2023 Toyota Prius Prime Road Test

This is the road test for the 2023 Toyota Prius Prime. I'm John Lindcove. I'm Alex Nisak. As you may know, we buy all of our cars anonymously for our test program, and that keeps us independent and frees us to report all that's good and not so good about the cars that most people buy. For this road test, we bought a 2023 Toyota Prius Prime XSE. The options on it are the digital key capability for $275, 12.3 inch touchscreen for $735, fixed glass roof not a sunroof, a roof for $1000 and the all weather floor mats and cargo liner for $299. With the destination fee, which Alex is one of the lower ones out there, $1095 total comes out to 39,000 and four dollars. So what you may know about the Prius, it's it's very widely known as cars go as a brand name. Maybe it's actually, I would say not maybe it's probably the best known hybrid out there really got the whole hybrid thing started. Exactly, exactly. But for those of you who don't know what the Prime version is, Alex is going to tell you a little bit about what it is. Yeah. So the the Prime version is basically Toyota's name for the plug in hybrid Prius, right? And they apply Prime to other models like the Rav 4 Prime, which means that's the plug in hybrid version of the Rav 4, right? So, and you know, to take that further, if you don't know what a plug in hybrid is or a PHEV. So these are essentially regular hybrids, but they add a larger battery and a larger electric motor. And what that means is you can basically drive around for some amount of miles usually, you know, 20 to 30, maybe 40 miles of all electric driving, right? And it gives you some of the the benefits of that electric type of driving experience, which is, you know, some smooth acceleration, quietness, things like that and no gas use exactly. And at least for those those miles, right? And so in the case of the Prius Prime, it's electric only driving range is an EPA estimated 39 miles. So it can go 39 miles and then it'll switch over to regular hybrid operation essentially. So one thing is you can charge the Prius Prime at least, or you could charge most PHEVS on both the regular wall outlet, so 120 volts. But you could also use a specific EV charger. So if you want to spend the extra money and have that built in the 240 Volt one, you could build that, put that in as well. But because you're probably charging it at night and the battery's so small in comparison with EV, it kind of doesn't matter, right? Yeah, for most plug in hybrids you can get away with, you know, the included 120 Volt charger and, and our Prius Prime did come with one. And yeah, it only takes a couple of hours really to to charge it and it's enough where you can charge it overnight. And the nice thing about the plug in hybrid as opposed to an EV is you have that gas engine as a backup. So even if it doesn't charge, it's not like you're left stranded or with a car that you can't drive. So, you know in some cases with plugins with larger batteries, you might want to go for that 240 Volt charger just to get the most out of it but in the Prius Primes case, the battery, like you said is small enough where yeah, the 120 Volt is is good enough. Yeah. Just so to further you build on that one of the nice things about a plug in hybrid electric vehicle APHEV is that you don't have to find that public charger if you're out driving. Once you run out of electric range, it just kicks over to hybrid operation. The gas engine works as well with the with hybrid part of the battery and and you on your way, right? And it's a huge advantage for people who are interested in getting some of that electric range electric driving, right. But when they go on a long trip, they don't have to worry about finding that public charger for their EV or, you know, dealing with routing and figuring out where they're going to charge, right? You just drive the car, etcetera. Yeah, the whole thing. So basically that's what the Prius Prime is. And a little primer on what APHEV is. But Alex, what is new about this redesigned Prius Prime? Yeah, it's a it's essentially a ground up redesign. I mean, if you look at this new car compared to the old one, the styling is way more radical, right? It's it's sleek, it's lower to the ground. It actually looks kind of compelling and and pretty interesting, right. Whereas the old Prius in prior generations kind of a little dowdy. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Just angry. The last one. The last one was oddly angry yeah, but it had this even without the angry face like this kind of bubble shape to it and everything right now it's they really moved the center of the roof like the the highest point of the roof, they moved it back. They kind of raked the windshield even a lot more. And then you know what makes it really stand out is the 19 inch wheels that the XSE and XSE Premium have, which are huge wheels. I mean, even the base car has 17 inch wheels, which you know, the the old Prius had much smaller, right? But beyond that, which is kind of all a styling thing, right? They really focusing on the appearance of the Prius. It has a new two liter engine which, you know, gets it more power in addition to a longer EV range that comes from a larger battery than the Prius had before. But All in all, it is still on the same TNGA platform. Right. So the bones underneath the Prius are are similar ish to the one that, you know, it replaces. Yeah, not a ground up redesign from a clean