This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of employ.

The Toyota Prius Prime plug-in is the all-time hybrid the automaker sells. Equip a Prius Prime the same way as the popular regular Prius hybrid, and the deviation is less than $i,000. With the Prius Prime, fifty-fifty if you bulldoze 20-25 miles to piece of work and back daily, you lot'll be running exclusively on cheap electricity during the piece of work week. Because it's a Toyota, information technology comes standard with an excellent safety suite chosen TSS-P. Even equally a compact automobile, the Prius Prime is reasonably comfortable for four adults. And it was adequately quiet and comfy on the highway. This is a solid, Corolla-size vehicle that happens to be a hybrid.

How the Prius Prime number Works

All Prius Prime models combine the same front-drive layout, an viii.8-kWh, 265-pound lithium-ion bombardment pack with an EPA range of 25 miles, two electrical motor-generators, and the "bridled fury" of a 95-hp 1.8-liter Atkinson-bicycle inline-iv gas engine (descriptor courtesy of Car and Driver). Total output, gas and battery, is 121 hp. The planetary gear arrangement effectively works as a continuously variable transmission.

Hop in the Prius Prime number and it shares many features common to the Prius and few other cars: The layout is flowing and modern. The instrument panel, what's usually behind the steering wheel, is in the center top of the dashboard. Some will have a while to warm to it. The center console includes a shiny white plastic tray. There's a nubby blue-knobbed shifter fastened to the dashboard. The Prius Prime delivers leisurely 0-60 dispatch times of about ten.5 seconds with all systems running, and almost two seconds more on battery power only. A Tesla this is not.

If the battery pack is total, the Prius Prime number starts up in EV fashion–or you lot can button a dashboard push button for hybrid mode and more often than not run on combustion engine ability. A separate EV Automobile push button lets the motorcar decide when to run in hybrid or EV power. At that place are also Eco, Normal and Ability modes. Eco makes the car accelerate slower; Power seems a bit quicker than Normal at doling out horsepower. In metropolis or highway driving, there'south plenty power, just this is not the car for passing on 2-lane highways. In my driving, I found the battery mode was skillful for just over 20 miles. One time EV style is effectively used upwardly, the battery nevertheless has enough power to run in hybrid way, or what Toyota calls accuse-sustaining mode. Reverse is an electric-only mode.

Current Toyota Prius hybrid sedan (top) and Prius Prime plug-in hybrid bear strong family resemblance. Prime is 4 inches longer at 183 inches; both are 58 inches high.

Urban Runabout That Can Accept Long Trips

I tested the 2017 Prius Prime number (which shipped spring 2017) and the 2018 Prius Prime should be substantially the same. It is an offshoot of the fourth-generation Prius that launched as a 2016 model. The test motorcar was comfortable and quiet in the way most modern meaty cars in the 180-190-inch long range are. At that place's only so much a meaty automobile with a short wheelbase can do to avoid pavement bumps. Forepart and rear seating is reasonable for adults. There is no middle rear seat on the Prius Prime; the mainstream Prius seats a 5th passenger snugly in the centre rear.

The Prius Prime is best described every bit a city and suburban car that tin can continue long trips, since information technology'southward not saddled with beingness a pure battery-electric vehicle as the similarly sized Tesla Model 3 or smaller Nissan Leaf are. EV purists may non similar that the Prius Prime number in EV Auto mode jumps back and forth from gas to electric, merely they can't mutter virtually the unmarried-tank range: 500-plus miles. Officially, it's rated at 54 mpg combined city-highway and 133 mpg-due east, a measure of the efficiency of the electric drive. MPG-e measures how far you can become electrically on the equivalent of the 115,000 BTUs in one gallon of gasoline, which is equal to 33.7 kilowatt hours of electricity. Charging takes v.5 hours on 120 volts, or two.ii hours on 240 volts.

The Prius Prime number Premium and Avant-garde trim lines get an xi.six-inch LCD display. No Apple tree CarPlay or Android Machine, though.

