Introducing… The $40,000 Plug-In Prius
It’s here: after much talk, hype, third-party conversions, hand-wringing, and other drama, Toyota has finally announced the plug-in Prius. It starts at $32,000 plus destination… but the one you really want will cost you a cool forty G. Click the jump for availability, specs, and some personal hand-wringing.
Full details can be found at the new and very comprehensive Prius Plug-In site. Here’s the money shot, though:
The Prius Plug-in features an extended EV mode that can let you drive up to 15 miles on a single charge, up to 62 mph, as well as a quick three-hour charge time from a standard 120V AC household outlet. If you run out of electric charge, the vehicle seamlessly shifts into hybrid mode, still giving you great mpg.
That “great mpg” should decrease a little bit in the real world compared to the standard Prius, since the Plug-In carries about 176 pounds of batteries. Toyota’s made the fairly interesting decision to equip the base $32,000 Plug-In with a reasonably comprehensive list of standard equipment including:
- 6.1 inch nav screen
- LED tails and DRLs
- heated front seats
- power folding mirrors
The greenies may have wanted a plug-in penalty box, but Toyota isn’t bothering to provide one. In 2012, plug-in hybrid tech will still be a luxury feature, not a way to save money on fuel. To emphasize the point, there’s an “Advanced” model at just over $40K including destination that offers:
- LED headlights
- JBL sound system
- Dynamic Cruise Control
- auto-dim mirrors
You get the idea: this may drive like a crippled econobox from 1988, but it won’t be equipped or priced like one.
For 2012, availability will be limited to the usual suspect states in the Northeast and West Coast. Flyover-state hicks such as yours truly will be forced to drive out to a stocking dealer. Toyota explicitly suggests that we do so in their FAQ, assuming we can stop screwing our sisters and manually masturbating farm animals for profit long enough to make the trip.
I think the Advanced Package car might be a good fit for my life companion, Vodka McBigbra; she rarely covers more than 15 miles at a time and she does not value outright over-the-road pace in an automobile. At forty grand, however, one wonders if there isn’t a competitor which offers more value. Perhaps a longer battery-only range? A more iPod-like interior? A chance to get up close and personal with my friendly local Chevrolet dealer? Hmm…
More by Jack Baruth
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see the article from green car reports: In the SF bay area, people will be happy to pay the extra $ to be able to drive solo for free in the carpool lane. By John Voelcker Reports say Toyota expects to sell as many as 15,000 of its 2012 Prius Plug-In Hybrid model per year in the United States. But electric-car fans and advocates have vigorously debated whether the plug-in Prius is a “real” electric car, whether its 9 to 14 miles of electric range is adequate, and how much of an increase in gas mileage it delivers over the standard 50-mpg 2012 Prius hybrid. None of that matters. Toyota is likely to sell every single 2012 Prius Plug-In Hybrid it can deliver to California dealers for one simple reason. It’s about the stickers, stupid. Put more politely, the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid is expected to qualify for the highly prized Clean Air Vehicle sticker in California that gives its driver access to High-Occupancy Vehicle lanes on certain crowded freeways in and around San Francisco and Los Angeles even when traveling solo. That privilege—formerly extended to 75,000 owners of three specific hybrids, but now ended for those cars—turned out to add as much as $1,500 in value to the value of those hybrids in the used-car market against the same cars without the stickers. So it’s logical to expect that the 2012 Prius Plug-In, with a base price starting at $32,760 including destination, will enjoy the same popularity. Traffic congestion remains grim in the state’s two largest urban agglomerations, and time is money. Right now, the only new cars that qualify for the white Clean Air sticker are the electric Nissan Leaf (with a range limited to 100 miles or so), the Tesla Roadster (starting at $109,000), and the tiny numbers of natural-gas Honda Civics and hydrogen fuel-cell Honda FCX Clarity models. So for drivers who are leery of the all-electric Leaf’s limited range, but want solo driving in less-crowded HOV lanes, the Prius Plug-In is the easy, obvious, best-known solution. And we predict there will be waiting lists for the car for many months as word gets out. The one fly in the ointment? That would be plans by local transportation authorities to convert HOV lanes to tolled “Lexus lanes,” in which drivers pay a variable fee for solo access to those same lanes. Under those plans, electric-car drivers would pay the same tolls as any other solo driver—and they’re not happy about it. But for every other HOV lane in the crowded parts of California, expect to see lots and lots of Priuses starting next spring. They’ll look just like regular 2012 Priuses, except for a second round door (for the charge port) on the right rear fender—and that invaluable green white carpool lane sticker on the bumper. The 2012 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car does not qualify for California Advanced Technology-Partial Zero-Emission Vehicle (AT-PZEV) status, which would allow its drivers to get the same sticker—even though it runs electrically for up to 40 miles before the range-extending engine kicks in, unlike the Prius. Although Chevy has said in the past it plans to qualify the Volt for the sticker, GM representatives refused to say when that would happen—or whether they would charge extra for AT-PZEV status in Volts destined for California and the other states that have adopted its emissions standards. So who cares about plugging in? It’s all about the sticker—even if Prius Plug-In drivers never once plug in their car. Does that make sense to reduce emissions, which is the stated goal of the HOV access scheme? Oh, that’s another story altogether.