It sounds like the engineers got a chance to do a lot of things they wanted to do before but couldn't because they were constrined by schedule.

I just hope they didn't make too many changes all at once - it increases the chances that you'll have manufacturing problems in the first year.

I wonder if they were able to supress the electrical whine that you get when the battery recharges on soft braking or during a coast. Maybe the improved sound insulation covers it up better. Anyway, you only hear it when the radio is off and there is no other traffic on the road nearby.

I would have liked the option to buy a bigger battery pack (2x, 3x, or 4x), but I suppose that will have to wait until 2012.

I wonder if they've fixed the power steering so that it actually feels like the steering wheel is connected to something ... the complete lack of steering feel and limp suspension turned me off the outgoing model. If not, the Insight is supposed to have better driving dynamics.

It's not plug in because there is not enough battery to plug in.
Hymotion's $10,000 battery pack is bad ROI.
The car is not engineered to handle too much all electric driving. You can only drive upto 35 mph without the gas engine, and the amount of power and acceleration you get with the battery only is somewhat weak.

Wait until 2012 when the engineers can get it right.

Two years ago Toyota's head of Prius development said that the 2010 Prius would have 9-miles of EV range.

This 1-mile EV range is a real U-turn from that, and I wouldn't be surprised if the 3rd generation battery is actually smaller (in kWh terms) than the 2nd generation battery!

It has a flying buttress! Woo-hoo! I'm sold :_>
http://priuschat.com/forums/members/danny-albums-2010-toyota-prius-official-toyota-photos-picture950-42-10-prius.html

Batteries Are Hard. I'm not going to buy the first year that the plugin option is generally available (2011; 2010 availability will be severely restricted as a beta test).

I think they have done an admirable job of continuous improvement. Now being in the 3rd generation, they are way ahead of everyone else in this hybrid technology. As is the tradition, american companies will now try to "leapfrog" and hope in this way to regain a competitive advantage. That may work, but the risks of failure are higher. The option is being plug in ready is great, although I did not see any particular place prewired for an outlet.

Is any manufacturer considering the Miller cycle for their hybrids? I haven't seen one except for Subaru's aborted plan. I would have thought that this would be the most efficient gasoline powerplant, and turbos are cheap these days.

Does it seem odd to anyone that both Ford and Toyota have both significantly increased the size of their hybrid engines? I'm perplexed.

They are saying the larger 1.8L engine will run more slowly and therefore be more efficient.

Hmmm the new engine has the increased bore of 80.5mm which will typically have more friction than the earlier 75mm. More likely the reason has to do with a cost reduction by using the same engine as the Corolla.

The Prius was never underpowered, too bad they are moving it in a power hybrid direction. For those who put on large mileage out on the highway I see the advantage now shifting towards the new Honda Insight with its 1.3L.

- Brian P I agree it's not yet a power hybrid but this move from 104Hp to 134Hp with the GEN III that's more than an incremental step in my view. And you would think that with a million sales or so that the Prius would at least get its own engine else what's the point of introducing a hybrid Corolla ? The HSD system or, to put it more accurately, MG1 needs an engine of constant torque over a wide rpm bandwidth - this automatically eliminates the diesel from contention by the way. An engine with higher max rpm, say 6000rpm but with orig 82lbs-ft torque, would place max power point currently at 51mph also higher as well. Not good. Therefore the transaxle gearing would need increasing from the present ratio of 4.113 towards something higher so that MG2 and the ring gear approach 7200rpm, up from 6000rpm, at 100mph. All this is purely speculation but it's fun. Any comments ??

As I have written before although the philosophy behind Prius seems more about it being ultra low emission than actually having good mileage, the improved mileage comes about anyway from having that smaller 1.5L engine with the Atkinson camming.
For what it's worth my Toyota Echo with virtually the same 1NZ-FE engine already achieves 51mpg on the highway, just not as clean. But I admit that when it comes to town driving the Prius will clean the Echo's clock.

- Mark and TM regarding your need for more energy storage.
The Prius is less about the utility of being an electric car and a lot more about the utility of it being an electric transmission, despite the efforts of those misguided souls who would try to turn it into one with $12,000 of computer laptop batteries. An electric vehicle it is not. It is what it is. It is in fact a shining example of what you can do if you replace the conventional multi-ratio gearbox and clutch (19th century technology) with an electrical transmission that partially decouples the mechanical connection of the engine to the wheels.

For those not in the know. It is from the help of two powerful servomotors MG1 and MG2 followed by a single fixed gear reduction equivalent to something between conventional 3rd and 4th gear and with no clutches whatsover, that allows the engine to rotate at any speed no matter what the speed or direction of the wheels happen to be.
In real life that means a small 1.5L engine is capable of propelling a midsize hatch as if it were a 2.4L. Sure the 21kW battery assist of effectively 28Hp can help also, but most of the time the engine just simply speeds up when extra power is needed and spins back down again afterwards.

Since the torque fluctuations - as when the driver of a conventional car "rows" through the gearbox while accelerating - are not present, many people gain the false impression that this is a slow car. Gradually declining torque as you accelerate rather than in chunks that rock you around is going to be the hallmark of 21st century powertrains.