sheet. Right. Exactly. So how did it do in our testing? Yeah, I mean just some some highs, you know, from from testing is that, you know, of course, like we talked about, you can drive an electric power part time. That's the benefit of a PHEV. And you know, as far as the the spectrum of plug in hybrids, this one has a decent, you know, range at 39 miles, excellent fuel economy even in hybrid mode. Yes, it's less than the regular Prius, which we'll talk about, but still good fuel economy. It's quick to accelerate, more engaging to drive. Now the the Prius just has better steering, better handling, you know, not as much body roll and less engaging to drive. So they've really improved it there. And it's still a hatchback. So you do have some of that cargo versatility, right, right. Of course, even if a vehicle that does pretty well and then gets such great fuel economy like Prius still has some lows from our testing. And a lot of it really is design based. You know, it's a, it's a side effect of some of the of that aggressive design. For example, access to the cabin and outward visibility are really hurt. So getting in, you have to duck low with that roof line visibility pinched by the windows, noisy engine. A lot of times you have the hybrids, once you kick past the electric operation, you know, you're accelerating hard. The engine gets kind of loud. Rear seat comfort is significantly compromised by that styling. And even though it is a hatchback, you do have reduced cargo space compared to the previous Prius Prime. Little more upright, have a little more of a square back there. Yeah. So I think, you know, one of the ways to sum up this car, you know, comes from our logbook. So somebody's quoted here saying this car is trying to be too many things to too many of the wrong people. And So what they're really talking about is people who weren't likely to buy the Prius in the past because they're kind of poking fun out of it and things like that, They're probably not going to buy the new one anyway, especially with how many other hybrid options there are, right? And then people who are dedicated Prius owners, they see now that the practicality's kind of been taken out of it in a sense, right? And so there might not be as interested as they were previously. So time will tell with how much it sells and, and all that. But yeah, interesting way to think about it. It's almost like they answered a question no one was asking for this car, right? Right. I, I mean, I think they had to do it to some degree, right? Because of how many, again, how many hybrids there are now when the Prius got started, it was basically the hybrid option, right? So it could be whatever it needed to be and it could be that practical thing. But now when you can get a even sticking with Toyota is a Camry that gets very, very similar gas mileage in hybrid form. They had to make the Prius something more compelling and they chose to do it with the styling. Yeah, no, it, it, it stands out, but maybe not for all the right right. So in our testing, out of 100 possible points, the Prius Primes Rd. test score is a 78. That's a good score among compact cars and it's actually two points better than the regular non plug in Prius scored, but still not class leading overall among hybrids, 'cause there's some compact hybrids and plug in hybrids that have stronger Rd. test scores. And even some non hybrid compact cars score even better in terms of the road test score again. Alright, so Alex, can you recap the differences between the Prius hybrid and the Prius Prime plug in hybrid in terms of powertrain? Sure. Yeah. So you know, the base powertrain's very, very similar. But this gets a larger battery. So it has a 13.6 kWh lithium ion battery, which gives it that EPA estimated 39 miles of all electric driving, right. So on top of that it the foundation is really the two litre 4 cylinder gasoline engine that it has and then it has 120 kilowatt electric motor attached to that essentially. So it gives you 220 horsepower overall, which is 99 horsepower, basically 100 horsepower boost compared to the last prime. And you can definitely feel it when you're driving it. Yeah. So we got 43 miles per gallon combined in hybrid mode. So that means once that electric range and that high voltage battery are depleted and it's just working basically like the regular Prius does as a regular hybrid, that's when we got 43 miles per gallon combined. So that's a a drop compared to the 51 miles per gallon that we got with the regular all-wheel drive Prius XLE that we tested. The non prime version, right, 'cause the prime is front wheel drive only, right? Front wheel drive only. And you know, part of that is it's heavier, right? It's about 240 lbs heavier than the regular Prius that we tested, even considering front wheel drive versus all-wheel drive. So it's got that extra weight to carry around and then the system's just working a little bit differently, right to to manage the the power and everything. So still, 43 miles per gallon is pretty impressive. That's pretty high. But yeah, so if you frequently travel long highway distances and your, you know, opportunity to charge is limited, you're you're probably better off with the regular Prius because you would be getting that higher fuel economy. Definitely, definitely. So powertrain aside, what is the Prius Prime like to drive? Yeah, it's actually really nice. It's it's kind of a pleasure to drive, especially when it has a charged battery