The New Prius is... SICK! (Solar panel roof)

So what type of cars are you usually into is the question that I usually get now that we have this Autofocus channel and we talk about all these different cars and the answer that I usually give is high tech cars .

That's the sort of generic version of it , right ?

A lot of electric cars are on the forefront of this .

So they come up a lot , but just anything high tech in a car is interesting .

And I , I think that actually does still apply , but also this one came up completely randomly and organically because I just kept seeing it on the road .

And I was like , is that , is that a Prius ?

I don't know if I've , is this the new Prius ?

And I eventually I had to ask and check it out .

And I guys , I think the new price is kind of sick .

I don't know if I'm crazy for this one , but I really had to check it out .

And now that I've been driving it , there are a lot of really cool features and tech in this car and I completely get it .

I want to talk about this as a hybrid so a lot of people go straight to E V S as the highest tech cars because they typically are .

But let's be honest , not everybody is ready for an electric car right away .

Right .

They're expensive .

They are for the most part still relying on the infrastructure .

You need to be able to know you're going to be able to charge wherever you go .

And so for a lot of people , they're not ready for an E V yet , but they are in the market for a car and the stop gap between them is a hybrid and this is sort of the king of hybrid world , maybe not the king of hybrid world , but it's the most familiar hybrid to most people .

This is the Prius prime , meaning it's a plug in hybrid .

It has 44 miles of electric only range .

You can plug it in and charge it up and never sip the gas at all .

But it does also have a gas tank for 400 plus miles of gas range .

It's got something crazy like 55 MPG and it actually looks kind of good this time .

So let's check it out .

Look at this thing , man , this , this is the Toyota Prius prime , the 2023 .

Uh There are a lot of really good angles to it , but I think in general what's happening here is they've given it very E V styling despite it not being fully electric .

So I'm gonna hit the , the lock button here so you can see the lights , the ambient lights have this sort of a check mark .

We've seen a lot of these in new cars , the headlights are below them and I think it's got a pretty good front facing look .

The only weird part about the front .

Honestly , to me is this this big hub on the windshield wiper looks kind of weird , but then it's got this big slope , this big sloping windshield right from the front of the car all the way to the top and the back of the trunk , which is a hatch .

It's got these big wheels , it's got these 19 inch wheels .

You can see the brakes in there .

Nothing too crazy .

And on this side is a gas cap .

This is actually the handle to get into the back seat .

We'll get to that in a second .

On the other side is gonna be your electric charge , port door .

No crazy fast charging again , it's a pretty small battery .

So just regular ccs , you can plug it up just like that .

But here is another good angle .

The back of the Prius .

I think it looks good .

Wait , let's see the lights , those your left and right and you can also , I'm gonna open the trunk .

Actually , this is a good opportunity to show you the hatchback .

So what's funny about this car is this is maybe the slowest opening hatchback I've ever seen but I also noticed it has the fastest opening and closing windows I've ever seen .

So I'll show you that in a second kind of random , but you can fit charging equipment over here .

This is a tiny bit of extra storage in the styrofoam , but a reasonable size trunk , I would say .

And obviously this is the uh the cover which you can pop out and actually fold in half and put on the floor if you don't want the cargo cover , uh sort of privacy cover .

But I think it has a good look with this sort of a tail light bar here at the back , this entire left to right width which turns on when the car is on and I'm liking it .

So that's the Prius prime spec wise is not even like a ton has changed about the Prius .

It was 100 and 30 horsepower before now .

It's 220 horsepower , it's still slow .

It's still like a seven second 0 to 60 .

Um You're not getting this car for how sporty it is .

You're getting it for how efficient it is and for just how little you will pay to think about fuel .

But there's one more X factor because this Prius that I'm testing and I didn't even realize this until it showed up has one more trick up its sleeve , which is solar on the roof a little dusty right now because we just had a storm , but a solar panel on the roof that actually contributes to the car's drive range .

So let me tell you about that .

I took this car , uh , for my daily commute , which for me is about 29 miles and it was full at 100% .

I drove it all the way to the studio 29 miles and I had 40% when I arrived , I didn't use any gas , pure electric .

When I got here , I left it out in the sun and I haven't driven it for the weekend because I had an ultimate frisbee road trip .

We went to Boston and Montreal came back .

So it's like 2.5 days later and it has 52% battery .

It actually gained meaningful battery just by sitting out in the sun .

So this is maybe the only shipping production car I've ever seen with a solar panel .

Good enough that if you actually drive it around with a short enough commute , you might never actually have to plug in and pay for gas .

It's , it's a small amount that you gain in range every day .

So let me show you , you put your foot on the brake , you hit power and this is the inside of the Prius .

It looks very familiar to some other Priuses .

I've never actually lived with a Prius before .

So this might be , uh , very familiar to previous Prius owners , but there's a screen up here behind the steering wheel .

It's obviously very visible .

It's writing your line of sight as you're driving .

Normal driving stuff , the software , which I think is pretty solid and then a good amount of physical tactile buttons , you've got temperature control , you've got heated and cooled seats .

So whichever you choose up in the front .

Um There's a little bit of a cubbie here which if you pop this back has a hashtag hidden compartment , cool cup holders , this little uh gear selector here , which is interesting , you kind of have to move it over and down to drive or over and up to reverse or just hit the button to park .

