2026 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid // Full Review
A couple of years ago, the Prius started turning heads with its redesign, something that had never really been a thing for this efficient little Toyota. And this year, it gains a nightshade edition for even more cool factor. That’s right, I use the word cool when referring to a Prius. And I also did call it a night shade. This actually is a nightshade edition despite being brighter than the sun. Let’s go ahead and take a look. [Music] My tester being a plug-in hybrid means that it’s powered by a 2 L 4 cylinder and my inability to open the hood. It’s powered by a 2 L 4 cylinder as well as two electric motors, one of which will help drive the front wheels. Note that being a plug-in hybrid means it does not have the option to get the extra motor, the third motor that drives the back wheels like a lot of Toyotas have nowadays, including the other version of the Prius. So, if you get the regular hybrid Prius, you get in front-wheel drive form or all-wheel drive. The plug-in hybrid is frontwheel drive only. Note that if you’ve come across the term Prius Prime, that is the same as a plug-in hybrid. Toyota changed the naming last year and just changed it to Prius plug-in hybrid to make it a little bit clearer cuz what the heck is prime other than Optimus or Amazon. Combined power from the electric motor and the gas engine is 220 horses. So a big bump over that 194 to 196 that you get in the regular hybrid. Definitely not your grandpa’s little slow left lane camper Prius here anymore. This thing can actually get out of its own way. Your transmission is going to be an ECVT and your fuel economy is rated around 48 miles per gallon. At least it is here in my tester since I’ve got the 19inch wheels. If you go into the base model, the SE, and get the 17in wheels, it’ll be a little bit more efficient. It’s rated about 52 m per gallon combined. That’s when you’re in hybrid mode anyway. But the beauty of it being a plug-in means you get some pure electric range as well. With the base model, the smaller wheels, you get up to 44 miles of all electric range. The rest of the lineup gets you up to 39 m with the bigger wheels. And that’s not just for moving around parking lots. You can use that up to 84 miles per hour. And then if you’re going above that, then it’ll kick into hybrid mode. If you’re going above that and you’re not on a racetrack, I would recommend not getting the bright yellow one. For charge times, you’re looking at about 4 hours. Come on. Not going to do it cuz I’m on the wrong side. All right, let’s try this again on the charge door instead of the fuel door. When it comes to charging, you’re looking about 4 hours. If you happen to have a level two lying around, that’s a 240 volt. Or if you are just running a standard 120 volt, a standard outlet, you’re looking about 11 hours to get your entire charge back. Of course, there is no range anxiety here because you’ve always got the gas motor to kick in afterwards and it’ll just go into hybrid mode. But if you want the best efficiency and if you want the best get up, then you’re going to want to keep it juiced up. The PriusP have comes standard with things like LED headlights and tail lights, rain sensing wipers, heated mirrors, and keyless access to the driver side door. The XSSE and therefore the night shade as well since it’s built on top of the XSSE. Also adds parking sensors, keyless access to the passenger side front door, and keyless access to the hatch. It also unlocks the option of a power tailgate or that is standard on the XSSE Premium. No keyless access on these funky rear door handles. You know, I don’t actually mind that too much because it is still a pretty normal motion there and it does clean up the design a little bit. At least they’re not like stick door handles that come in and out. The Nightshade is really just a styling package on top of the XSSE. gives you black accents like the door handles, the shark fin, the badges, the wheels, and it’s only available in three colors: black, white, or karashi. That is this yellow. And in fact, this color is only available on the Nightshade edition, which makes perfect sense. No matter which wheels you end up with, you’re going to be wrapped in an allseason. My tester here is on Toyo Extendzas. As for the roof, my car here has the glass roof option on it. That is actually one of the few options that’s ticked on this particular car, but if you go up to the XSSE Premium, you’ll get this glass roof as standard with the option to go to a solar roof. So, if you are somebody that parks outside a lot, that might be worth considering. The hatch here, I don’t have the power hatch option on this one. Actually, interestingly, I don’t remember the last time I had a press car that didn’t have a power hatch option on it. So, props to Toyota for not just totally loading this thing out. Um, but it opens up into about 20 cubic feet of space, which is plenty. But if you do happen to need more, you can always drop those seats down and get plenty more