because that noisy engine that we mentioned, that's off most of the time, right. So like most of these plug in hybrids, it's really only when they have a charged battery when you get on to the throttle more heavily, right, you need to accelerate up a hill or accelerate pass something like that, that's when it kicks the gas engine on. So that can kind of make it feel a little less pleasurable of a driving experience. Yeah, it gets noisy, but still that that electric motor that we mentioned, it gives it a decent electric shove off the line so it accelerates smoothly. And then once that high voltage battery is depleted and it's just working as a regular hybrid. It's kind of like other Toyotas where you know you might roll out from a stop sign or drive around slowly at parking lot speeds and it'll stay in that electric mode. But once you kind of accelerate more hard or, you know, just get up to regular driving speeds, that engine's on more often. So there's a unique feature in the Prime that we're not 100% sold on. When the batteries charged, drivers can select A specific EV driving mode that actually keeps the engine off even if you fully press down the accelerator pedal. Most plug in hybrids operate, whereas if you floor it in EV mode, the gas engine will kick in. So one of the things you have to do is if you're in A2 lane passing zone, for example, going around a slower vehicle, you really gotta make sure you have a lot of room, Right? Right. Yeah, And you know, this mode like you described is unique to the Prius. Most will kick it on. There are a few that do that. But it really makes it good for a plug in hybrid owner who really, really wants to maximize that electric only driving, right? Because it just makes it easier to avoid having that engine come on. Because the way a lot of these work, once it comes on, it's going to stay on at least for a little bit because of now it's got to warm up and and do its whole engine thing, right. So it doesn't just pop on for a second shut off. Now, I will say the Prius Prime is actually one of our fastest accelerating plug in hybrids in its electric mode. We tested all these from zero to 60 and it was about 11 seconds. So it's nothing crazy fast by any means, but that's actually pretty quick for a plug in hybrid in its electric mode. So what that means is, you know, you could drive it regularly without feeling like you're, you know, in a dangerous situation, even though that engine's not on. And you can really feel the additional power that the Prime has over the regular Prius. So it yeah, it makes it pretty nice to drive and you can pass with confidence and all these things. All right Alex, so now we get into the specifics of the performance. These are our standard objective and subjective tests, right, That you use instruments for some, some of them are just kind of seat of the pants and so to speak, like, you know, comfort judged by a jury, right, right. So it's the jury of of our auto engineers take care of these. Yep, absolutely. So how did the Prius perform in the zero to 60 mile per hour test knowing we were talking about the 11 second acceleration before right yeah. So that 11 seconds was in its electric only mode, right. But our our test that is counted for the road test is its full acceleration capability. So that means in this case with a full charge battery in its regular mode. So the engine is on, right? And it was able to do it in 6.9 seconds, which is pretty quick. And it's actually a whole second quicker than the regular Prius And amazingly, a four second improvement over the previous generation Prime, which is pretty huge. That's huge, that is. And when it comes time to slow down from that massive speed improvement, how did the previous Prime do in our braking test? Yeah, really. Well, yeah, We've seen that sometimes in our testing that hybrids have longer stopping distances. But in the Prime's case, in the dry, it was 133 feet, which is short for the class. In the wet, it was 151 feet, which is definitely starting to get a little longer and a little bit, you know, further than we typically see. As far as the brake pedal feel, it's pretty natural actually, compared to most hybrids. Hybrids tend to have this, you know, blending between the region and the friction brakes, which can make it feel a little odd. And in this case, it can be a little grabby at slow speeds when you first, you know, press that pedal. But generally, you know, it kind of feels normal. After that point, you can modulate it pretty easily. So one of the things that Toyota and Toyota's Lexus luxury division has seen is that they've been putting a focus on performance more than they've never really been. Aside from some of the sports cars you haven't really thought of the Camry, the Prius, the Lexus RX is the sportiest version out there. So they have been trying to make handling better, more, more of a an attribute of the vehicles. How has it been with the Prime? Yeah, it's actually pretty good. They definitely improved it. The steering is more responsive. There's less body roll. You know, it has a natural feel to it when you turn it into corners, you know, and you do sit so low in this car. And the car is so low that that center of gravity is pretty low down South. Yeah. It feels, it feels pretty capable through turns. I mean, I'm not going to call it a sports car. If you want that, you know, go look at the the GR, you know, some other Toyota models. But it is engaging enough to drive where, you