4 ms·

I have been driving Priuses for a good chunk of my life now, and there’s really no way I could safely max out their acceleration while merging. Typically the ri

I have been driving Priuses for a good chunk of my life now, and there’s really no way I could safely max out their acceleration while merging. Typically the right-lane traffic on highways here flows at 75 MPH when there isn’t much congestion. Why would you benefit from greater acceleration? It makes very little sense from my perspective. What am I going to do, cut someone off? Floor it and merge with no consideration for the trajectories of other vehicles? It’s not that difficult, and I live in an area with notoriously short on-ramps. You’ve still got plenty of road to match the speed of the cars on the highway and shift your position so you land between two cars. Accelerating as you’re about to merge just makes that more difficult, especially with a short on-ramp. Yeah, sometimes people don’t know how to drive and stop or slow down on on-ramps. I don’t care how fast my car can accelerate; if the person in front of me isn’t reaching the same speed as the cars on the highway, I’m going to stop much farther back on the ramp, wait for them to do their thing, and resume proper merging once they’re out of the way. I don’t want to have to deal with flooring it and trying to time everything while accelerating.

philistine 5y ago
Have you ever driven a plug-in Prius (the Prius Prime here in Québec)? It's got wonderful acceleration when using the all-electric mode.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  What opportunity do you have for dramatic acceleration driving legally on a public road? 0-60 in 3s vs 20s how much time can that really add up to shaving off your drive?
  - zbrozek 5y ago
    I borrowed (actually traded; swapping with my truck) a ~2016 Prius for a month and hated driving it. Merging is slow; I ended up flooring it and only reaching ~50 mph by the end of the onramp. Bay area ramps are, however, very short. Try the SB 101 Rengstorff ramp in Mountain View, it's horrible. In fact, that very ramp is why I replaced my 2002 Saturn LW200 with a 2010 BMW 135i in 2012. The Prius also can't maintain speed up hills. I would engage cruise control and find myself dramatically slowing down on any uphill segment. By contrast none of my cars have this problem - the 2010 BMW 135i, the 2022 Chevrolet Bolt, and the 2000 Chevrolet Silverado all do just fine. Of the three, the Bolt is my favorite to drive. That is, of course, not an indictment of PHEVs in general, just the Prius in particular. It's under-powered for unremarkable basic driving. Hopefully the Prime and other models newer than what I drove are better.
    - mattlondon 5y ago
      Sounds like the car you drove was defective. I have an auris which is mechanically identical to a Prius. I have not driven those exact roads but I have never struggled going up hills and it will hit 60mph from a standstill in just under 10s, so with a rolling start of say 20-30 getting onto the onramp you are at 60 or so in 6 or 7 seconds. If your onramps are so short that you can't drive for 6 or 7 seconds before merging, then I guess that is a different problem.
      - zbrozek 5y ago
        Maybe, but I doubt it. It wasn't throwing any codes and I notice other Priuses also sagging by 5-8 mph on uphill sections of 280. Nowadays I habitually change lanes if I see a Prius in front of me just prior to an incline.
    - numpad0 5y ago
      The official spec sheet says ZVW30 Prius has a 73kW(99PS) engine and a 60kW(82PS) motor, so combined it's a 130kW(180PS) system if it was possible to do so. 130kW is about as much as a Caterham Seven and slightly less than fast motorcycles. Take a Porsche 918 and it does 0-60 in 3.2 and goes around the ring in 7 minutes... with a 450kW(600hp) + 210kW(280hp) hybrid drivetrain. There is nothing in hybrid configuration that makes a car slow, if not faster, not just Tesla quickening but actually overall faster. It's definitely Prius product design problem that is creating an impression that hybrids are slow ugly cars.
pandaman 5y ago
You don't have metered on-ramps? These are ones with a traffic light at the start where one has to come to stop at the light and then accelerate to match your speed with the traffic.
- mattlondon 5y ago
  Very rare in UK at least .. and the few that exist are only active when traffic is at a near standstill.
  - pandaman 5y ago
    Yeah, they are the same in the US, only metered when there is a lot of traffic. Which exacerbates the need for acceleration because you need not only match the speed before the ramp ends but also find a hole in the heavy traffic.
    - mattlondon 5y ago
      Why do you need to accelerate so much if the traffic is so slow? Perhaps this is a cultural thing, but bad traffic here means stationary or less than walking speed. There is no need for hot rod acceleration in these situations!
      - pandaman 5y ago
        Don't need to accelerate if the traffic is slow, need to accelerate if the traffic is heavy i.e. a lot of cars driving on the same road at 60-70 mph.
- brewdad 5y ago
  In my area, if the ramp meters are on, traffic on the highway isn't moving faster than 35mph and might very well be at a dead stop. Why would I need hyper-acceleration?
yholio 5y ago
I am perplexed by the insinuation that an average power car is less safe than a sports car on public roads. Everything I was taught shows that proper driving technique is paramount, and I would have to see data supporting a contrary assertion. While we can construct edge scenarios where a fast car can get you out of trouble (mostly when overtaking) I'm willing to bet that's a marginal effect that is trumped by the inherent danger of very powerful cars in the hands of inexperienced drivers - i.e 100% of the first time buyers who never drove one. Seems more like a rationalisation for wanting a cool toy, "don't worry honey, those 500HP will mean the world when merging to drop the kids to school".
- mattlondon 5y ago
  Yeah this sounds to me like a lot of "whatabout"ing. "I can't drive anything that does less then 3s 0-60s because <insert some flimsy reason>". If you want a fast car, just come out and say it. Driving a high performance car can be exhilarating - I have a second/weekend fast car for precisely the reason that I enjoy it, but I don't pretend it is required or that it is particularly responsible or socially acceptable to boot it away from the lights or go accelerate like shit off of a stick when merging with faster traffic. My hybrid does 99% of my driving, and the other is strictly a weekend guilty pleasure. I've never been in a situation in normal driving where the hybrid couldn't do something my weekend car would have handled (apart from just blow someone off at the lights if they have pissed me off) The arguments here against PHEVs and EVs etc used to be towing speed boats up mountains every week (it was never made clear why people were taking speed boats up a mountain so frequently! Surely there is not much water up a mountain...) I guess people need new arguments now that range and towing and charging are solved issues for 99% of people's needs. I am sure someone will now reply about their journey out to meet their parents in the country with no chargers on the journey there etc etc... Did you try driving your speedboat there instead? :)
  - Armisael16 5y ago
    The person I was responding to said the difference was impossible to notice on public roads. I gave an example of a situation where it is noticeable and everyone decided that I meant it was a situation where it’s necessary (despite explicitly saying that it isn’t necessary). It’s the kind of thread that makes me really wish people on the internet would read what’s written, not what they’d like to think was written.

