you have the EV button (EV mod) in your Prius? Without this you have to accelerate very gingerly in order to keep it in electric mode. Is this the slow acceleration you are referring to? With the EV mod the Prius can accelerate moderately well up to about 30 mph on electric alone, however it is almost always undesirable (from a fuel efficiency perspective) to do so.
The Mariner may be able to accelerate to 30 on batt alone but, it is nowhere near the mpg king the Prius is. My advice is, go ahead and accelerate to 30 as fast/robust as you want, use the engine. You'll still beat the Mariner by at least 10 mpg's (easily). With some proper hypermiling, you can beat it by 20.