know, it doesn't feel like the handling was an afterthought. So one of the signature tests that we do here at Consumer Reports is called our avoidance maneuver. And it simulates a a quick left, right, left steering maneuver. For example, you know, you're driving down the street, A child runs out between two parked cars. You avoid the child, but you have a car coming either way. You cut back into the lane so that you're back of your travel lane, you know, just to avoid an obstacle. How did the Prius do in that? Yeah, really. Well, it was secure and, and basically all of our handling tests, you know, had pretty high limits with strong tire grip. You know, going through the course, navigating it through is predictable, forgiving, you know, and some of the handling that we talked about just on the road previously really, you know, comes through in the the avoidance maneuver and just makes it easy to drive through the course. And ultimately it managed a 56 and a half mile per hour, you know, speed through the course, which is about 3 mph faster than the the regular Prius. And you know, different weight distribution, slightly different, you know, handling characteristics because of it, right, right. So while it's fun to drive ish while we are on our Rd. course or doing emergency handling, ride quality on regular roads is a big thing. So has it changed? Has it gotten bigger? We have the better or worse we have the bigger tires and wheels and that much older one. So any impact? Yeah, it's it's firmer than before compared to previous Priuses it you know, two things right? It feels tighter. It is tighter because of and just more firm suspension 'cause they are going for improved handling, which you know was successful, I would say. But putting those giant wheels, the 19 inch wheels in this case for the sake of styling really definitely hurts in terms of the bump absorption when you hit those sharp edges and potholes and things like that. Just more likely to feel that coming through. If you do get the base model, the SC, it does get smaller 17 inch wheels, even those are two inches larger than the previous generation that we tested which had 15 inch wheels. Believe it or not, I don't think those exist. If they do, it's it's a very, very small amount of models these days, So it's not surprising to see them increase that size, but it does have an impact. But I will say that the prime is a little bit more comfortable than the regular Prius. You know, that added weight, the different weight distribution cause of the battery, it does change the way it rides it not dramatic, but it is a little bit different, more comfortable. But yeah, just you know, it has gentle body motions. It's not like you're getting pitched around and and tossed around as you, you know, go over various bumps and things like that. So overall, wall firm and maybe not a luxury car. It's it's passable for sure. OK, so we get to cabin noise. Historically, the Prius hasn't always been the quietest vehicle. And whether it's, you know, to save weight so that you get better fuel economy, take out some sound deadening. You know, whatever the reason has been, it hasn't been known as a quiet car. So you can drive the Prime though as an EV, which is kind of silent. Yeah, Yeah. These plug in hybrids almost make talking about noise more difficult because you have to think about it in two different situations, right? One, when you have the charge battery and you're in electric mode and when you're not, when you don't have that power, right. And, and in the some of them, some of these plug in hybrids, those two situations are fairly similar because of how quiet they are otherwise. But the Prime is like a pretty big dichotomy between having a battery charged and not. So in EV mode, pretty quiet. I mean, I would say don't expect, you know, a full on EV experience like you know, some of the quietest EVs out there, you still get the road noise and some wind noise. You know, it's a fairly low to the ground kind of light thin vehicle in showcases, right. So you're getting some of those noises come through, but still it is fairly quiet. But it's when that gas engine comes on and that Eve CVT lets the engine RPMS rise, kind of hang at that higher level when you need to accelerate, you know, more quickly. That's when it starts to get quite noisy. Somebody in our, our logbook described it as an avalanche of noise when you need to merge onto the highway. Yeah, it, it's interesting 'cause it really takes the sophistication out of the experience in a sense, right, where you're driving around an EV and it feels premium, quiet, refined, right. And then all of a sudden this thing comes on the avalanche of noise, as it were. The electric motor has some, you know, high pitched whine here and there, but nothing that's, you know, out of, you know, character for the class. I would say that's kind of something that we see in, in, in PAGVS and and even some electric vehicles, right? Motor wine. OK, so we've gotten down handling ride quality, you know, the driving dynamics. So we're gonna go inside the cabin because that's been like the exterior totally redesigned from the last one here at Consumer Reports, we talk about build quality in terms of fit and finish. So has has Toyota snazzed up the interior a bit or? Yeah, a little bit. It's definitely a, it's a modest step up in terms of, you know, the presentation and quality of the interior. Still a lot of hard plastic trim and things like