2020 Prius Prime- Looking for tasteful Highway aeromod

[gregersonke]

Like the subject says, I've got a 2020 prius prime LE for work, and 45 miles of my commute is at a speed of 76-80 just to keep from getting run over on California interstate. I do a lot of IT stuff so I'm constantly going in and out of the car between customers etc. The rest of my commute I do very well at slower speeds. But that part of my commute I'm only getting 40-45mpg and I'd like to get closer to the 65+ I get on the rest of the time when I'm not covering high speed highway. My average on my over 200 miles of daily driving is around 63.5 plugging it in every night which nets me 30-40 miles of electric or roughly 5 mpg daily average increase.

I'm looking for some simple yet not intrusive mods to help out with the highway if it's possible. I figured I'd check and see if you all have any ideas.

-Kevin

[redpoint5]

To get the MPG you're talking about, we're talking serious boat-tailing, and even then it would be difficult at 80 MPH.

Minor mods will improve efficiency a minor amount. Major mods will improve efficiency a major amount.

All the usual mod options exist for your vehicle: partial grill blocking, moon disc wheel covers, rear wiper delete, aero treatment to the rear, increase tire pressure...

[freebeard]

Ignore the 911 cooling fan, that was to make a different point. This shows Moon disks and wheel spats.

Are those snorkels on the front active air curtains or no? I can't find any discussion. It's fairly well optimized from the factory, adding length with a boat tail or boxed cavity would help the high-speed aerodynamics but compromise parking, etc.

Else, stance it.


https://i2.wp.com/www.toyotacarsq.co...80%2C460&ssl=1

[California98Civic]

Everything they said above... also, you don't have to do moon discs, which you might imagine are not "tasteful." There are effective alternate designs. See this thread: https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthre...s-37690-2.html In post #12 of the thread I showed some data and some studies indicating certain other designs can be about as effective as moon discs.

[freebeard]

If aesthetics are a problem, just add googly eyes


https://i.imgur.com/DhDzaAk.jpg

[RedDevil]

Googly eyes solve that. Beam me up Scotty, no aesthetics here

There's little low-hanging fruit left for aero improvements on a 2020 Prius...
Maybe a small air dam or front splitter like lip.
Just do the other stuff. Remove weight and air up the tires, nobody sees that and it helps a couple of %.

Paint it black with white doors and JAPD in big golden letters (for Just A Prius Driver) so you can drive as slow as you like without getting bothered. Oh, aesthetics?

[redpoint5]

BTW- buying the Prius is like paying for a factory ecomodded vehicle. They've done the heavy lifting already. Heck, my wife gets nearly the same fuel economy as me trying, which means they've removed most of the simple techniques to save fuel.

[Vman455]

I disagree with a lot of the above; Toyota claims a drag coefficient of 0.25 for the Prime, identical to the 3rd gen 2010-2015 Prius. There's room for improvement.

The Prime has active grill shutters, but a permanent partial grill block might still be helpful. There's no rear wiper on the Prime already, and no air curtain ducts. Trying to add internal ducts would be quite difficult since Toyota puts the signal lights right where the inlet should go. If you don't mind the look, I added external air curtain ducts in front, and am fabricating a similar design for the rear this weekend.

As far as other unobtrusive modifications: remove the passenger mirror (I think California requires the driver's mirror). Swap on some lowering springs. Enlarge the wheel air dams. Add fairings to those air dams from another car (I used the fairings from the 2014-2018 Ford C-Max Hybrid). Move the antenna inside the car and fill the hole in the roof or wrap over it. Increase the closed area of the wheel covers. That's about it for the easy stuff; then, you're looking at building a spoiler extension or tail, maybe like this guy.

[gregersonke]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

To get the MPG you're talking about, we're talking serious boat-tailing, and even then it would be difficult at 80 MPH.

Minor mods will improve efficiency a minor amount. Major mods will improve efficiency a major amount.

All the usual mod options exist for your vehicle: partial grill blocking, moon disc wheel covers, rear wiper delete, aero treatment to the rear, increase tire pressure...

Well, I'm thinking that it's already so efficient, it won't take much to increase it by much at that speed. I'm okay with the idea of the racing discs if I can actually get 2mpg out of them at speed.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by gregersonke

Like the subject says, I've got a 2020 prius prime LE for work, and 45 miles of my commute is at a speed of 76-80 just to keep from getting run over on California interstate. I do a lot of IT stuff so I'm constantly going in and out of the car between customers etc. The rest of my commute I do very well at slower speeds. But that part of my commute I'm only getting 40-45mpg and I'd like to get closer to the 65+ I get on the rest of the time when I'm not covering high speed highway. My average on my over 200 miles of daily driving is around 63.5 plugging it in every night which nets me 30-40 miles of electric or roughly 5 mpg daily average increase.

I'm looking for some simple yet not intrusive mods to help out with the highway if it's possible. I figured I'd check and see if you all have any ideas.

-Kevin

The Tesla Model X has the same drag coefficient as your car.At 55-mph,it's road load is 15.9-horsepower.At 80-mph,that grows to 36.2-horsepower,more than double.It experiences the velocity-cubed relationship for power consumption.
As mentioned by others already,speed is your enemy,and no token effort will make any appreciable difference.'AeroCivic-ing' your Prius would be your only option.