PHV is the official name, as clearly confirmed by the type listed on Toyota's website. In Japan, they actually get a "PHV" emblem on the car itself. Here, many people like the "PiP" shorthand reference. That doesn't exactly lend itself toward any type of plug-in identifier, similar to what HSD does now. The confusion PIP causes baffles me as to why/how it still lives on. For many years, that's what we've been calling the units of measure on the fuel-guage.
PiP = Plug in Prius Easy to type and with a context anyone knows what you are referring to. This is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
Not utilizing a naming standard is a problem in the waiting... especially when the audience expanded beyond the "anyone" currently reading this. Think about a vastly expanded audience, less informed, and years later. Waiting to react is not a trait we embrace either. Consider all the other hybrid abbreviations of the past, didn't we learn anything from that?
Toyota was pretty clear with me it is Prius Plug-in Hybrid, even saying the P in Plug is capital while the i in -in is lower case. The Toyota website even says 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid. I do not know John, I'm actually pretty content with calling it what it is now. I haven't seen much confusion actually. Now getting people to use a lower case v for Prius v, that's another story.
There won't be much confusion HERE, but we are contributing to inconsistencies elsewhere. And what are those of us adhering to the standard being told/asked to do here? Keep in mind package identification became a problem later, but was dismissed as a non-issue initially.
When I put in my order today, all dealership personnel referred to the car as the Prius PHV. Although it's not a big issue, I didn't think it would hurt to offer the suggestion I'll keep calling my new car a Prius PHV and you can call yours a Prius PIP OK LOL I just looked at the Prius USA site. There seem to be a number of references to a Prius Plug-in Hybrid. So if you want to get technical, let's follow their wording and abbreviate on that. So it would be PPi or PPiH. LOL
Knowing that some start their plug-in quest from Toyota, then proceed to search the web for the reference they first saw, it would be helpful to match that... .
I have no problem with PHV but Danny's the admin lol. The Plug In forum was meant for a discussing the PHV before its arrival. Technically, it could fold into the regular Prius forums. We're still in the process of deciding on the organisation of PC with the influx of new Prius models.
Not really tideland, I named the plug in forum what it is once we knew the announced name here with the whole capital p thing etc I described above. Yeah if Danny wants PHV by all means but I've gone on record liking it the way it currently is, Plug-in Prius.
I will never call the PIP the PHV for the same reason I will never call my HyCam a TCH - PIP and HyCam are far more fun, alliterative, engaging and descriptive than those other straight boring acronyms, IMHO.
If our audience was exclusively first-timers, that would work. But for those coming from or still on the outside, searches with "Prius PHV" will be much more likely and will obviously be more fruitful than "pip" or a "plug-in" prefix/suffix. So if you want threads & posts to be seen beyond the confines of the members here. So for the sake of adding value to the forums & threads...
Toyota website use Prius plug-in. I would bet big bucks that most people looking for PIP info use plug in prius or prius plug in as their search term. Only the people here would even know that Toyota sometimes likes to use PHV.
How about we rename it Prius Plug-in PHV PIP? Would that make everyone happy LOL? I know search engines would like all the keywords in the forum name
Actually, it is only used by Toyota for the basic introduction. The rest is referred to by PHV. Look at what the popular media does. Same thing. After the intro, it too is PHV.
We called it PHEV to start but Toyota shortened it to PHV when they started communicating with us (Prius Experts). It's because they preferred to call it a Plug-in Hybrid Vehicle as opposed to a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle since hybrids in today's world imply an electric portion.