that that you might expect. I mean, $39,000 is not cheap, but, you know, this is basically the same interior that's in the the regular PS, right, which starts at a lower price. So, you know, on the positives, there's kind of this like brushed aluminum look to some of the trim, which is kind of nice padded surfaces on the, you know, in front of the passenger and on the windowsills and things like that. It does have Toyota's fake leather seats, which are passable for sure as Mercedes bends, but maybe not. But, you know, they're nice, you know, and then some of the let downs are just, yeah, that plastic trim around the instrument cluster doesn't feel so great. Some flimsy plastics here and there. And mold lines that you can, you know, if you have a really keen eye, you can start to find things that maybe aren't so nice. But again, it it fits in with the class that, you know, competes in stuff like, you know, the plastics that popped out of the mold. So you have that like Ridge, right? Yeah, exactly. Like if you you know, on the edge of like the cup holder on the door or sometimes the visor might have something on the edge, something like that. So yeah, gotcha. Alright, so everyone's got their phone, their wallet, a purse, a bag, you know, a laptop or whatever it is stuff we carry around, but, you know, sort of dumping it on the passenger seat and not having a passenger. Where do you store that type of stuff? In the Prius? Yeah, I mean it, it's pretty decent. I mean, look like this is a small car, right? So you're not just going to go in and throw things into giant bins and like pickup truck with a Giant Center console, right. But for its size and and capability, I'd say it's it's pretty good. It does have a good size bin that's in front of the center console with like a, you know, rubber base to it, so your stuff's not sliding around making a bunch of noise. Pet peeve of mine personally has a dedicated phone charging, wireless charging slot, One of my favorite actually. It's kind of this like vertical slot, I guess to the left of the shifter that your phone just drops into nicely. And and if I could cut in, that's kind of a rare thing for Toyota because a lot of them are just open and especially their SU VS flat surfaces with the Qi charger and the phone slides around. So that takes a lot of space. Yeah, it's really nice. Yeah. And then you have a decent sized bin under the center armrest. Door pockets are kind of small, like you know where the cup holder is in the door and and other storage places kind of in that area. And for better or worse, I don't know, but there are Easter eggs all over the car. If you look inside the wireless charger, you'll see like hashtag wireless charger. Or if you take out the cover for the bin, it's like hashtag hidden storage or something like that. It's all over the car. So take that for what it is. All right, All right, it's kind of like the Jeep thing, right? You know Sasquatch, I think they're trying to yeah, they're trying to be cool. So putting put people behind the wheel, you know, you're sitting there. How do the drivers, because we have drivers of all shapes and sizes, heights, you know, etcetera, find it to get into the previous prime and and were they able to find a comfortable driving position? Yeah, I would say it, it takes some getting used to and it takes a little bit of almost effort to to get your driving position right because of how low you sit in this car. It's almost sports car like with how you know, high your seating position is off the ground or off the floor of the car, you're you're quite low. And then the way they dramatically raked the the windshield, right and those a pillars, they go really far out. So you're sitting like in the middle of the car, right? And the dashboard extends really, really far out. But I think beyond all that, the thing you'll notice the most is probably where they put the instrument panel. It's really far away on the dashboard, right? And unlike most cars where you look through the steering wheel at the the gauge cluster behind it, and this is designed so that you look over the steering wheel and it's really far away. So it takes a little bit of time to get the steering wheel in the right position. And then one of the problems with the way they did this is that the screen for the gauge cluster isn't really any larger than any other car or any other Toyota for that matter. So even though they place it really far away, some of the text and icons are kind of small, hard to read. Yeah. So it can just take a little bit of of time to get, you know, acclimated to it. Some of the things that we did find or the, you know, with the driving position is that the center console cuts into the driver's right knee, right. And, you know, it's not a wide padded, so it's a little bit little bit wide. So if you sit splay legged, you know, you sit, you're trying to get closer to that gauge cluster, you know, pull yourself up, you're going to bang your knee onto the right side of there. We, we did find that the door and center armrest well positioned enough, but the padding's kind of minimal, particularly in the center armrest. One person or we wrote in the log book, it's just like you have a piece of material right over a piece of hard plastic. But on the positive side, even with that raked roof, the decent headroom and the left foot rest or the dead pedal, you know where you're just going to position your foot there really nicely sized, well placed