2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid Preview

The 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid.

And TireKicker's unofficial "Green Week" (yesterday, the Nissan Leaf, Tuesday the Chevrolet Volt) continues with a car you can't buy yet. In fact, you can't even put in an order yet.

The 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid goes on sale sometime in spring of 2012 in  Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. The rest of the country waits until sometime in 2013. Orders won't be taken until late this year, but Toyota, which has been running a demonstration program of 600 Prius Plug-Ins for the last couple of years, has begun putting examples into the hands of automotive journalists, and that got us a week at the wheel.

The 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid's plug-in port.

Apart from the decal along the bottom of the doors reading "Plug-In Hybrid", that little door in the left front fender is the only obvious difference between a regular Prius and the plug-in. The Priuses on the street the past decade don't need to be plugged in. The batteries aren't allowed to drain fully and recharge through braking and other regenerative activity.

Charging the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid.

So what's the point of the Plug-In? Well, the standard Prius has extremely limited capabilities running on purely electric power...get above 25 miles per hour and the gasoline engine kicks in. Drive at most one mile on electricity alone, and the same thing happens.

The Prius Plug-In will operate in EV (electric vehicle) mode "under certain conditions" up to "near freeway speeds" for "approximately 10-15 miles".

The 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid's range indicator.

That's a lot of maybes, but it does allow people going short distances at city street and freeway speeds to do it (under certain conditions) without using gasoline. And you have the gasoline engine when the battery decides the party's over.

Because the battery isn't being asked to propel the car for 35 miles like the Volt, or 100 miles like the Leaf (both those are manufacturer estimates...under certain conditions), the Prius Plug-In Hybrid needs less recharging time. And this is likely to be a big selling point. Both the Volt and Leaf need 14 hours (give or take) to fully recharge a drained battery on 120V household current. Toyota says the Prius Plug-In will do it in 3 hours. And if you use a 240V charger, that drops to an hour and a half.

With at least 60 days to go before orders are taken (maybe longer) and perhaps six months or more before the first owners take delivery, it's too soon to come to conclusions about the Prius Plug-In, its usefulness, and where it will fit in a rapidly growing field of alternative vehicle. Will the limits of its pure electric operation be too much of a compromise for green buyers? Or will its either/or concept and the promise of quick recharge be a game-changer?

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2011 Nissan Leaf Review

The 2011 Nissan Leaf. Park one next to a Juke and contemplate automotive styling.

Welcome to TireKicker's unofficial "Green Week".  Just yesterday, we had a First Drive review of the Chevrolet Volt, an electric car with a safety net (namely a gasoline engine that kicks in when you're out of juice, which happens in 35 miles or less on a full charge). And, in the next few days, we'll review the Toyota Prius Plug-In, the Honda CR-Z, the Lexus CT 200h, and the Porsche Cayenne hybrid.

But today, it's the all-electric Nissan Leaf. No gas, and as the decals on the sides say (yep, our tester had them), "Zero Emission".

The interior of the 2011 Nissan Leaf: Futuristic, but functional.

It's a very nice, modern car. Not terribly gimmicky, yet with enough dashes of obvious tech here and there to remind you of your cutting-edge status. It drives well, is surprisingly quick, very quiet (no gasoline motor noise, for one), and is roomier inside than the outside suggests (the Nissan Tardis?)

$33,720 puts one in your driveway (our tester, with optional splash guards, ECO Design Package..that's the decals on the doors, Hologram 3D door entry plates and center console applique'...Protection Package, floor mats and cargo area mat, cargo net and safety kit, came to $35,430 with destination charges...but subtract the $7,500 tax credit and you're at $27,930).

Better yet, let that money put it in your garage, where hopefully you'll have the optional ($2,200) 240 volt charging station installed. The advantage...the ability to fully recharge a very-nearly-drained Leaf in just 7 hours. Use the charger that stashes in the trunk and hooks up to your household 120V current and it'll take 14.

Like optimism? You'll love the 2011 Nissan Leaf's range meter.

Nissan's early PR for the Leaf suggested a 100 mile range was attainable. The EPA, however, doesn't agree, and has issued a 73 mile estimated range on a full charge. Even that, though, can be optimistic. How you're driving, whether you're using the air conditioning, and things beyond your control such as traffic patterns, can all affect your range.

When the Leaf was dropped off for our test, it showed what the picture shows above...83 miles. But a 15-mile roundtrip from my office to run an errand brought that down to 57. No problem. I'd made arrangements with the building supervisor for a parking space next to a 120V outlet in the company garage. I'd get six hours worth of charge (not quite enough to get it to full, but giving me a comfortable cushion for the 25 mile drive home that evening).

Except.

The Leaf kept tripping the circuit breaker. Turned out to be the outlet's fault, not the car, but it meant no charge, and a drive home in rush hour with no more juice than was in the car.

57 minus 25 is 32. But the Leaf showed only a 19 mile range by the time I pulled into my driveway that evening....and it was estimating a 14-hour full recharge on household current. More trouble. I'd just finished a double shift. It was 7PM. I needed to leave for work at 4AM. That's only 9 hours of charging time.  I left the next morning showing 55 miles on the range meter, with a 25 mile drive (same as last night, just the other direction). Good news...it wasn't rush hour. Bad news...it wasn't rush hour. What that means is that while there wasn't much unpredictable about 4AM traffic, it also meant running 65 miles per hour on the freeway, which eats the charge quicker than say, 40 or 45.

