Written by Elizabeth Liedel, 2010 Oregon Fellow
When I finally got my hands on the plug-in Prius that my colleague Sarah blogged about the other week, I was thrilled to take it out for a spin. Luckily for me, the Prius did not let me down in the slightest. The gadgets on the dashboard are smoothly integrated and easy to understand. The low-end pickup was so swift that all I wanted to do was fly down the road. Between the speed, the lights and the knobs, it felt a little bit like driving a spaceship. An astronaut might disagree with that statement, but then again - how many astronauts do you know who have driven an electric vehicle? So, there you go. They have no basis for comparison.
Using the power cord was a breeze, whether in my garage (where it plugs right into the wall, with no need for additional paneling or special voltage capacity) or in downtown Lake Oswego, where I plugged into one of PGE's charging stations. It was considerably simpler than using a fuel pump (which I've never been skilled at, having grown up here in Oregon where we don't pump our own gas). So easy, even an Oregon girl can do it!
What I loved the most about the plug-in Prius, though, was the dashboard energy monitor, which is a graphic of a car that demonstrates where the energy is flowing - from the fuel tank to the wheels, from the battery to the wheels, from the wheels to the battery via regenerative braking, etc. I'm familiar with this type of graphic - my dad owns a hybrid Camry, which has a similar monitor. But the plug-in Prius has an additional feature - it tells you, to the tenth of a mile, how many miles you have left in electric drive mode. At first, I thought it was neat because I would be able to tell when I was out of charge and running on gas. But I quickly realized the real advantage to this mechanism - the ability to watch the remaining mileage increase, rather than decrease.
What? Yes. As in my dad's traditional hybrid, I was able to use the graphic to watch the car feed the battery when I coasted or braked. But with the mileage monitor, I could also watch the number of remaining electric miles increase as I rolled downhill. Magic! The first two miles of my commute were basically downhill the entire way, so I ended up three miles into my drive with a full battery and with my mileage monitor still showing 14.0 miles of charge left. Another downhill road segment, slightly later in my commute, resulted in an increase from 10.2 miles to 11.5 miles of charge.
The plug-in Prius' dashboard energy monitor, showing 3.6 miles of charge left.
What I discovered, much to my surprise, was the impact this knowledge had on my driving behavior. I found myself using the accelerator sparingly, coasting much more than normal, and eliminating my gleeful "tests" of the low-end pickup - essentially, using the driving behaviors that minimize energy use. I did absolutely everything I could to squeeze as much power into that battery as possible, and even rethought my route to see if I could avoid hills and stop-and-go traffic. And importantly, I did this to a greater extent in the plug-in Prius than I ever have when driving my dad's traditional hybrid.
This process reminded me of how I ride my bicycle. Toward the end of a long bike ride, I coast as much as I can, slow down on uphill segments, and temper my stops and starts to conserve energy (this isn't the best strategy for training, but it works pretty darn well when you're tired). It turns out that when I physically feel the impact of conserving my own energy, I do it naturally - without ever needing to be trained how. That natural impulse is lost in a car - when we have a foot on the accelerator, and when the "cost" of inefficiency hits our wallet instead of our tired muscles, we drivers are left without knowledge of how our behavior impacts fuel use. Enter the plug-in Prius' energy monitor - providing real-time, easily digestible, quantitative information on our energy use. How much do you think your driving behavior would change - and how much energy and money do you think you could save?