philistine 5y ago

Have you ever driven a plug-in Prius (the Prius Prime here in Québec)? It's got wonderful acceleration when using the all-electric mode.

chrisseaton 5y ago
What opportunity do you have for dramatic acceleration driving legally on a public road? 0-60 in 3s vs 20s how much time can that really add up to shaving off your drive?
- zbrozek 5y ago
  I borrowed (actually traded; swapping with my truck) a ~2016 Prius for a month and hated driving it. Merging is slow; I ended up flooring it and only reaching ~50 mph by the end of the onramp. Bay area ramps are, however, very short. Try the SB 101 Rengstorff ramp in Mountain View, it's horrible. In fact, that very ramp is why I replaced my 2002 Saturn LW200 with a 2010 BMW 135i in 2012. The Prius also can't maintain speed up hills. I would engage cruise control and find myself dramatically slowing down on any uphill segment. By contrast none of my cars have this problem - the 2010 BMW 135i, the 2022 Chevrolet Bolt, and the 2000 Chevrolet Silverado all do just fine. Of the three, the Bolt is my favorite to drive. That is, of course, not an indictment of PHEVs in general, just the Prius in particular. It's under-powered for unremarkable basic driving. Hopefully the Prime and other models newer than what I drove are better.
  - mattlondon 5y ago
    Sounds like the car you drove was defective. I have an auris which is mechanically identical to a Prius. I have not driven those exact roads but I have never struggled going up hills and it will hit 60mph from a standstill in just under 10s, so with a rolling start of say 20-30 getting onto the onramp you are at 60 or so in 6 or 7 seconds. If your onramps are so short that you can't drive for 6 or 7 seconds before merging, then I guess that is a different problem.
    - zbrozek 5y ago
      Maybe, but I doubt it. It wasn't throwing any codes and I notice other Priuses also sagging by 5-8 mph on uphill sections of 280. Nowadays I habitually change lanes if I see a Prius in front of me just prior to an incline.
  - numpad0 5y ago
    The official spec sheet says ZVW30 Prius has a 73kW(99PS) engine and a 60kW(82PS) motor, so combined it's a 130kW(180PS) system if it was possible to do so. 130kW is about as much as a Caterham Seven and slightly less than fast motorcycles. Take a Porsche 918 and it does 0-60 in 3.2 and goes around the ring in 7 minutes... with a 450kW(600hp) + 210kW(280hp) hybrid drivetrain. There is nothing in hybrid configuration that makes a car slow, if not faster, not just Tesla quickening but actually overall faster. It's definitely Prius product design problem that is creating an impression that hybrids are slow ugly cars.