space. There is a 120 back here. You got some access to the battery on the side. And then underneath, there’s not really much room. There’s a little bit of space, but you got the hybrid running gear. So, not a ton of space underneath there. And you do have the privacy cover, which is nice. Before we head inside, we’ve got the key fob here, which is your standard Toyota key fob here. Lock, unlock, panic, and it even says Prius Prime on the back. That’s pretty funny. Hidden feature, double tap, lock, and then hold that down, and it will remote start the car. Or you can go in through the app and do that as well. But that only works if you have a remote connect subscription. You do get a one-year free trial of Remote Connect if you are buying this new. Not a big fan of the subscription service thing, but just note that that is there. That is an option if you do have the subscription. The interior of the Nightshade gets a couple of little unique touches like the carbon fiberesque trim up here on the dash and the black and gray here, the gray stitching instead of the red you would get in the other trims. Even if you go into the base, the SE, uh you’ll get cloth seats, but you get the red trim. And then the rest of the lineup, the XSSE and the XSSE premium are going to be this soft tech synthetic leather, but with red trim instead of the gray that you see here. These are eightway power adjustable with lumbar support, at least outside of those cloth seats in the base. And they’re fine. The Prius has never really had super comfortable seats. I feel like on a long road trip, these would get a little bit uncomfortable. For the daily drive, they’re fine. They got the job done. And they are heated here, but if you want ventilation, you’re gonna have to go up into the XSSE Premium. Heated steering wheel here too, actually on the XSSE and up. This massive steering wheel with more buttons than my keyboard at work. It takes some time to find everything. Definitely not journalist friendly, but if you own the car, I’m sure you’ll get used to all of this. It’s interesting that Toyota went in a totally different direction with the Prius than everything else, you know, with all the buttons here and then having the cluster kind of sit up. But I kind of like this setup better than the rest of the lineup because I like that I can just drop the steering wheel down a little bit lower. I like it in a lower position anyway. And now I don’t have to worry about like kind of squeezing the cluster display in between this little area. I can just have it sit right on top and I can see everything without anything being blocked. Efficiency data in there, tire pressure, temperatures, lots of good stuff. And I like that you have the option to drop the extra info away and just kind of keep it a little bit cleaner. No head-up display presumably because of the way the cluster is set up high here. The infotainment is the latest Toyota with touch and voice. Android Auto and CarPlay are both standard wireless. And I noticed a little touch in this one that I haven’t seen in other Toyotas. This must be new. Uh but when you are in Android Auto, there is a little drop down now to get you back to the home screen easily. That was one little nitpick that I had with the other Toyota vehicles is that you really couldn’t get back to the main screen very easily once you were in Android Auto. My only real qual now with this setup is I just wish that you could adjust your safety and assist features in here like you can with Lexus rather than having to go through the more cumbersome cluster. But other than that, it’s simple. It’s easy to use. It’s got the icons down the side uh and then the menus laid out just like a regular phone or tablet. Very intuitive. Note that this is the optional 12.3 inch upgrade. The regular one’s going to be an 8 inch. That bigger screen and the glass roof are really the only add-ons on this tester. HVAC and volume control are all physical. I love that they have left that here. Very intuitive, easy to use. Some USB C’s down below and a 12vt little tray here. That is not the charger. Uh it kind of confused me there when I first got in. That is not a charger, but there is this hashtag hidden compartment underneath there. So, you know, there’s that cup holders back behind it. And then the charger is back here, also labeled #wireless charger. They really went wild with the hashtags. I actually really like this setup for the charger cuz it’s it’s vertical, which means that your phone’s not going to be bouncing around too much, and it’s just really stuck in there, so it’s going to be charging. you don’t have to worry about it getting sliding off a charger or rattling around. We’ve got the Lexus style gear shifter, which is now going into a lot of Toyotas. I really like this because it’s a distinct movement for each setting in your transmission. And it’s also pretty low impact and just simple, easy to use. Auto- dimming mirror up top with home link. You can option a digital mirror if you go up into XSSE premium, not standard. you had to go