Based on the 2012 Toyota Prius, the Prius Plug-in Hybrid will feature the same 1.8 liter engine and 60 kilowatt electric motor found in the standard Prius.
Unlike its sibling, the Prius Plug-in Hybrid comes with an extended 5.2 kilowatt-hour battery pack, on-board charger and revised software enabling it to travel at up to 60 mph on electric power alone.
While we’ve clocked several thousand miles behind the wheel of the 2012 Prius Plug-in Hybrid prototype, we’re expecting the production version debuting in Frankfurt to differ in several key areas.
Firstly, we’re expecting the battery pack — an improved 5.2 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion pack — to be slightly smaller in physical size than the battery pack found in the prototypes, increasing the load-bay area a little from the slightly smaller load-bay we griped about in the prototype.
Secondly, we’re expecting Toyota to increase the range of the Plug-in Prius slightly, improving on the disappointing 13 mile all-electric range of the prototype in order to make it more appealing to first-time plug-in buyers. We’ve heard nothing to confirm this, but several sources close to Toyota have hinted the range will increase.
Thirdly, as we’ve said before, the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid needs a range sustaining and a pure electric mode. The prototypes we’ve driven haven't allowed us to chose when the car will enter all-electric mode, meaning that it is always the first 13 or so miles which are driven in electric mode.
Enabling a charge sustaining mode (to prevent the plug-in battery pack from depleting until it is needed) could help improve the overall fuel economy of the Prius Plug-in Hybrid.
Finally, we’d expect the Prius Plug-in Hybrid to include some form of telematics to enable drivers to time charging and pre-heating of the cabin. These features were absent on the prototypes we drove - and are a must in order to offer the same level of functionality found on the Prius Plug-in Hybrid’s direct competitors.
Of course, we’ll have to wait to find out for sure what tweaks Toyota has made to its first Plug-in Hybrid — stay tuned for more from the 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show, which opened its doors on September 13.
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