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Plug in Prius

2013 Toyota Plug-in-prius

I recently upgraded from a 2001 Acura Integra to a 2013 Toyota Prius plug in. The Integra was getting older, mpg wasn't great and the dealer was offering a pretty good trade-in, a big discount on Plug-in-prius (PiP) and  0% financing.

The good

Mpg is excellent. Even without the plug in battery the car gets about 60 mpg if you stay in the 65-70 mph range. This basically matches the regular Prius even though the larger Li battery pack adds a hundred or more pounds. With the ev battery fully charged I get about 80 mpg on my 35 mile 40 minute trip. Oh, and the pip displays helpful trip summary after being powered off:
Plug-in-prius trip summary
Side decal
The touch screen on the in car system works relatively well. It appears to be a resistive touch screen though. Resistive touch screens are being replaced by by surface and projected capacitance technologies. Resistive only detects single touches, requires harder touches, and takes more time to detect a touch. They also transmit less light than capacitive so a stronger backlight is needed for the same apparent brightness. Given the automotive setting it may have been a cost or reliability concern that pushed Toyota towards the older resistive technology but almost every smartphone and tablet are using capacitive. Maybe they'll upgrade in the near future.

Bluetooth is easy to pair and its easy to switch between devices. Bluetooth takes a while to start up, am/fm is available as soon as the car is started.

The bad

The Entune system is terrible. Modern applications rely on Internet connectivity, being able to book tables via OpenTable, weather updates etc, so something has to permit the car and the Entune system to get Internet connectivity. Android phones can apparently be used to provide Internet connectivity to Entune without any additional software but this isn't the case with iOS devices like the iPhone. iOS devices need to install the Entune application and have it running in order to provide this connectivity. The real question is why didn't Toyota use either the Bluetooth Personal Area Network profile or a WiFi hotspot? Almost all smartphones have hotspot support, providing this support through WiFi and, at least for the iPhone, also through Bluetooth. I use the hotspot feature all of the time with my laptop and tablet. People also aren't happy with the Entune application itself. The iTunes page for the Entune app has a rating of 2 starts as of 2013-06-02 but a bigger question is why there is an Entune application at all? Come on Toyota. I'm betting we won't see an update for the in-car software to fix the issue either but it is 2013.

Chargepoint

Chargepoint is a company building out a network of charging stations for plug-in and electrical vehicles (EV). These charging stations are the EV version of gas stations with a few caveats. EV charging can take hours with today's technology, although Tesla appears to have solved part of that issue with their Supercharger stations. Chargepoint has been positioning stations at locations where it is ok to leave your car for an hour or two, such as malls, grocery stores, plazas, airport parking etc. I hadn't heard of Chargepoint until I got the PiP. Then I spotted a station at a 99 Restaurant a few miles from where I work and went to try it. Of course I didn't have a Chargepoint account yet so I had to get one of those and wait for the activation card, an rfid card, to come in the mail.

Plug-in-prius charging port with charger attached
At this point many of the charging stations are free. The Chargepoint iPhone app, while not flashy or fast, does work pretty well for locating stations and looking at your current charge status.

I suspect that Chargepoint's business model is to build out a huge network of charging stations for EV and plug-in vehicles, either free or lower cost. In the near term, the next several years, battery technology will likely remain limited enough to make it useful to pick up a charge when you are at the store or mall or work to extend your car's range or make it possible to get to and from work. This period of time may be where Chargepoint wants to start charging for electricity and making a profit. The flaw in Chargepoint's business model is that battery technology is quite likely to improve. At some point you'll be able to go a few hundred miles on a relatively low cost battery pack. When this happens the desire to charge will go down, you'll just plug in when you get home in the evening. Charging stations would then be something you would use for longer distance trips, like filling up at a station off of the highway so you could go beyond the X hundred mile range of the battery. The technology used for the current Chargepoint stations is a standard, SAE J1772. Compared to Tesla's Supercharger technology the J1772 is pretty low power. As battery technology improves it looks like J1772 will have to be updated or replaced. Newer batteries (or the huge ones in Tesla's cars) would take several hours to charge at J1772 rates. This shift also makes me skeptical of Chargepoint's business model.

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