Prime Evolution: A Comprehensive Review of the 2023 Prius Plug-in Hybrid
So the Prius is obviously the OG of hybrid vehicles it debuted in 2021 and this the 2023 is the fifth generation Prius obviously we got a new design which will go over new interior which we’ll cover and this isn’t just the Prius this is the Prius Prime which
Means it’s a plug-in hybrid not just a hybrid and it’s currently 17° outside today with a feels like temperature in the single digit so uh most of the talking to the camera you’re going to see me is going to be inside the car but let’s get this thing
Started all right and as promised we’re inside the car right now let’s quickly hit on the trims and we’ll talk about some of the exterior and then I’ll show you around the interior we’ll take it for a drive and we’ll wrap it up talking about the price and some of my final
Thoughts on this Prius Prime so there are three trims available with the Prius Prime you have the SE the xse and then the sxe premium this is the sxe premium so it’s basically the topof the line got a lot of features to try to cover here starting with the exterior so this new
Prius boast a sleek and sporty design standing 2 in shorter 1 in wider and 1 in longer than its predecessor this Prius Prime is colored in supersonic red and paired with machine finished 19in Wheels exclusive to the xsc grade it’s a very aggressive yet sophisticated appearance for a Prius definitely had a
Lot of questions about it even had a few people ask me if it was a Tesla this new body design comes with a lot of new quirks it’s actually a bit less efficient than the previous body design with a higher coefficient of drag the previous Prius had a 0.25 coefficient of
Drag this has a 0.27 coefficient of drag what does that mean in real world numbers I’m not completely sure but they did sacrifice a little bit of the efficiency to make a sleer nicer design and I’m not hating on them at all for that we do have nice LED
Daytime running lights with a unique design we have by LED projector low and high beam headlamps full LED tail lights and one of the big features here on this xse premium is the solar charging roof which will put electricity back into the battery just by sitting out in the sun
Looking at the full size of the vehicle it has a wheelbase of 108.3 in a full length of 181.000 cubic feet of cargo volume in the rear hatch and again this is is integrated nicely into the design of the vehicle and I love that it’s a hatch and
Not just a trunk but the Prius has traditionally been a hatch but it gives you plenty of cargo volume for luggage for groceries definitely for our camera gear that we carried for this video taking a look under the hood we have a 2 L 4 cylinder engine definitely a very
Sophisticated engine it’s a Hybrid engine paired with a electric motor driving the front wheels the gas engine puts out 150 horsepower but com bined you’re looking at 220 horsepower and 139 lb feet of torque which makes this one of the more sporty and quick feeling
Prius that you can buy you have an all electric range of 44 mil and that’s in the SE the xse and xse premium only gets 39 Mi of all electric range the battery can be charged up on a 120 volt plug completely to full in 11 hours or with a
240 volt you’re looking at 4 hours which is pretty standard for the market all right let’s talk about the interior here it is a really nice interior completely new for the Prius with its own quirks but uh a lot of cool stuff as well we do have this nice leather-like soft text
Material you can see here on the seats you do have a kind of two-tone look with red red stitching extra red piping here perforated these are heated and ventilated seats eight-way power adjustable eight-way power adjustable for the driver six-way power adjustable for the passenger overall it’s a very
Premium pretty upscale look for Prius you can see the two-tone from the seats translate into the uh Dash as well with this it’s almost more of a pink copper look but it goes with the red theming we have LED lighting back here it looks like it’s blinking on the camera but it
Is just a solid led to the human eye it is is obviously a push button start and we’ve already got it on we have our nice 12.3 in touchscreen display for the center display running Toyota’s new uh interface here we’ve seen this in a lot of different uh Toyota vehicles that
We’ve reviewed recently it’s a nice enough system I do have my gripes with it with it being a bit cluttered with some of the features that it has here but overall it’s a good size and a really decent uh SC screen and you can see a lot of different information about
The Prius including the solar panel and what you’re generating off of that down from the screen are your vents and then a lot of your AC and heat controls here below that you have two USB type c ports one for interfacing with the infotainment system one for just
Charging you also have an accessory plug there you have a little bit of a shelf cup holders this can be lifted up and reveals an extra cubby moving back right here you have a Qi wireless charger and your phone sits in there pretty well and a will start wirelessly charging your
Phone you have the small knob here for your gear shifter again the same that we’ve seen in a couple other Toyota and even Lexus Vehicles push over and up for reverse once you got it into reverse we do have the full 360 camera so you can
See the backup there and 360 and it does do the trick where as you’re backing up it uses uh what it knows from the front camera or the rear camera to show you what’s underneath the car which is always a cool feature there to have of course you
Can see the camera going forward as well with a front-facing camera which is great for parking even though this is a smaller vehicle coming back to the gear shifter push in right here for park over is neutral over and back is drive back again is B which is basically your most
Regenerative braking gear you have a little toggle here for Drive modes and if we quickly look at the screen as we toggle through it you can see you have a normal a sport a custom or an eco mode we’ll talk more about that as we drive it you also
