Trips to the market never used to be this fun. But in the 2024 Toyota Prius Prime, coaxing another mile out of the plug-in hybrid’s limited electric-only range has turned out to be an entertaining game. Now, after nearly 15,000 miles of ownership, we have answers to common questions: Just how many miles can the Prius PHEV travel on electric power alone before the gas engine turns on? And what percentage of our miles have been traveled in blissful, engineless quiet?
Our Range Record
Our high-mile range record is only impressive if you know what the 2024 Prius Prime is normally capable of. The XSE and XSE Premium trims are EPA-rated at 39 miles of electric range before the noisy gas engine wakes up. That number jumps to 44 miles for the base SE, which has smaller wheels. Instead of letting the car decide the most efficient time to use the electric juice, we opted to go all EV mode, as often as possible.
With the gas engine turning on occasionally on my way home, this isn’t the most efficient strategy but it has been a fun one.
Hybrids and plug-ins aren’t at their efficient best during full-speed highway driving, but in my quest to understand how far the Prius Prime can go on electric range in the real world, I decided early on to stick with EV mode whenever possible instead of leaving it in the auto setting.
So—drumroll, please—our 2024 Prius Prime managed 48.9 miles on electric-only power one week in May, which is … incredible. Also, extremely rare. At no time before or since did I record anything close—43.7 miles is my second-best performance so far.
The Details
I don’t drag race from red light to red light here in Los Angeles. In fact, if I’m not trying to pass someone or take advantage of our world-class driving roads, I’m driving in the car’s Eco mode, which dulls the throttle response just a bit. I think of it more as smoothing initial throttle response for when I don’t care how fast I leap away from a stop. In temperate L.A., I don’t often have a need for heavy A/C use, though it’s almost always on.
Perhaps also contributing to the efficiency, I not only use the Prius Prime’s regenerative braking mode, but I also have it dialed to its most extreme setting: L3. Unfortunately, the Toyota won’t come to a complete stop when you lift off the accelerator in this mode, but it can give drivers a taste of what one-pedal driving in a fully electric car is like.
Because I live in a place where it snows once every few decades, average temperatures probably help increase the Prius Prime’s efficiency. I also don’t have a huge need for the defroster, use of which instantly turns the engine on. And, oh yeah, because this is Southern California, driving on the highway is a very different thing from driving at highway speeds.
A couple MotorTrend editors have complimented the way you can dig far into the Prius Prime’s throttle before the gas engine eventually realizes it may need to provide an assist to increase acceleration. That smart tuning and the Eco driving mode likely help us get within 10 percent of the car’s EPA-rated 39-mile electric range most of the time without any interruption from the gas engine. If you travel at sustained highway speeds, though? Forget it.
What Percentage of Driving Is on Electric Power?
About a quarter of our driving has been done on electric power alone, and that’s much lower than it should be. If I weren’t so focused on maximizing electric range around town and recording my results, I would do what we encourage plug-in hybrid owners do: plug the car in when the miles of range indicator is in the single digits, not after it reaches 0 miles. Keeping it charged ensures you’re using electric power far more of the time.
Think about it: With a plug-in hybrid and a predictable routine, you can easily travel more than 1,000 miles on electric power alone.
Cool, right? We can hear some of you from here: “Electric cars do 100 percent of their driving on EV power alone!” True. And at the Prius Prime XSE Premium’s roughly $43,000 as-tested price tag, several enticing fully electric cars start to enter the picture, some with very attractive lease deals.
Bottom Line
Yes, you can match the EPA’s 39–44-mile electric only range figure listed for the 2024 Prius Prime plug-in hybrid models. You’ll end up plugging in more than you ever would with an EV, but the bottom line is you’ll save money as opposed to operating a purely gas-powered car. Plug-in hybrids are still for a very specific type of buyer, but if the conditions are right, hitting the EPA-rated electric range with a Prius PHEV is absolutely possible.