Uh And there's a wireless charger in here for your phone .

So let me show you how that works because I thought it was kind of clever .

There is wireless Android Auto .

So you can do this and actually still have Android Auto , you plug your phone in over and it sort of leans over to the side .

So there are these like guidance pieces of plastic here and it does say wireless charger and you pop that over and it leans your phone to the side and you can see it's charging and you can hit a button to turn that on or off .

So that's cool .

You still have all the uh typical controls here .

Yes , there are drive modes .

Yes , there is a uh sport mode .

I don't think most people will drive this in sport mode most of the time .

Um , but in terms of typical interior stuff , like a lot of plastic , a lot of the typical , uh , 30 to $50,000 car price range stuff here .

These are a little bit nicer seats than you might have seen in most Prius specs .

But this is again the highest end Prius .

And you've got this led strip across here which blinks to make sure you've got attention on the road because this came is watching you while you're driving .

So the couple of things I want to show you in this car , one is the windows .

So just so we can confirm this is the fastest window I've ever seen in a car done just as the , the just the time it takes to open and close .

It's a Prius guys .

There's not a lot for me to talk about in this car , but I do want to note that that is pretty impressive .

Um The roof is obviously , uh not a sunroof because there's solar above me .

But let's look at the uh the U I for the solar .

So this is their software part than the blinking that doesn't usually look like that .

It's just a solid red line in real life .

Um But this is the maps , it's pretty reasonably usable .

It's Google Maps U I I think the data is really solid .

So I like using that , but of course , I still prefer wireless Android auto over this .

Uh It is more responsive and more functional .

But you have Bluetooth audio .

If you want to select your audio source here , if you have your phone connected , you can do that stuff .

But then there's all the other settings over here .

Energy flow while you're driving will show you .

Yes .

Right now I am filling up the battery with sol and if I go to solar , this is the really interesting part just by sitting in the sun today , I've added 506 watt hours of battery .

Doesn't sound like a whole lot .

It's half a kilowatt hour and I am literally generating 32 watts of power right now , which I don't know , might be enough to charge my phone .

But if you look at the totals for how much you're adding per day and actually sort to distance , you can see this is a rainy day .

This is a storm that we had , but just today by 3 30 PM , I've added about two miles of range to the battery .

And so I've got over here my battery meter , I'm at 50% battery , as I told you before .

And so I've added 2.2 miles other days with fully like sunny days , you've added over four miles of battery to the range .

So let's say you have a , I don't know , a five mile commute , seven mile commute .

You theoretically with enough sunny days in a row just straight up won't pay for gas or electricity .

I feel like it's one of those things that I don't talk about too much in cars often because when I see a solar panel on a car , it feels gimmicky .

It was on the Mercedes like World Record Car .

It was on , I saw it on the app , Terra , I've seen it on a couple other cars that aren't shipping .

Did the Carma Rivera have one ?

Like , I usually don't see solar panels on cars .

And when you have an electric car , the battery is typically in the realm of 100 kilowatt hours , 100,000 watt hours .

So to add 500 watt hours in a day , doesn't seem that significant .

It might only power you for a mile or two , but this is a hybrid which means if you ever do run out of electricity , you switch over to that gas and you can just go forever .

It's like a nice backup , a nice intro to electric driving .

That's what's so cool about it .

So , ok , a couple of the last second things I noticed that are interesting about this car one .

Uh It doesn't have the best visibility I've ever seen in a car .

It does slope quite a bit and you can tell that it's a sloping roof line .

But what's nice is it has a couple of features .

One is there's a regular rear view mirror and you can see the visibility is decent , but that can actually switch to a camera feed because there is a separate camera on the back of the car just for the rear view camera .

That is kind of nice to see .

And then second , when you back the car up or put it in reverse , there's this really nice view and it is just sort of a top down view .

And when I drive , it actually fills in the transparency of what's underneath the car .

So now I've fully filled in and I'm basically driving a transparent car around and it can show me what's underneath the car .

What's where I just was when I park this big transparent car , it's super easy .

So I appreciate that and then driving it around actually notice something .

I gotta hit the off button .

Uh-huh , it depends on what car you're driving .

A lot of cars get different types of looks or different reactions around the Prius is interesting .

It's the new Prius .

So it did get some people looking at it because of that .

But sometimes when you drive a sports car around , you get a lot of people pulling up at a stoplight revving , they want to race or they want to hang or whatever on the freeway .

And that's a thing .

The Prius kind of has the opposite effect where , because it's a Prius , everyone tries to cut in front of you in line .

Everyone thinks that you're the one that they're going to get in front of on the entrance ramp to be the last one to , to join where they're supposed to .

Kind of weird stuff that happens also .

Uh There's a nice noise that it makes when I hit that lock button .

So it's not a horn like you'd usually have .

It's just a chime , which is kind of cool , I guess .

But that's the Prius .

Honestly , I'm , I'm on board with the fact that hybrids right now in 2023 are a decent stop gap on the way to people getting more electric cars , electric cars are expensive .

There's still range anxiety and there are still infrastructure questions and the Prius clearly makes a lot of sense .

And in this new package , this new suit it's got on , I get it .

I like the priest man .

All right .

That's it .

Thanks for watching .

Catch You in the next one .

Peace .