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2015 Toyota Prius T spirit


liner33
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Ordered one of these today to replace our well loved Skoda Superb , should get delivery in a few weeks

 

We wanted a nice relaxing car to drive , for the wife really, so needed to be auto and pretty effortless and the Prius fits the bill

 

Plus she often gets one when she works in the US and decided she liked them

 

Going to be base white like this one , will miss the Superb though but decided we would shake up the cars a little and replace my Fabia VRS in a few months with a larger vehicle

 

PRI_MC_T_spirit_070_00029_zpsc2f806ef.pn

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They put it in the boot, has that not normally been the case?  The plug in doesnt get a spare nor models with solar roof they just get the foam . We had to add spare tyres to our last two Skodas and the 370z doesnt have the room for one anyhow

 

We test drove a plug in but didnt think it was worth the premuim

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My 2009 T Spirit had a skinny in the lower boot compartment, but I had heard rumours that the 2015 version would have only the gunge. I'm pleased to hear that the rumours were wrong. I had endless trouble getting a skinny for the plug-in, including deliberate obstruction by Toyota UK of my attempts to purchase the part.

 

No spare would be a deal breaker for me now.

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Nice one, I've never been that keen on the shape but they do tick all the right boxes and they're one of the few cars that would be an ideal replacement for the missus Civic when the time comes. What is the Toyota auto box like?

 

I'm surprised you're getting rid of the Fabia so soon, you've not had it long.

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It's the Superb that going , had it 6 years and done 85,000 miles in it.

 

The cvt is very smooth , couldn't get over how quiet it was . We were looking at replacing the Superb with a yeti but wasn't impressed with it , lots of wind noise and engine was rough , plus it's pretty ugly !

 

Mind you we are thinking of changing the Fabia this year as well , we've had that three years but I'd like something bigger and since we are downsizing to the Prius then we will need something for family gp holidays etc

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 What is the Toyota auto box like?

Strictly speaking, the Prius does not have a gear box. There is a planetary gear train with three separate torque/power sources attached to it (the IC engine and two electric motors). Varying the rate of rotation of any of the power sources changes the rate of rotation of the driving wheels. So the gears are always engaged and there are no gear changes in the conventional sense. I've hugely over simplified this description, but there is lots of detailed information about the system on the net if anyone is interested.

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I'll have to read up about them but after a quick look on autotrader (looking at 04-05 reg) most have done well over 100k, some even nearing 200k so they must be reliable cars but I'd imagine the battery needs replacing on them. The £10 tax would also be very appealing!

 

What is the real world mpg like for town driving?

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About 60mpg real world driving apparently. Should be a saving on fuel as the Superb does about 41-43mpg but of diesel but that wasnt the motivation since depreciation costs a lot more than fuel , but it was only about 25% more for a new one over a 3 year old 15,000 mile one 

 

Tax is free on the newer ones and the battery is covered for 8 years or 100,000 miles, from what I have heard (granted its gossip) but a new battery pretty much writes a 10 year old one off. 

 

sagitar , is there any good forums online ?

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There's a Prius forum on the Toyota Club site at http://www.toyotaownersclub.com/forums/forum/52-hybrid-toyota-prius/ but by far the best one technically is US based Priuschat site here http://priuschat.com/categories/gen-iii-2010-2015-toyota-prius-forums.93/

 

You have to be a bit careful with the US site because there are some specification differences on cars built or delivered there, but it's all pretty obvious.

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Just out of curiosity and not designed to put anyone off the car but how much does the battery cost?

 

http://www.toyota.co.uk/hybrid-faq

 

Will the battery be replaceable in Hybrids or will the car lose its value/the battery very expensive to replace, a bit like an iPhone battery is very hard to replace?

It is extremely unlikely that a battery will need replacing. In the unlikely event that the hybrid battery does need to be replaced and the warranty has expired, the cost is approximately £800. An annual Hybrid Health Check at a Toyota Dealer is the best way to ensure you are safeguarding the health of your vehicle for years to come.

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The Prius has two batteries; the high voltage traction battery and the low voltage battery that boots the computer and enables start-up. Surprisingly, it is the low voltage battery that gives trouble. It's quite small and tends to discharge when the car is not in use because of the quiescent load from sensors etc. If, like me, you do only low mileages, it pays to give it a regular boost charge.

 

The traction battery is very well managed by the system, which avoids running it to the extremes of charge/discharge. It gets a fairly easy regime aimed at extending the battery life and leaving plenty of headroom for regenerative braking. Premature battery failures are very rare. The battery pack is made up of multiple modules and large numbers of small individual cells so that even when the battery pack performance is beginning to degrade, it is still possible to refurbish the pack by replacing the cells that show early signs of failure. So it's possible to avoid the big hit that would result from the need to buy a completely new battery.

 

I believe the replacement cost figure shown above must be the cost of a re-built pack. The cost of an entirely new battery would be much higher than the figure quoted.

 

I think one of the real engineering successes of the Prius is the way in which Toyota have been able to manage the traction battery for long life and the extent to which they have been able to achieve a high level of battery re-cycling and keep down replacement costs. Of course, the Prius traction battery is relatively small and so it does not need the kind of extreme charging regimes that plug-ins with bigger batteries require in order to reduce charging times.

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What is the real world mpg like for town driving?

 

In the three years that I drove the T-Spirit I managed about 55 mpg. A lot depends upon journey patterns and I do a lot of very short journeys. It's not a problem in the summer but in the winter it plays havoc.

 

If you look at Fuelly you'll see an enormous range of mileages, but I think liner is about right as long as the "warm-up" proportion of the journey is pretty normal.

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Some good info there and 55mpg around town is brilliant, I think the Civic (auto) struggles to hit 30mpg. With the battery it must be cheaper to replace/re-condition than actually buy a new car but it does sound like they should last the life of it. I guess if buying used a high mileage is probably the better option as you know it's been used regularly so the batteries would've been kept charged.

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