Get an indicator here on this screen what mode you’re in beside your drive mode you have an auto EV HV button will put you into EV mode if you have enough battery you have HV EV hold which is also unavailable because our batter is not charged enough
You have an auto hold button here traction control button and your parking brake armrest is decently padded nice decent size you can throw some stuff down there two more USB typ-c charging ports there’s also USB type-c charging ports in the rear which makes every charging port in here a USB type-c
No USB type a moving on to the steering wheel this is a heated steering wheel you can see the heated steering wheel button right here this is where we get to some of the quirkiness of the Prius this is a rather small steering wheel a little bit oddly shaped you’ve got all
Your function buttons on either side they’re pretty easy to get used to and really easy to reach as you’re driving again you can see this in the camera but you can’t see it with the human eye these blinking Radars this is actually shooting a radar at your face which does
Things like tell you if you’re distracted while driving and it is a really aggressive system if you look off to the side as you’re driving at all or if you’re looking down at all you’re going to get a warning on your screen telling you to look forward I tried to
Drive with it covered and it didn’t give me any kind of warnings but but definitely if it sees you not looking forward it will let you know could be a good feature don’t love the idea of shooting radar at my face while I’m driving but uh definitely not the first
Vehicle to implement this either and then again looking back further we have our driver information display when I first drove the new Prius I really didn’t like this if you have your steering wheel up more you can see that it really just covers the entire screen you have to look under the steering
Wheel or wa over to be able to see it and this is kind of a more comfortable position for the steering wheel to be for me but I do drive it with a steering wheel lower than normal just so I can see the screen better from my ey line I
Don’t think it’s a deal breaker necessarily for buying this vehicle it’s just something you have to get comfortable and used to and everybody I’ve seen complain about it has been on the taller side so if you’re shorter you might not have an issue with this at all
But looking at this screen you have a ton of information here almost almost too much for the size of screen it is actually a little bit difficult as you’re driving if you’re looking for something specific to uh see and read what you’re looking for of course we can see our temperature at
17° we can see that we’re in HV mode our average mpg is 44.1 it’s been just out just over 45 m per gallon for most of the uh week that I’ve had this today we’ve been letting it idle a lot more and uh it suffered because of it and I
Did take this and plug it in for a little bit at just one of the generic Chargers it said to get it to a full charge it would have been 4 hours we definitely didn’t stay more than 30 minutes but if you had a good charger at
Your house especially if it’s a 240 volt you could plug it in overnight and get the most out of the fuel economy that this is giv you basically during my week I’ve used it as just a hybrid not a plug-in hybrid so you can definitely do better with that fuel economy and we’ll
Talk more about that as we drive but again I think this uh digital screen is good and you do have other bits of information that you can get up there but I do think it looks a little bit crowded especially for not being super familiar with the uh with the setup
Maybe if you owned it and had a little bit more time with it you could get more used to looking at it we also have an8 speaker premium JBL audio system with amp in this xsc premium it actually does sound really good a lot of Base probably
A little bit too much base for my liking but with that I think it’s time to get this thing out on the road we’ll start talking about how it drives a little bit more about the economy and then we’ll wrap it up talking about the price and some my final
Thoughts let’s get it all right let’s get this drive started let’s put it into gear and take off we are in EV mode to start off with again 44 miles or 39 mi in the xse and xse premium all electric range but of course we don’t have a full
Charge here so we’re definitely not going to get that and as soon as you really put your foot down it wakes up but it uh kicks that gas on pretty quickly so the full week that I’ve been driving it I really only charged the battery up once and again it
Was for about 30 minutes we didn’t get a whole lot of charge in that time so I’ve been driving this thing basically just like the Prius hybrid not a plug-in hybrid so I’m not taking full advantage of the electric motor for more fuel economy that being said the fuel economy we are
Getting at just about 45 m per gallon is still really good so the actual EPA numbers here in the SE is 52 MP gallon or 127 mpge and the xse and up is 48 MP gallon and 114 mpge so we’re really close to that uh average of miles per
Gallon and again if we use this more as an electric plugin hybrid more than just a hybrid that 114 mpge sounds really good and you could probably get closer to it if you charged it every night and try to use that EV only mode as much as possible and it’s definitely
Doable and you can see with that 220 horsepower combined Prius gets up and goes should we do a 0 to 60 in this maybe we will Toyota says this thing can do a 0 to 60 in 6.6 seconds again maybe we’ll test that out here in just a
Second we do have those Drive modes that I showed you the normal drive mode which we’ve basically kept it in all week you have an eco mode which improves the hybrid system efficiency by limiting power in response to light to moderate acceleration pedal input and then you have the sport mode which enhances
Dynamic performance and acceleration obviously sacrificing economy so now we have it in sport mode the acceleration comes on a bit quicker through the corners Prius is pretty flat you obviously have a low center of gravity in this so you’re not going to get much body roll suspension is good
