infinitenexus said:
With the heavy battery down low, they also handle surprisingly well. That car has almost zero body roll, and I have definitely gone around a few corners a bit too fast just to see what it would do. Just flat handling. Also from a stop I have spun the tires a few times. Hehehe.
Lol wut?
I like Priuses. I had a 1G and it was entertaining to hypermile. The chassis is on par with other econoboxes.
The battery is not that heavy and also not that low. They have plenty of body roll. That said, it can be corrected, just like it can on other cars.
As mentioned above, the main issue is not making more power, but actually delivering it through the transmission - which is made up of 2 electric motors you don't really have control over.
In reply to ProDarwin :
Well mine at least has very, very little body roll and I tend to speed around onramps and flog the car a bit. Now to be fair, my current base for comparison is a 2012 mustang GT, which handles like a boat. But for a small economy car I've found the Prius does in fact have pretty good handling.
Lemons had a stock Prius finish in 11th of 78 it was themed as a smokey the bandit the last race I saw it.
The 1NZ in the echo/yaris has the non-atkins camshafts, which has 108hp vs 85hp.
I don't think hacking/ECU tuning is going to help much for the first or second gen, but I absolutely think there's probably some power left on the table with the newest generations.
For some reason I recently bought perhaps the nicest first year prius still on the road today(I know the reason, it was a handful of fifties and I was bored). Just hit 57k and has a new bank of batteries as of a couple years back. From what I've learned, the first gen is stuffed full of unproven tech and very much designed for Japan, seeing as they had it for 4 years before us and uh, the electric motor assist unit is known to cook itself with prolonged freeway use. So that probably explains why there isn't an aftermarket for this thing. Since I can't make it any faster, I'm going to try and make it handle.
^The biggest thing to watch out for with a 1st gen is the electric assist steering rack, which will total the car (if the recall has not been done). It wouldn't surprise me to see a corolla unit bolt up though.
infinitenexus said:
It'll definitely be the polar opposite of a full sized truck, that's for certain. But personally, I find the Prius to be the perfect appliance car. If there was a way to bump it up to 200hp, it would be a blast indeed, especially being so aerodynamic with that handling.
I looked up the specs on the CT200h hoping that it was more powerful than the Prius, but alas it is not. Same drivetrain, just a less-dorky body.
Vigo
MegaDork
11/26/19 12:21 p.m.
I've owned a 2g Prius and put some miles on a Corolla XRS, which was the sportiest car on that basic suspension design. Everything that makes the Corolla suspension better swaps directly over.
As far as a Prius having 200hp, having driven both those cars I have definitely benchraced the idea of how awesome it would be to have a 2zz Prius. The 2zz is a sweet motor but from the factory it's difficult to keep it 'on cam' because of the lift switch point, rev limiter, ratio spread of the gears etc etc BUT!! If you hook it to a cvt in a Prius it would just zing up to 7-8k rpm and sit there making about ~200hp total from gas and electric. Doesn't sound that great unless you've driven a 2zz car. They don't feel that fast but if someone next to you happens to be flooring it at the same time 
it turns out a 2zz on the highway is STUPID fast for its 180hp! It'll go around a lot of 13 second cars on the highway.
So yes, i would really like that. 
Toyota does make a 180hp 2.0L Corolla Hybrid in other markets, but it is mysteriously slower than its rating would suggest. The ~200hp Camry Hybrids though are pleasantly quick. TTAC tested a 2g Camry Hybrid at ~15.2@90+ in the 1/4 mile back in ~2012 and it is still a 40+mpg car. Newer ones are slightly heavier and slower iirc.
So my 2013 has the 2ZR-FXE, and some Corolla and other cars have engines in the same family making 150+hp and the main differences are cams and pistons. It seems that a cam swap could net a good bump in power, however the Prius has 13:1 compression so either you'd have to run race fuel or drop in some lower compression pistons. Hmmm, 13:1 compression, bigger cam, race fuel, autocross Prius... Please someone do this. For science.
In reply to infinitenexus :
There are some suspension options too- there's a Gambler 500 prius that was lifted with a Russian-made kit for a Hilux truck that actually fits, and the JAlopnik article it was in mentioned other kits as well.
I know its an old thread, but has anyone actually tried any of these things? This may be too much work, but Damien Maguire on youtube made an open source control board for the Prius inverter. If you combine that with a replacement ECU for the engine, you could make the car do whatever you want. I want to do something like this in the future, once I don't have to rely on my prius as a daily driver.
In reply to NoInstructions :
There's some problems with that, as an earlier comment said. Take a look at this cutaway for the 2nd Gen:
See how the electric motor is connected *to* the engine into the trans? The power-split device is actually the CVT; any screwing with the ECU programming or overvolting the motor would start overpowering the gas engine, vice-versa if you swapped cams on the atkinson engine or something else similar (as the motor has to kick in to assist with low-end torque for stop/start). I *think* you would be able to squeeze more out of the combination, but to be frank they're built to complement each other so heavily I really don't know how.
There are other options; the DIY electric Car forums found the Lexus Gs405h transmission has multipule motors directly inside the housing and is capable up to 100Hp- you also have the current hybrid system for the RAV4, which integrate an AC motor into the pumpkin of the solid rear axle for nearly the same horsepower level.
The GS450h would have been a lot faster if it had traction for all its torque. It was heavily throttled (both ice and electric) and you could feel it ramping in from 0-30mph or so. It did 0-60 in 5.2 pushing a 4100lb 2wd car on 245 runflats open diff throttling the heck out of the power delivery.
I did put mine in a maintenance mode that allowed some goofiness but with the ramp-in gone every time I hit the gas it felt like it was going to break the diff mounts with the nasty instantaneous torque hit so i quickly gave up on that and left it alone.
GIRTHQUAKE said:
In reply to NoInstructions :
There's some problems with that, as an earlier comment said. Take a look at this cutaway for the 2nd Gen:
See how the electric motor is connected *to* the engine into the trans? The power-split device is actually the CVT; any screwing with the ECU programming or overvolting the motor would start overpowering the gas engine
There are multiple motors. One that controls the gear ratio, but the main traction motor is driving the ring gear of the diff, independent of engine power. You can ramp up torque (and regen) on that one without impact ICE or vice versa.
GIRTHQUAKE said:
In reply to infinitenexus :
There are some suspension options too- there's a Gambler 500 prius that was lifted with a Russian-made kit for a Hilux truck that actually fits, and the JAlopnik article it was in mentioned other kits as well.
After Googling "Gambler 500 Prius", I found out that there was more than one. The one with the Russian kit was apparently for a Corolla based SUV.
pointofdeparture said:
I guess the question is, what would you want to hack it to do? You can spoof a key fob on just about anything these days but the root vehicle systems are pretty heavily encrypted.
For an enthusiast example the OBDII Toyota 2JZ-GE engines came out over 20 years ago and ECU encryption STILL hasn't been broken on those. And I guarantee you a lot more people want 2JZ-GE ECU tuning capabilities than Prius tuning capabilities...the only solution is a piggyback add-on. Likewise with the newer Hondas, Hondata has to add in a separate board to have any control, the stock ECU is locked down tight, the ability to do a reflash has disappeared.
So if someone really wanted to they could probably gain some control with a piggyback add-on but the market for that is just about near zero...
Thank you! You just turned on a big light bulb for me. Jaguar V12 has its own system. With no OBD2 port . The world has been trying to replace the factory system with aftermarket systems such as Megasquirt. Without much success.
Perhaps we should be looking for an Add on to supplement it in the event we want to put turbo's or change operating parameters etc.