The range meter showed 22 when I got to work. Thankfully, the building supervisor had sent an email. A good outlet had been located and blocked off for the Leaf. The bad news? The Leaf again needed 14 hours on 120V household current, and I was only going to be at work for 8.

The panel around the Nissan logo on the 2011 Leaf? That's the flap that opens for the charger.

This could have gone on forever, but Nissan scheduled a short loan. They dropped it with me at noon on Thursday, and picked it up the following Monday morning. So I finally got a full charge between 1PM and 3AM Friday afternoon/Saturday morning, but I wasn't commuting on Saturday and Sunday. I drove it for errands through the weekend on that one charge. And after giving it a full charge Sunday afternoon until 4AM Monday, I drove it to work and Nissan came and picked it up.

The 2011 Nissan Leaf from the rear.

So what did we learn? A few things:

1. The Leaf is a much better electric car than the General Motors EV-1 of the 1990s, a car whose range meter could go from 80 miles to 45 in just three miles. It is far more comfortable, carries more people and their possessions and is simply more practical.

2. If you drive more than 10 miles one way to work in a day, spend the $2200 for the 240V charger for your house. You'll have a full charge when you leave each morning and reserve power for lunch runs and unforseen emergencies.

3. If you drive more than 25 miles one way to work in a day, seriously consider doing whatever it takes to get a second 240V charger installed where you work. Again, a full charge in the morning, a full charge to get home on and reserve power for the stuff that comes up. If you can't make a 240V work charger happen, think twice about the Leaf.

4. If you ever have days where you drive more than 75 or 80 miles, or if your life or job are simply unpredictable in terms of how much and where you might have to drive at any given time, there's probably a better option for you.

Still, purely electric vehicles have a place in the future of the automobile, and there's no doubt Nissan will improve and refine the Leaf as battery technology improves. It's a good car, a commendable effort, and for some drivers, a solid choice.

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First Drive: 2011 Chevrolet Volt

The 2011 Chevy Volt.

It's a picture a lot of us have entertained in our brains...home for the night, having commuted without using a drop of gasoline, our new Chevrolet Volt sitting out front for the neighbors to envy.

But how realistic is that daydream? To find out, we borrowed a Volt from the good folks at Courtesy Chevrolet in Phoenix for four days, shorter than our usual tests, but enough to give us an overall impression of the car Motor Trend has named Car of the Year. First of all, the Volt isn't a purely electric car. It has a gasoline engine, too. But it's not a hybrid.

Hybrids blend the gas and electric motors in driving, switching between them as conditions warrant. The Volt runs solely on its electric motor, not using a drop of gas...until the battery runs out of power. And at that point, the gasoline engine (a 1.4 liter four) takes over.

Is the 2011 Chevy Volt running on gas or electric? Only the driver knows for sure.

If you can keep the Volt charged, it's possible to drive for days, weeks even, without using a single drop of gas. The range on pure electricity is 35 miles, according to Chevrolet (though we could never get the dashboard display to tell us more than 29 on a full charge). We managed it until day four, when the to-do list required about 55 miles worth of driving, and the car hadn't had enough time on household current to fully charge before the trip.

Still, in 122.9 miles, we only used 1.8 gallons of gasoline...an average of 65.1 miles per gallon. Not too shabby.

The 2011 Chevy Volt interior. Detroit meets Sci-Fi.

What's it like to drive? Very much like a Malibu...roomy, smooth...and, especially on electric power, quiet. There are some "future car" touches...like the gauge clusters (there are two...one which monitors charging, energy use and efficiency that shares the audio/climate control/nav screen, and the one in front of the driver) and the contrasting white center stack that replaces buttons for audio/climate/nav with a touch-sensitive surface. Oh, yeah...and the "whooshzoom" noises that accompany opening the car and starting it. A little too cute. You can turn it down or off (you can also set it to ear-splitting volume and fool the neighbors into thinking a movie with THX is about to start).

The base price is $40,280 and the one we drove had the leather trim package for $1,395, a rear camera and park assist for $695, forged polish 17-inch alloy wheels for $595 and a front license plate bracket for $15. Total price with destination charge: $43,700.  But remember, there's a $7,500 tax credit for buying one...so the real bottom line is $36,200. And that is a fair price for what you get.

But should you get one? Well, the key is how much you drive and how often (and where) you can charge. The car comes with a 120 Volt portable charging cord, so you can plug it into household current...but fully drained, it'll take 12 hours to get to a full charge that way.

It's only 4 hours with a 240-volt charger, and Chevy will sell you one of those for $490. Want it installed? That'll be $2,000.

                                  

Ideally, there'd be a charging station near where you work, too...but they're not everywhere yet.

Still, our first impression is a good one: It's possible to not use gas or to use a lot less than you otherwise would, and if you have to drive farther than your charge allows, you've got a gasoline engine that can take you 344 miles further (again, according to Chevrolet...we couldn't get the gauge to promise more than 231). That's a nice safety net to have and makes the Volt practical as your only car.

A full weeklong test is coming shortly.

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