so you're not sliding off of it or just kind of putting your foot on the floor. So besides the odd driving position, we also are going to look at the visibility. So how well you can see out the front, sides and the back of the car. One of the things we see is that, you know, if you can't see out well, you're not going to be able to see pedestrians, you're not going to be able to see other traffic 'cause, you know, stuff like that and keep people safe on the road. So how has it been with the redesign? What where did it? You're going to guess from this, from the styling, it has been kind of negatively impacted considering compared to the other one. Yeah, we've been kind of alluding to that. And yeah, visibility definitely is challenging. And yeah, that redesign, you know, they, this is one of the more obvious areas, I think that they compromised, you know, to make it look the way it does. So you're sitting really, really low. You have that raked windshield. And, you know, for me, the first thing I notice is how long those A pillars are and how far they extend out towards the front of the car, right. So I could just make it challenging. At intersections. You're kind of trying to look around them to, you know, make sure, you know, somebody's not crossing the road or in a crosswalk or something like that or oncoming traffic. And then just the way the roof line has been lowered, right, the side windows aren't as tall as they used to be. So just your visibility to the side is a little bit more compromised. And then as you get to the back, they they really shrunk down that rear window, right? They used to have this 2 panel type situation going on where you had a little extra visibility at the bottom and that's pretty much gone, right. So the the rear window's a lot smaller than it used to be. Yeah. So definitely not the Prius or Prius Prime strong suit. And I mean, crazy enough, it's it seems to be a theme nowadays with electrified vehicles. No rear wiper. Not sure why it's if aerodynamics can clear snow and ice and and rain. But yeah, so you have snow, rain, Rd. grime, it all builds up on there and it makes it hard to see at the back. You know, even it could be a clear day. You still have like grunge on it. Yeah, absolutely. So now that we're still inside the interior, how are the front seats for for comfort and and in position? Yeah, they're they're comfortable. I think most people, you know, found them to fit pretty well and they had, you know, mild but good enough bolstering, right, to kind of keep the driver in place. Again, this isn't a a race car by any means, so you don't need the most prominent lateral support and bolstering, but it, you know, does its job. You do have the two way lumbar adjustment here, which definitely helps, especially on longer trips making the tweaks to the seat. But yeah, there were a few people that said that the the cushion was on the short side, so not enough under leg support, right? And then just the upper portion of the back rest for some people was a little firm. So just putting extra pressure on the back. But I'd say overall pretty, pretty solid seats. OK, well, some of that kind of carries over the back. So you know, the rear seat is tighter than before. Even though the original Prime had just a two position seat. This is now a three position. You know, 3-3 people can sit across the back seat, but it's still pretty snug and not super comfortable. So low to the floor, just like the front seat. So there's not as much under leg support, unlike the front headroom's pretty tight. And foot space is, is OK for average size adults, but it's it's still snug. And those rear windows that don't help with visibility, they're so squat. They also make you feel kind of like in a cave, kind of pending. So, yeah, definitely not the not the long term trip type rear seat that you would you would, you know, look forward to being. Yeah, definitely not getting in is is also been a challenge, you know, so it's a low slung stance makes it gives the car a low center of gravity, but that helps handling, but that makes it a challenge for getting into the car. Yeah, I think this is a this is a huge point of why somebody might choose a small SUV over something like this. It's just getting into the car and they didn't do any favors by making that windshield and A pillars the way it is, right, 'cause it's already so low. So you're kind of falling down into the seat a little bit. But then you have to manage to duck your head under the A pillars and kind of, I mean, I hit my head, I'll be honest, once or twice getting used to it. So, yeah, I think this is something you'll definitely want to get in and out of the car a couple times and, and really decide if you're willing to put up with that, you know, as opposed to just an easier SUV to get into. Right. Yeah. And then as far as the rear, I'd say the rear door handles are kind of the most unique thing going on here, right? They hid them in the trim essentially behind the window. So they're up high and just not that easy to find. Once you know they're there, it's OK. They're a little awkward to grab, but yeah, just not immediately obvious. It's one of those things where if, if you have the car, you have family and you're carrying kids and you're carrying friends, it's, there's always, I find particularly with a lot of the cars with different electric door handles, it's teaching the new passenger how to get in, how to get out of the car. So that's where the challenge