Gadgetory

so some of you probably saw the sponsored social posts or better yet tuned into the awesome periscope stream from the Prius Prime announcement at the New York International Auto Show where I ran around opening up hoods and honking horns and stealing the touch-up paint from the prototype Prime you guys know how I do it really raises an interesting question why did Toyo don't want to partner with me again well thanks guys and we're even doing it better this time not only do I have my very own fully functional Prius Prime to unbox one of the first off the production line but while in the interest of protecting trade secrets they couldn't tell me absolutely everything I've also got a handful of interesting answers to my questions about what really went into this fascinating marriage of technology and automotive engineering I got where they always - sorry am i up now if anyone's in line up so up oh let's go have a look shall we so it starts on the outside this is what car people do right they admire the 15 inch slicked aerodynamic covers over your dope 15 inch alloy rims isn't so hard you got your aggressively angled headlights lines stuff and this is really cool there's like a robot man face styling to the back but what you guys don't see it here look you got your your sunglasses right there you got your like mustache and like a nose well we can agree to disagree that's fine but what pretty much everyone does agree on is that Prius prime features noticeably sporty or styling than previous Priuses why I mean in the past Toyota was perfectly content to build Priuses that look like well Priuses so it turns out the answer has to do with drag using a combination of simulations run on their own supercomputers did you know Toyota has supercomputers I sure didn't but apparently they kick ass because only a single prototype needed to be built to the air flow separation suppression characteristics of the upper body and the air flow rectifying effects of the enlarged underfloor covers in a wind tunnel to achieve Prime's 0.25 drag coefficient only marginally higher than a 787 airliner and there are lots of other things that might seem like premium or sporty or an enthusiast design choices that really come right back down to efficiency slick AF front grille design nope right there flap to control engine cooling and air resistance LED lights these are four cool factor right wrong LEDs are smaller lighter and more power efficient than traditional lights Toyota Safety sense P features like their pre collision system with pedestrian detection lane departure alert with steering assist full speed range dynamic radar cruise control safety okay yes safety but also efficiency in your car that doesn't go anymore it's not efficient right carbon fiber reinforced polymer trunk track day right wrong weight reduction and redistribution efficiency let's get inside shall we no one's gonna move the caramel on in here right okay okay so this is the point then I think I'm supposed to mention the best-in-class 19.8 cubic feet of cargo capacity I mean I'm Canadian and it's cubic foot anyway besides I'm more interested in the how so they upgraded the battery from 56 cells to 95 cells over the last gen and to make room for it they moved it down and forward this has the obvious benefit of getting the weight closer to the center of the vehicle and then they actually adjusted the suspension in the rear as well making it more vertical let's move on in shall we 60/40 split engine mode oh you know it's always funny to me when we do projects like this because there's like a committee on whether my clothes are going to clash with the interior styling of the car like that's the concern they didn't get awkward right ah okay so let's take a look around here most of this is at least somewhat familiar we've got the Qi wireless charging we've got the colour heads-up display JBL green edge speakers proximity sensors parking assist backup camera so it's an 11 point 6 inch 1920 by 1080 full HD display running an undisclosed operating system that handles all of the things that you would traditionally do through the potato I'll shoot can we do that again all the functionality that you would normally get through the console nailed it it's also running an undisclosed processor but I can speculate that it's doing a heck of a lot more than just smoothing out the animations on screen because there is a lot going on in here scheduled charging the ability to use easy mode normal hybrid mode or a third mode that dynamically switches between them and their predicted efficient Drive which sounds painfully marketing speaky but actually does pretty much what it sounds like the car will learn up to a thousand stops and will coach you on when to release the accelerator so the regenerative braking can kick in earlier and work its magic even the climate control system was custom tailored for prime in cold weather down to minus ten degrees Celsius which involved this fancy battery heating element in order to keep things working properly so that means it's a cold day you hop in you can run an easy mode immediately and furthermore thanks to the heat pump based HVAC system your range in cold conditions is going to be improved over systems that power the heating element off of the battery directly so it's that combined with everything else we've looked at today that allows prime to achieve its epa-estimated 133 MPGe your mileage may vary full of disclaimers taxes not included batteries not included other charges maple okay no batteries are included so I don't want it I want to get any trouble saying things that aren't true which I guess leads us pretty much to the end of this thanks to Toyota for bringing us down here thanks to you guys for watching if you want to learn more about Prius prime you can check out the link that we've got in the video description that's Toyota comm / Prius prime and I think that pretty much wraps it up like this video subscribe all that good stuff make sure that you like the video I think I said that see you guys next time