It was now the 3rd test drive already I had with the Toyota Prius Plug-in. Oh boy this car feels good! First two test drives felt good also, but now that I am a bit more used to the car, it just starts to feel better and better the more I drive with it.

Road noise concern

I already wrote a bit about the road noise concern in earlier posts. Car had a bit more than 2000 km in the odometers. Maybe it has some impact that tires are run in, but in my opinion the road noise level was reduced a bit. And it is not a concern at all anymore. Car felt even silent most of the time.

Sense of the speed

Car drives extremely steadily. Which is ofcourse a good thing. Then the only bad thing is that you don’t sense the speed so well. It is super easy to drive too fast. Car plays three chimes when exceeding the speed limits and it also flashes the speed limit on the dash.

This is one of the latest EU regulations, all new cars from 2024 onwards have to do similar things in one way or another. There are some alternatives for the car manufacturers on how to implement the system. Toyota decided to use chimes to warn the driver.

Chime annoys a bit at first but is still something that the owner will get used to (atleast have to get used if they want to drive the car). One way to mitigate annoying sounds is to use more cruise control, so you won’t accidentally drive too fast.

Optimizing electric range

With 19” wheels the electric range is somewhere near 60 km. However if you use the factory navigation system and autoEV mode you can optimize the electric use to where it is the most beneficial.

This can be done also manually. And remember that if you’re doing roundtrips, i.e. you need to go back home, it might not be the most optimal to use all electrit when driving to the destination. Leave some “juice” back on the home trip as well.

My experience is that electric drive is most economical when driving 60 km / h or below. Although this applies to the internal combustion engine as well, the speed typically kills economy. But with this technique it is possible to reach even 100 km range with the electric drive only.