Responding

John Voelcker from Green Car Reports was kind enough to respond in comments below to this POG piece. I wanted to republish it on the front page, as it were, because I thought it was a great response and deserved better billing than the comments section.

Russell: Thanks for the good words. All of the questions in your last paragraph are very apt, and many of us will ask them as the cars get closer to the hands of actual drivers.

As for your comment on my closing question, I could probably have phrased it better. Here’s the point I was trying to get to …

Both cars are plug-ins, and hence will be perceived as “electric cars”. That is, users will expect them to run in electric mode some or most of the time.

From talking to Toyota and GM tech folks, I gather the Prius Plug-In may start its engine under many circumstances: Heavy load, full acceleration, a catalyst that’s cooling down, cold weather, and so forth. It remains fundamentally a power-split hybrid with a larger battery, and operates as such.

On the other hand, the Volt engineers tell me it switches on the engine only under one circumstance: The pack is depleted, which they say occurs only after 40 miles. (It may also fire the engine to start the car in extremely cold weather; must ask about that.)

SO, my question might better be: Will plug-in buyers expect continuous electric running for the stated range (12 or 40 miles)? If they do, I suspect the Prius Plug-In may have a perceptual problem, because it may well not run all-electric for 12 continuous miles. If not, no problem.

In either case, GM and Toyota are likely to be sold out of their first couple of years of production.

It’s in 2014 and after, as volume rises, that they’ll actually have to start to market these guys. That’s when it’ll get interesting!

The real cipher here is the Volt. As I said below, the Prius is a known quantity and, as John points out, perhaps the potential weakness of the Prius PHEV is that it is a Prius and not a brand new, designed from the ground up PHEV. Over the last couple years I’ve said the same thing here several times. While I love the Prius and can’t wait to see the Prius PHEV, I would prefer to see a brand new, designed to be nothing but a PHEV vehicle from Toyota. I think a PHEV should be smaller and lighter than the Prius (more range, better performance). I question whether or not the Prius is the ideal platform for a PHEV given where battery development is right now. All that is moot because this year Prius PHEV testing will begin.

Back to what John said…

I don’t know what the public perceptions of the PHEVs will be. None of us do (as John points out). It will be interesting to see if the Prius’ hybrid PHEV suffers in competition to the Chevy’s take on the PHEV concept. One thing both cars seem to insist on is that gas powered motors augment a pure EV concept for extended range.

I still think that two huge things give Toyota a leg up on producing a real PHEV. One, is using an existing, proven platform. For whatever drawbacks there are to using the Prius platform, there are also huge advantages and, let’s face it, Chevy’s been blowing smoke about the Volt for what, three years now? It’s still a mostly mythical car whereas the Prius is very real. Toyota has established itself in this altcars genre and I think that for every person who wants to buy a bowtie because it is a bowtie, there are just as many people who want the implied reliability and sound engineering that goes with the Toyota name.

John Voelcker wrote:

SO, my question might better be: Will plug-in buyers expect continuous electric running for the stated range (12 or 40 miles)? If they do, I suspect the Prius Plug-In may have a perceptual problem, because it may well not run all-electric for 12 continuous miles. If not, no problem.

My take on it is this, I don’t think consumers are going to care, too much, about how the ICE interacts in either vehicle. What will drive consumer reaction to the Prius PHEV and the Chevy Volt are the basics, MPG, ease of use, comfort, price, reliability. I don’t think that consumers will care overmuch about when the ICE starts and stops as long as it delivers on the PHEV potential of using very little gasoline. I could be wrong and if so, here are my words for future embarrassment but I don’t think I’ll be bummed out by what I’ve written in a few years.

My thanks to John Voelcker for taking the time to read my original article and add his thoughts to it.