Braking is good even the feel of the steering and braking are really good and acceleration out of turns is good all right and just for you guys let’s do a quick 0 to 60 still in sport mode come to a complete stop Ready set Go 6 that didn’t feel particularly fast but uh it is what it is this is a Prius but the prime is probably a little bit more fun than just a regular Prius if you need something like that out of a plug-in hybrid vehicle so there are a
Few quirks uh a few things that I would say I don’t like about the Driving Experience one I kind of already told you is my seating position it looks really great on the camera but uh if I had the steering wheel up more where it would be a little bit more comfortable
For me in my height it would be blocking the screen even more and that screen is pretty cluttered you can change things around make it a little bit less cluttered but I like to see a lot of the information it’s just there is so much packed into that one little uh Circle
That we have here it’s a bit difficult to reason about probably after driving it for some time it would get easier but uh just for now for this week it’s been a little difficult especially turning on your cruise control and safety settings and things like that which this does
Have while this is a small vehicle and easy to park easy to maneuver you can’t see the front of the vehicle at all from the driver position so you do have to rely on your cameras a lot of the time to know how far up into a uh parking
Spot you’re parked or how close you are to another vehicle parking in a driveway or something like that cuz the nose can be a little deceptively long my only other real complaint about the Prius at least this Prius Prime is the engine noise or the noises alog together
Nothing about the sounds that this vehicle makes sounds premium or sophisticated the engine is loud and again doesn’t sound great even in EV mode that electric motor powering the wheels doesn’t sound particularly good couldn’t really get it on video the sound but uh it just doesn’t sound great so if that’s something you
Look for in a vehicle just something to note we really didn’t touch on the back seats during the uh interior talk this is a compact vehicle but there’s actually a decent amount of room back there we had the kids three wide during the week that I had this vehicle well
It’s a little bit tight as expected they did fine you could use this as a small family Runner but with that I think it’s time to uh we’ll pull back over let’s talk about the price of this thing let’s talk about a little bit of the competition I’ll give you some of my
Final thoughts and if I would recommend it if the exterior updates and interior updates made it worth buying a Prius let’s get to it all right with that let’s quickly talk about the price of the Prius Prime the Bas SE starts at 32,000 975 this one the xse premium is at
39,6 70 and wow $440,000 is a lot of money for a smaller Toyota vehicle everything that you get in here is definitely worth that price it’s got a nice exterior I was definitely more in love with it when I first saw it than uh
Every time I see it now but it’s still a lot nicer than the previous generations interior I think has improved proved really great I really like the interior in this xsc premium touchcreen is really nice all the features that you get the seats are really comfortable my biggest
Gripe is probably the driver information screen just being a little too cluttered and a little bit of the issues with the steering wheel blocking that screen for somebody my height where I have to sit and where is most comfortable for me other than that pretty fantastic and
Obviously there are a ton of other Hy hybrids plug-in hybrids and EVS on the market today that just weren’t on the market when the Prius first came out it’s got a lot of great competition out there depending on exactly what you’re looking for so it makes sense that
Toyota’s trying to set the Prius aparts with some better design better interior overall it’s a vehicle that I do like that I would recommend if you’re in the market for uh hybrid or plug-in hybrid it’s hard to go wrong with the OG that’s been around and doing it for the longest
Time and at least initially you’ll be the person with the new Sleek looking vehicle probably once they’ve been out for a while it’ll get the same stigma that Prius always get but at least you’ll be saving fuel along the way and have a really nice interior with that I
Hope you enjoyed the video I know it might have been a little bit different or more rushed than some of my other videos with it just being so cold out here it’s tough to get good video but hit the Thumbs Up Button if you enjoyed
Leave me a comment let me know what you thought thought subscribe to the channel if you’re into automotive reviews we do a different one every week you should also go check out TX garage.com where we’ve got a lot of written reviews as well as event news coverage from a lot
Of great authors over there not just myself but with that guys that’s all I got for you in this one thanks for watching
In our comprehensive review of the 2023 Toyota Prius Prime XSE Premium, we delve into the heart of hybrid innovation. As the fifth-generation descendant of the iconic Prius, the Prime XSE Premium boasts a sleek, sporty design and cutting-edge features that redefine efficient driving. From its alluring Super Sonic Red exterior to the advanced solar charging roof, this plug-in hybrid is more than just a vehicle; it’s a statement of eco-conscious sophistication. Inside, the premium interior offers comfort and technology, including SofTex-trimmed seats, a 12.3-inch touchscreen, and a top-notch JBL Premium Audio system. While the drive may not be described as “premium,” the Prius Prime impresses with well-weighted steering, stable handling, and remarkable brakes. The review navigates through its performance, tech prowess, and the critical role it plays in the transition towards a greener automotive future. The 2023 Prius Prime emerges not only as a fuel-efficient choice but as a compelling bridge between traditional and electric vehicles.
Check out the full review and let us know your thoughts in the comments below. If you enjoyed the video, be sure to hit that like button and consider subscribing to the channel.
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