really lies. So with child seats, you can put the put a child seat in with the vehicle's seat belt instead of using a LATCH attachment. It does require some extra effort. So with a rear facing child seat, you really want to make sure that the car seat has enough recline adjustment because the angle of the seat cushion is really steep. So you want to make sure it's it's not tipping forward towards that seat back, you know, their faces coming to the seat back too much. Three car seats can fit across, but it's going to be really, really tight if you need to use the seatbelts again. So it'll take some, you know, like a little Jenga work, you know, you know, to get every all the seats in their position properly. And also you have to take out the rear center head restraint with a high back booster. So, you know, child sitting up with the with the booster there, that seat head restraint's going to push in a bit. So we recommend limiting booster use to the outboard seats. Alright, so one of the things that Consumer Reports that we really focus on are the controls. You know, we want them to be easy and not contribute to distraction. And you know, in some ways Prius is pretty good. It it uses a lot of its interior layout and controls that similar to other Toyota vehicles, for example, climate control uses manual buttons, which we like unlike a lot of competitors and just other EVs and electrified vehicles out there, doesn't use touch sensitive capacitive buttons. You know that that it's not really a button. You just, you know, get your finger to it. So that's a nice thing. Unfortunately, some of the labels are small and challenging to to read while driving. But as far as infotainment system goes, there's two different ones, right, Alex? Yeah, they are. They're different, but similar. The the SC and the XSE come standard with an 8 inch infotainment system, which is like what we tested in the regular Prius non Prime version. But our Prime test car had the larger 12.3 inch touchscreen, which is standard on the XSE Premium. But honestly, the software between the two is, is pretty much the same. It's just a larger touchscreen. So I know on on some of these cars and other, you know, cars out there, getting the larger infotainment means you get a whole different experience. It's really not the case here. It really just grows the screen size, but it helps when you're using like car play and things like that, looking at maps and whatnot. It does help to have that larger screen and, you know, fit more text and icons and things like that. One thing that's a little unfortunate about the larger display, though, is it makes the volume knob go from the driver side over to the passenger side. So it just moves it away from you, which is kind of, you know, silly. I don't know why it makes it harder to access. So that's something to keep in mind. You still have the steering wheel buttons, but yeah, that volume knob moves away. But yeah, some other things that we like is just, it has a pretty, you know, simple layout, large clear icons and buttons and things like that. You know, I think one of the let downs though about Toyota's system in the Prius and other Toyota models right now is there's no home screen for this infotainment system. Which means that if you're using the navigation and media or phone or whatever, the different main systems are, right? You're always jumping back and forth using the the menu buttons as opposed to like being able to see what you're listening to and a view of the map or the road or whatever right there at a glance. So you're kind of always touching buttons to make that go. And then just some of the audio and radio minios can be a little confusing here and there. Yeah, I found myself backing in and backing at, you know, backing into things and going deep and then having a, you know, get back somehow to change the the function that I wanted to use it for, which again, that maximizes distraction, not minimizes it. Sure. One of the things also is that for a, a plug in hybrid, an electrified vehicle, a fuel economy special, Toyota did a really good job of taking all that really pertinent information and hiding it on that, that driver information, you know, the DIC, the driver information cluster, you know, up front. So it's small, it's far away and it's hard to see the real pertinent information. So that's kind of a let down, you know, And one of the other things, there's no EV range displayed in miles. They use a percentage. So you have to know that 38% means how many miles some amount exactly. So that's misleading. Another big control that we've been working on or focusing on here, consumer points, the gear selector, right, gone from the the simple Prindle PR, you know, park reverse neutral, Dr. low to all kinds of knobs, buttons, switches, etcetera. Yeah, what's going on with the Prius? Yeah, so the Prius is getting this kind of electronic gear selector that a lot of other Toyotas and started with Lexus models in it. Yeah, it's this like mono stable thing, which means it moves to the center after you, you know, go to select, drive or reverse or whatever it is. And you kind of have to move it in this specific pattern. And basically it it can be a little tedious to get used to and you end up, I know what happened to me, you end up in neutral a lot trying to go from reverse to drive or drive to reverse, that type of thing. But honestly, I think, you know, with enough time, while it is a little fussy if you