All that aside TM writes -The car is not engineered to handle too much all electric driving. You can only drive upto 35 mph without the gas engine, and the amount of power and acceleration you get with the battery only is somewhat weak.

I agree the 50Kw electric motor (now to be 60kw with this GEN III) is disadvantaged by the 21Kw HV battery, but this servomotor does not have a continuous rating at its full 50Kw output anyway, have you seen how small it is ?

Clett - Two years ago Toyota's head of Prius development said that the 2010 Prius would have 9-miles of EV range
I know you know the Prius battery holds only 1.3Kwhr. A hundred dollar 72AHr lead acid battery holds 0.9Kwhr. So you're wanting the Prius to drive 9 miles on less than two conventional batteries ? The NIMH battery is even less than this since deep discharges are inhibited. That one mile is conservative but there are probably a few uses for it that will save gas in the long run so why not, electric mode will save owners having to play tricks to prevent the engine from starting. Being 3 minutes at a stop light a mile from home and the engine kicks in can be frustrating when it kills your mileage figure for the trip.

For every person who wants the car to be more active in electric-only mode there is someone else who won't buy the hybrid because of a possible battery failure after ten years. That possibility must be why the manufacturers have refrained from opening themselves up to further vulnerability on a replacement being necessary. At the moment there is no real competitor to the Prius for Toyota to take unnecessary risks.

Excuse me T2. The above post was in response to Brian P instead. Sorry for the error.

Brian P,

The ordinary Cruse uses a standard 1.4 liter engine without hybridization, but with turbocharging. It is expected to produce 40 mpg with no hybridization operation at all. The European Focus is now doing somewhat similar.

I would expect that with primitive parallel/series hybridization that you could achieve the 50 mpg that the Prius III produces.

But if you add constant speed at partial load operation tuning you can do better. Constant speed at partial load, is conducive to extensive HCCI operation, you have indeed achieved the equivalent to diesel operation except in a much lighter engine block.

Even without HCCI, tuning for constant speed operation, with equivalent Atkinson cycle operation, would produce a better BSFE than the larger 1.8 liter that the new Prius has.

I fail to see why a Volt couldn't/ wouldn't easily achieve 50 mpg in such circumstances, if the Prius can do so. When HCCI comes, it should jump to even higher fuel economy numbers.

The series-hybrid promoters love making the constant-engine-speed argument. I do not dispute that this can be an advantage, but must point out that except at the *one* speed at which the power demand to drive the wheels matches the power output from the engine, this arrangement MUST involve charging and discharging the battery. There is a significant energy loss involved with discharging and charging a battery. With lead/acid this process is about 85% efficient at best and that's only at low charge/discharge loads (and I realize that other battery technologies are planned but they will have a similar effect). Also, the effect on battery life of constantly charging and discharging has to be accounted for. These losses can easily be made up by NOT charging/discharging the battery (or keeping it to a minimum) and instead accepting a *slight* loss in engine efficiency by running it "off-design" but at a power output that more closely matches demand ...

For what it's worth, I have the BMEP map of a certain VW diesel engine, and if one accepts a 15% drop from the best possible BSFC, the possible range between maximum and minimum power output within that constraint is about 5:1. If the battery charging/discharging losses are accounted for, when one considers the WHOLE vehicle as a system, it's more efficient to let the engine speed and load vary if the power demand is within this range.

And this does not account for the losses in the generator, rectifier, inverter, and motor, which will surely be greater than the losses in a gear-to-gear transmission.

I still maintain that the engineers who designed the Prius do, in fact, have their heads screwed on straight (by allowing for almost-all-mechanical drive during motorway conditions) - and further, the designers of the Volt also have their heads screwed on straight (by allowing the engine/generator speed to vary SOMEWHAT according to vehicle power demand to minimize battery charge/discharge losses).

Remains to be seen how the Volt will do in charge-sustaining mode compared to the non-hybrid Cruze. I betcha if you take both cars and drive them down the road at a constant motorway speed, the Cruze will do a little better due to fewer losses in the powertrain ...

Regarding HCCI, every case of this that I have heard of thus far, only allows HCCI operation at relatively light engine load, and thus far this has been true of both the gasoline and diesel based HCCI concepts. BSFC is normally best at relatively high engine load (for gasoline and diesel), not in the regime where HCCI has thus far been proven possible.

@Ken - I left it unsaid that a parallel hybrid must provide both paths. The planetary dual-motor-generator arrangement used by Toyota (and Ford) and the two-mode arrangement used by GM, Chrysler, Mercedes and others don't have any particular difficulty providing both paths; this is scarcely an obstacle. All of those can transmit engine power straight through without encountering charging/discharging losses.

It remains to be seen whether a serial hybrid will cost less to build. The big money is in the batteries and the power handling equipment, not in the gearbox that a parallel-hybrid must have.

Brian: you obviously know a great deal about the tradeoffs of serial and parallel. And so do some other commentators.

You are right that battery costs are a dominant factor, especially at the moment. If they remain too high then the design with lesser battery requirements must prevail. I'm guessing battery prices will fall rapidly.

I am dubious that the costs for the power handling equipment gives advantage to either technology. Both serial and parallel must handle the same sort of electrical conversions. Admittedly the serial would deal with more power.