Stay in Eco mode all the time?

• ECO = sub-light, barely escape velocity, old lady in Hyundai Accent w/automatic transmission passes you. A plus - they admire the 2010 Prius great looks.
• None = normal speed, later dudes!
• Pwr = transwarp capable - if only the car in front would get out of the way...

:welcome:

 

ECO mode can be kept all the time. In fact, enables some fuel savings, though marginal over the Normal Mode.
There are moments when PWR is more suited, like crowded crossings or just before a tight take over on open road.

 

I personally leave my car in ECO mode. You become used to it. For me, it makes driving more relaxing. Truth is though the only difference between the 3 power modes is sensitivity of the gas pedal and how hard the fan blows. Either one will go just as fast when you press the pedal to the floor.

 

+1

 

It has more effects than only this. From memory, it will:
- change the gas pedal mapping
- make the gas pedal less reactive (takes more time to "acknowledge" a quick change, making it less sensitive to an unsteady foot)
- turn off the ICE sooner and more often
- reduce fan speed, but more than that it will reduce A/C compressor speed
- reduce the coolant heat taken away from ICE toward the A/C heater (in the winter)

I therefore always keep the car in ECO mode and have adapted to the different pedal mapping.

 

I live in an undulating area and I find the car too insensitive when it is in mode ECO so used maybe 1 or 2 times.
I'll try it again when going on holidays.

 

I hate eco mode - turns the Prius into the wimpiest car on the road. My 1995 Tercel is more powerful.

I like normal mode. Not really powerful, but relaxed driving.

I find power mode makes a huge difference in passing on the highway - almost doubles the power. I only wish the pwr mode switch was on the steering wheel. There is room for all the mode switches on the lower right spoke. Toyota, are you listening?

 

It doubles nothing. Please distinguish perceptions from facts.

In any mode you have access to the same exact power. In ECO mode you will simply need to push the pedal further and it make take a fraction of a second more to react when you do so. Remember that the car is smart enough to always keep the ICE under its red line: feel free to floor it when you want; you cannot break anything doing it (at least under the hood... drive safely!).

It is already under you right foot.

 

I use Eco. The computer is smart enough to know when to change. Watch your displays that show where the power is coming from and the power bar.

 

I view numbers 2, 4 and 5 as negatives but that's just me. I stay in normal now after trying ECO for the first two weeks I owned the car.

 

i hate eco mode. i dont like having to push the pedal further to get power. And i definitely wouldn't want to floor my prius. reducing the a/c seems like a good idea, but not for me when i live in arizona and with all the heat after parking for an hour, you can fry your eggs on the dashboard.

and for 50mpg using normal mode, i'm happy =) and i'm sure the mpg will go up as i break in the engine further.

After all, plenty of gen II prius owners who didn't have any modes to choose from got 55+ mpg easy.

 

To me, this is one of the great mysteries of automotive psychology.

Cars that have sensitive pedal/power relationships feel more powerful. In the old days of cables connected to throttle butterflies, this made sense. Now with drive by wire it's all an illusion, but people are hardwired to love sensitive pedals.

People feel that flooring the car is bad for the engine (which it isn't), but they'll set the pedal sensitive and press it halfway, which is the same thing.

It's gotten so bad that my parents Volvo SUV is barely controllable at or below 30 MPH.

With drive-by-wire and fully tunable sensitivity, manufacturers have learned that touchy pedals sell cars...makes all those V6's feel like V8's. At least Toyota gave us the option.

Fortunately the engineer side of my brain overrules the "yee-ha" side, and I prefer controlability and smoothness. I just press down further when I need more power.

 

I used 'Eco' mode once. An old lady with a walker on the sidewalk passed me. The good news was I got 150 mpg.

So I tried 'Pwr' mode. I couldn't take off from a stop without smoking the front tires and laying down twin black marks on the pavement like my old Hemi-Cuda, with gas mileage likewise dropping down into the single digits.

So, I just decided to leave it in whatever mode doesn't produce a silly looking light on my dash.

 

I felt VERY NERVOUS AND TENSE when driving in ECO mode. I felt the car was having second thoughts about following my commands. I felt I was not in total control of my car. I also felt INTENSE HATE feelings radiating from the cars around me. I almost needed to visit a shrink after trying the ECO mode. "Never again!" I swore.

The fact that you'd have to FLOOR the gas pedal to tap into the normal power of your own car makes me tense. It remines me of the couple of (very scary) times when I had to FLOOR the brake pedal to avoid hitting the idiot who ran the red light. I don't want to FLOOR anything any more. Please, do not mention the word FLOOR again.

Let's start a petition to Toyota to BAN and disable the ECO mode.
The fact that one can still have great fuel economy driving the Prius in PWR mode (mine is now averaging 4.2L/100km, 57mpg), makes the ECO mode redundant, useless, meaningless, forgetable...Oh no, I need to breath...

 

For many opinions, as many options.
Toyota gave us 3. Congratulations! Yet another good feature!

 

I'm in ECO mode all th time. You get used to it and adjust your throttle foot pressure accordingly. I go for Max Mileage, so I'm always in ECO mode.

The only time I've not been in ECO mode is when I let my wife drive the car and she didn't like the throttle response (compared to her Sienna). I put it in PWR mode for her and she liked the car's response much better.

Pick which one you like best and happy driving!

 

Using ECO mode may increase your mpg marginally and if the traffic is light and you're not impeding traffic, I'd say go for it. However, one thing against using ECO mode ALL the time: (unless you're used to FLOORING the gas paddle everytime your starting from stand still, but then what's the point of using ECO mode if you floor it everytime?) Using ECO mode to start your car to cross a busy intersection can put you in dangerous situations. A lot of times drivers rear-end you from behind because they do not expect you to move so slowly while they're busy checking other traffic conditions. You'll also have a higher chance of being hit by idiot drivers running the red light. One of the most important things my driving instructor taught me 35 years ago, was to cross a busy intersection as quickly and safely as possible.

The other thing I'm against using ECO mode all the time is that you're presenting to the rest of the driving world that the Prius is a slow and whimpy car. That limits the group of people interested in buying a Prius only to hypermilers. It's similar to a movie unneccessarily including a couple of minutes of blood and gore scenes and got rated as "R", thus reduces it target audiance to a much smaller blood thirsty immature "adult" male group. I wonder if Toyota has ever thought of this.

 

I've been rear ended 5 times.. (In my CAR IN MY CAR Wait that still doesn't sound good?) I've been FULL Stop all 5 times...

Do people get rear ended in Canada for going slow on a start?
(If so I don't want to go there LOL)

I've never heard of anyone rear ending someone because they are slow to start in the states?

This is soo bad..
Russ