Yesterday I bought a 2013 Prius Plug In. I've been looking at cars and I was looking at Toyota Camry, Toyota Corolla, Honda Accord or Honda Civic, but primarily the Camry. I went to 3 different car lots. The salesman was showing me the used Camrys on the lot and as we were walking down the row of cars, there was a Prius. I mentioned that I was always curious about the Prius, and I had never driven one. So I asked if I could test drive it. He went and got the key and we went on a test drive. I loved the car right away. I never even thought about the Camry after that. He knew a little bit about the Prius, but he got a few things wrong. He didn't know much at all about the Plug In. He was pretty accurate about the regular Prius features but he got the plug in stuff all wrong. He told me I would need to get a special 3 phase outlet installed at home. He also said I would be able to go 75 or 100 miles on a charge. The previous owner had never used the plug in, the cord was still wrapped in the original bubble wrap. So when I got home I was showing it to a friend and I took the cord out of the packing. I was very pleasantly surprised to see a 110 volt 3 prong plug on the end. I charged it for the first time today. I was disappointed to find out the charge is only worth about 10 miles. But the charge is quicker than I expected. It will get me to work in the morning, but I'll come home in HV mode. This is an awesome little car. I'm really excited about being a new Prius owner.
congrats and welcome! all the best. that's too funny, sorry he mislead you about ev miles, but i guess that's your responsibility. i think you will enjoy it as the the drug for more ev.
Nice PiP purchase and welcome. For some reason Virginia was one of the few states that Toyota sold PiP, and most of the other states Toyota sold PiP were CARB states. The flip-side of the shorter EV range is you got a ton of cargo space. You did lose the spare tire, I guess you know. Many threads here about that topic. Maybe the other owner used a different charging system?
Thank you. According to the salesman, PiP's are extremely rare around here. He said they have asked for them, but Toyota rarely sends them here, so he never sees them. We'll see. If there are others around here, I'm bound to run into someone.
I there any danger to battery life when an owner drives it for 3 years without plugging it in ever (low level of change for years)? Is there a chance that they only used the 220V plug and never the 110V?
Yeah, no spare tire. I hope I don't regret that later on... Yesterday I figured out how to reset the trip meters. There was one that looks like it had never been reset as it showed all the miles on the vehicle. It showed that 99% had been done in HV and 1% had been done in EV, and it broke it down as approx. 275 miles as EV. So if I'm reading that right, they must have charged it at least 20 times over the last three years. The charging cord looked unused and in the original bubble wrap, so I assume it hadn't been used. Maybe they re-wrapped it very nicely. Or they may have had to replace the cord when they turned it in at the end of their lease. But it looks like my assumption that they never charged it was wrong. I can't imagine not charging it. I've charged it 4 times already.
it's possible that they didn't have an outlet available at home. it's also possible they charged it more than that. when you charge away from home, there's usually an evse, not a 120v outlet. i don't think not charging much is bad for the battery. in fact, it may be good.