up to the XSSE Premium and then option it on top of that, but that would be nice to see here. I wish that they would offer that across the board. Dealer might be able to install that anyway, but it’d be nice, especially with the way the hatch is curved back there. Visibility out the back isn’t awesome. Your sound system here is a six speakeraker system, so not exactly going to be mindblowing, but if you go up to the XSSE Premium, you can option the 8 speakeraker JBL. In the past other Toyota vehicles I’ve been in, I haven’t been super impressed with their JBL sound systems. So, if that’s the one thing that’s got you on the fence between the XSSE or the Nightshade and the Premium, I probably wouldn’t necessarily spring for it just for that. The back seats are a little bit on the tight side. They’ll be fine for kids and smaller adults. Me at 5’7, I’ve got a little bit of space here. Uh, one side effect of having the sloped roof is you do lose a little bit of headroom back here. So again, if you’re on the taller side, you might be bumping a little bit. Uh you can get these heated in the top spec. So not here in my tester. Don’t even have a mat pocket on this side. There is one on that side, but got a couple of USBC’s down here. Uh and a regular uh 120 volt outlet. And then fold down armrest with cup holders here in the upper specs. And if you do put someone in the unfortunate situation of being squeezed in the middle here, luckily there’s not a huge lump here. uh for the transmission tunnel is just a little bit of a bump. So, they shouldn’t be eating their knees too much or having to do the straddle. Driving the Prius is not what it used to be, especially in plug-in hybrid form. You get 220 horses. This thing is actually pretty quick and it’s pretty responsive, too, when you start to put your foot into it. Even more so in sport mode, less so in eco. And then there’s a normal and you’ve got a custom mode as well. You can adjust your steering, the powertrain, and the AC. The get up and go doesn’t go quite as well when you do run out of battery. Now, it still goes into hybrid mode, so it’s not actually like you’re at 0% battery, but when your indicator here notes that it’s all the way down, and you can definitely tell that it’s relying a little bit more on the engine, doesn’t move quite as quickly. When you do have a full charge though, I mentioned you can get 39 miles of all electric range. I think Car and Driver did their 75 mph highway test and it got like 33 miles. You definitely notice on the highway that it tanks rather quickly. Um, it is in percentage instead of miles. So, I don’t have an exact uh number here, but when I’m on the highway looking at that number, the percentage goes down very rapidly. that seems a lot better suited to city driving. Road noise is certainly a thing, but it’s not too bad actually for a car at this price point or other stuff in this segment compared to the old Prius. It’s really actually not terribly loud. And it rides much better than I expected, especially on these big 19s. Visibility all around is pretty good, except for in the rear, as I mentioned before. That’s where it would be really nice to have that digital mirror. There’s also a 360 cam option you can get if you are in that XSSE premium. So, both of those, the digital mirror and the 360 cam only available in XSSE premium. But Toyota’s safety 3.0 system is standard here. So, you’ve got a lot of nice assist features. Um, you’ve got rear cross traffic, blind spot, front cross traffic, pedestrian alert, traffic jam assist, full speed radar cruise, even in the base SE trim. Lane shove assist where it shoves you back into your lane. And lane tracing. Lane tracing works pretty well, too. This 3.0 system is very good. So, when you’re on the highway, it’ll keep you centered in your lane. There are a couple of times on some of the bigger curves where it’s kind of drifted out of the lane a little bit, so you still have to monitor it. It’s not like hands-free, but for long highway stints, it’s a nice little feature. But that lane shove assist I have turned off. It is nice that you can disable some of the stuff if it is getting too in your way. Uh just cuz that that one is one of those that kind of gets in the way. I still have the beep on if you start to drift out of your lane. So, it’s got that it just won’t shove you back. And then the proactive drive assist I like to turn off because I don’t like the way it sometimes breaks for you. It’s really just when you’re like in traffic when you’re getting up close to somebody, it’ll start to press the brakes for you. and it’s just the inconsistency there um that I really don’t like. So, I like to turn that off. It almost feels like a regen braking. Now, there is also regen braking, and you have three different levels that you can set through the cluster, but even when you have the regen braking set to the max, it’s not super aggressive. It’s not like you’re in an EV uh with with one pedal driving where you start to take your foot off the accelerator, really breaks hard. And again, that