The Prius Prime Trim Walk

The Prius Prime comes in three trim lines, or model variants.

  • The base Prius Prime Plus, $27,995 list including $895 freight, comes with a 7-inch centre stack LCD, Toyota Entune audio, navigation, an app suite, and TSS-P, Toyota'south suite of safety features: lane keep assist, stop-and-go adaptive cruise control, automatic high beams, and a pre-collision/pedestrian detection system with automatic braking. The only option (on all three trim lines) is premium pigment ($395) on two of the six exterior colors.
  • The Prius Prime Premium, $29,695 list, adds a Tesla-similar vertical LCD (11.half dozen inches diagonal), Qi smartphone charger, and nicer seat trim.
  • The Prius Prime Advanced, $33,995, further adds blind spot detection (not available every bit an option beneath Advanced), head-up display, parking sonar and parking assist, and LED fog lamps.

Toyota'south Entune infotainment organization is workmanlike, but not country of the art, and it doesn't calibration to offering more utility on the bigger screens of the Premium and Advanced. Entune doesn't back up Apple CarPlay and Android Car. Instead, Toyota is working on a competing, open up-source spec called SmartDeviceLink, appear at CES 2017. Ford, Subaru, Lexus, Mazda, and Lincoln are likewise on board. (Some other makers may support SDL and CarPlay/Android Auto.)

At 183 inches long, in the eye of compact-machine territory, the Prius Prime seats four comfortably. There is no center seat in back.

Prius Prime number: Should You Buy?

The plug-in hybrid market is pocket-size, for now. The tiptop sellers are the Chevrolet Volt with 16,710 sales through Oct, the Prius Prime with 16,682, Ford'southward aging Fusion Energi midsize sedan at viii,026, and the Ford C-Max Energi compact hatchback with seven,181. In comparison, Toyota reported 10-month sales of the Prius sedan at 55,443.

If you're comparing the Prius hybrid sedan, proficient for 2 miles of electrical driving, with the Prius Prime number expert for twenty-25 miles, we see the Prius Prime number as a better bargain–peculiarly for commuters who tin can fit most of their daily commute within that range. Falling back to traditional hybrid manner, it'due south rated at 53 mpg, and between BEV and EV drive, one tank of gas will take yous 500-plus miles. With that kind of mpg, it's as good as whatever machine for long-distance driving in terms of economy.

The plug-in Chevrolet Volt costs several g dollars more, but it also has twice the bombardment range, an EPA-rated 53 miles. The other PHEV worth looking at is the Hyundai Ioniq, which can be had as a plug-in hybrid with an 8.9-kWh battery (almost the same every bit Prius Prime), traditional hybrid, or pure EV.

The Prius 1, Ii, Iii, and Iv and Touring refer to the trim lines of the mainstream Toyota Prius. The Prius Iii is closest to the Prius Prime Plus. The Prius C is a smaller hatchback vehicle. The Prius 5 is a Prius station wagon/crossover with a bigger cargo surface area. (There is no Prius Prime number wagon.) If y'all need more than capacity than that, get for the Toyota RAV4 Hybrid.

Our recommendation: If you're looking at a hybrid, await at plug-in hybrids, likewise, specially Volt, Ioniq in one case information technology's available in December, and Prius Prime. All told and comparably equipped, the Toyota Prius Prime plug-in hybrid is close to the regular Prius on price, is essentially the same on mileage, and it takes you 20-25 miles on bombardment power, which for many people would be the majority of their daily driving. Toyota has sold some 2 million Priuses; they're mainstream vehicles now. From our perspective, the Prius Prime plug-in should exist the flagship of the Toyota Prius fleet.

Often we recommend the peak trim line to become the most, best tech. Here most everything y'all need for safety and driver assistance is on the entry-level Prius Prime number Plus via Toyota Safety Sense-P except for blind spot detection, which is only on the Prius Prime Avant-garde for $6,000 more. Nosotros hope Toyota decouples blind spot detection from Prius Prime Advance and rolls it into TSS-P sooner than later.