pandaman 5y ago

You don't have metered on-ramps? These are ones with a traffic light at the start where one has to come to stop at the light and then accelerate to match your speed with the traffic.

mattlondon 5y ago
Very rare in UK at least .. and the few that exist are only active when traffic is at a near standstill.
- pandaman 5y ago
  Yeah, they are the same in the US, only metered when there is a lot of traffic. Which exacerbates the need for acceleration because you need not only match the speed before the ramp ends but also find a hole in the heavy traffic.
  - mattlondon 5y ago
    Why do you need to accelerate so much if the traffic is so slow? Perhaps this is a cultural thing, but bad traffic here means stationary or less than walking speed. There is no need for hot rod acceleration in these situations!
    - pandaman 5y ago
      Don't need to accelerate if the traffic is slow, need to accelerate if the traffic is heavy i.e. a lot of cars driving on the same road at 60-70 mph.
brewdad 5y ago
In my area, if the ramp meters are on, traffic on the highway isn't moving faster than 35mph and might very well be at a dead stop. Why would I need hyper-acceleration?

yholio 5y ago

I am perplexed by the insinuation that an average power car is less safe than a sports car on public roads. Everything I was taught shows that proper driving technique is paramount, and I would have to see data supporting a contrary assertion. While we can construct edge scenarios where a fast car can get you out of trouble (mostly when overtaking) I'm willing to bet that's a marginal effect that is trumped by the inherent danger of very powerful cars in the hands of inexperienced drivers - i.e 100% of the first time buyers who never drove one. Seems more like a rationalisation for wanting a cool toy, "don't worry honey, those 500HP will mean the world when merging to drop the kids to school".

mattlondon 5y ago
Yeah this sounds to me like a lot of "whatabout"ing. "I can't drive anything that does less then 3s 0-60s because <insert some flimsy reason>". If you want a fast car, just come out and say it. Driving a high performance car can be exhilarating - I have a second/weekend fast car for precisely the reason that I enjoy it, but I don't pretend it is required or that it is particularly responsible or socially acceptable to boot it away from the lights or go accelerate like shit off of a stick when merging with faster traffic. My hybrid does 99% of my driving, and the other is strictly a weekend guilty pleasure. I've never been in a situation in normal driving where the hybrid couldn't do something my weekend car would have handled (apart from just blow someone off at the lights if they have pissed me off) The arguments here against PHEVs and EVs etc used to be towing speed boats up mountains every week (it was never made clear why people were taking speed boats up a mountain so frequently! Surely there is not much water up a mountain...) I guess people need new arguments now that range and towing and charging are solved issues for 99% of people's needs. I am sure someone will now reply about their journey out to meet their parents in the country with no chargers on the journey there etc etc... Did you try driving your speedboat there instead? :)
- Armisael16 5y ago
  The person I was responding to said the difference was impossible to notice on public roads. I gave an example of a situation where it is noticeable and everyone decided that I meant it was a situation where it’s necessary (despite explicitly saying that it isn’t necessary). It’s the kind of thread that makes me really wish people on the internet would read what’s written, not what they’d like to think was written.