works best around town as well, just like the full EV uh mode really works best around town where you really can start to gain back some of your battery. On the highway, I’m really like I since I got on the highway 15 minutes ago, I’ve gotten 0% battery back. Whereas around town, getting to the highway, I got like 5 or 6% back just from my house to the highway in like 10 15 minutes. Overall, the driving experience actually isn’t too bad. Even the CVT doesn’t bug me too much like it does in some of the other cars from Toyota. You know, it helps that it actually has some decent power. I think I called the Corolla Cross aggressively fine and the Corolla drives about the same way. This one is actually a little bit more interesting to drive than those. Um, and you know, it’s quieter in here. It rides pretty nice. You get great fuel efficiency and it doesn’t have the angry CVT noises. Really not too bad of a driving experience. Ultimately, this is no longer grandpa’s Prius in the way that it looks or the way that it drives unless you have a cool grandpa, I guess. But you are no longer obligated to go 10 under in the left lane when you buy one of these. And the Nightshade edition helps solidify the looks a little bit more as well. It does look pretty good in this nightshade package. I do start to slide a little bit on things like the seats. I wish they were a little more comfortable for those long road trips. Feel like after a while they would get a little bit uncomfortable, but for the daily drive, they do get the job done. You get some decent features and you get that great efficiency along with that full electric range. With my commute being a lot of highway, it is a little bit frustrating seeing that fuel that that pure electric range just sort of tank rather quickly. So, there is definitely a costbenefit analysis to be done for the cheaper price of the regular hybrid Prius for the better fuel efficiency versus this one here with the pure EV range, the realworld pure EV range and the higher cost. Plus, you do get the option of all-wheel drive in the regular Prius. It’s not like a fulltime all-wheel drive. The rear just kind of gets involved as needed. Um, but that is nice to have. It is a little bit cheaper and you do have more options. You have more uh trim levels and more options available to you. So, there is definitely a cost benefit analysis to be done. Um, but if you are primarily just driving around town, if you have like a sub30 mile commute there, this one is probably the one that you would want to look at uh more closely than than the regular Prius. But with me, my sort of 25 mile eachway commute, half city, half highway, I would definitely be sort of bouncing back and forth between the regular Prius and this one. Let me know what you think about the 2026 Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid in Nightshade Edition or regular or the regular Prius as well. Let me know your thoughts down in the comments. As always, thanks for watching. I’ll see you next time. [Music] Here’s car reviews.
The Toyota Prius has been turning heads in the latest generation, with some actual style. And the Nightshade Edition brings even more cool factor to the table. The Nightshade is built on top of the XSE trim, which means it gets standard things like LED lights, keyless access, and power driver and passenger seats. But the Nightshade adds black accents, like wheels, badges, shark fin, and door handles. And it’s only available in black, white, or Karashi (yellow).
The Prius Plug-In is powered by a 2.0L 4-cylinder engine and 2 electric motors, with one helping drive the front wheels. That means this one is front-wheel-drive only, interestingly, while the regular Prius Hybrid is offered in both front-wheel and all-wheel-drive variants. But this one does pump out more combined horsepower, at 220 vs the non-plug-in’s 196 horses. Your transmission is an eCVT.
How is the Prius Plug-In Hybrid to live with? Let’s go ahead and take a look.
2026 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid Review
Merch:
https://gearbox-car-reviews.creator-spring.com
My setup:
Sony A6300: https://www.amazon.com/Sony-Alpha-a6300-Mirrorless-Camera/dp/B01BFD1CYI/?tag=gearboxcarr07-20
GoPro 9 camera: https://www.amazon.com/GoPro-HERO9-Black-Waterproof-Stabilization/dp/B09DJLW458?tag=gearboxcarr07-20
Rode Wireless II mic: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09PXCZ24?tag=gearboxcarr07-20
Tripod: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083J6D5ZK?tag=gearboxcarr07-20
External Camera Mount: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F19Q7YI?tag=gearboxcarr07-20
Tether: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073PV51NW?tag=gearboxcarr07-20
Internal Camera Mount: https://www.amazon.com/Suction-GorillaPod-Session-Contour-Action/dp/B00O8R79T6?tag=gearboxcarr07-20
0:00 Intro
0:30 Powertrain
2:28 Charging / Electric Range
3:09 Exterior
5:25 Key Fob
5:58 Interior
11:19 Driving Impressions / Safety & Driver’s Assist
15:49 Conclusion
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