will, you will get used to it. You know, you spend enough time with the car. Yeah, exactly. I know after driving that long enough, I stopped ending up in neutral by mistake. You've made it to work. So another kind of weird thing is that the way the diagram is on the center console by the shifter, it has P, but it's actually there's a park button instead of having the shifter go to a position for park. So it just is one of those things that it looks like you're gonna shift park, but you actually have to press a button to put the car in park itself. So look, like you said, people get used to it over time, but it is still odd. Yeah. And it's it's regardless of how much you get used to it, it's not as simple as just pulling the lever back to to D. Exactly. Exactly. So like we talked about earlier on, the styling has affected cargo volume somewhat, particularly compared to the previous generation. Yeah. We were only able to fit two large suitcases behind the rear seat when it's in the race position. Right. In the last Prime, we fit those plus two additional large duffel bags. So there's definitely a, you know, smaller space back there. And again, due to that styling primarily, right, some of the Prius Prime's competitors can hold four large suitcases back there, right. So it's definitely a smaller space. Yeah. Only the top XSE Premium version comes with a power lift gate, but that is nice to have. It opens pretty high, you know, gives you a lot of room without hitting your head while, you know, loading and unloading that cargo area. And it does have a pretty good cargo floor height, which means you're not lifting things, you know, too high over the the lift over height right and then having to lower them way down into the car. So it's it's pretty easy to get stuff back in there. So probably one of the areas Toyota save some money, save some weight is the cargo area. It's kind of bare bones and in terms of fit and finish some hard plastic. The material on the floor is it's more like felt on cardboard than any kind of real fabric of substance. So actually the all weather cargo floor mats and liners that we got dinged for on our option is actually pretty worth it and it makes it a little nicer back there. So as you wrap up, we're gonna look at safety, a key aspect that we at Consumer Reports look at with every vehicle, particularly the the more involved active driving assistance systems that are coming on more and more cars. Standard features All Prius Primes come with automatic emergency braking with pedestrian, cyclist and motorcyclist detection, comes with automatic emergency braking that operates at highway speeds to slow the vehicle to lessen the severity of crash, comes with blind spot warning and it comes with rear cross traffic warning. And the Prime also comes standard with an active driving assistance system which gives it the ability to use adaptive cruise control and lane settering to keep the car in it's lane and a set distance from the vehicle in front of it. So it's not self driving by any means, but it's additional safety feature. Alex, a little bit about the rear seat safety, if you wouldn't mind. Yeah, sure. Despite it not being the most comfortable spot, as we talked about, it does have, you know, a good amount of rear seat safety features. One of those is a standard rear occupant alert, which basically uses the logic of opening and closing the doors to give the driver an audible alert, right, Basically reminding them to check the rear seat if the ignition's turned off. It's really to help you prevent, you know, leaving kids or pets, you know, in the car and you know, God forbid something bad happens since it's hot outside or something like that. So it's really designed to to help prevent that. It also has a rear belt minder. Again, this is something that driver can see in the in the display that lets them know whether passengers have buckled their seat seat belts or not. Yep, I will tell you this from personal experience, kids getting out to run to the bus that will go off immediately. If you are driving and the child is getting ready to get out to hit make it to the bus. So if someone is considering buying a Prius Prime, what is the best version that buyer should look at? Yeah, I mean, again, we talked about how the Prius Prime is really, it's set up well for somebody who does want to maximize those electric miles right from a plug in hybrid. So if that really is your goal, the base SE version really fits that a little bit better because you're getting better fuel economy, first of all, but you're also getting more electric range. Probably the smaller wheels and tires they really help probably a little lighter too and potentially gives you a more comfortable ride compared to the 19 inch wheels. That said, if you want some of these other features we've talked about like the larger infotainment system, the fixed glass roof, you do have to step up to that XSE version that's kind of in the middle there. And I I think another thing of note is the Prius prime is only available front wheel drive like we mentioned. So if you do live in a snowy area or you're on, you know, slippery roads or steep driveways that are slippery, whatever it might be, you can get the Prius with all-wheel drive, just not the Prime version. So your dead set on the Prime winter tires will probably help you out. So if you're interested in the Prius Prime or any other plug in hybrid electric vehicle, head on over to consumerreports.org.