Driving along I noticed that my EV and ECO indicators were off. It turn about that my wife inadvertently put the car "B" while playing with the radio. I must have been driving like that for about 10 minutes doing no more than 40-45 on a flat road. Do you think any damage was done? iPhone ?
Nope Driving it for 10,000 miles in B is unlikely to cause any damage I wouldn't have though either. She's not the only one doing that though. I often use B coming down a steep hill and forget to select Drive when I reach the bottom.
No harm done at all. It's a little bit less efficient except where intended. (Long, steep downhills when the battery is too full for regen.) Maybe you burned an extra quarter of a teaspoon of gas. Welcome to Prius Chat, and enjoy the car!
I was on a long drive the other day (highway) and on a very long downhill I put it in B so as not to speed up any more then I already was speeding.... forgot to put it back in D. I didn't notice until I couldn't get the Cruise Control to Set. I probably did less then a mile that way but I thought it was interesting that CC won't work in B mode.
Used the B mode this past weekend on a road trip from Reston Va to Berryviille Va on Rt7... Some steep declines, and I still showed 100 mpg using the engine breaking of the B mode... I use to use the B mode on my commute on a downhill grade, till I learned that breaking as usual worked as well... My take is leaving the B mode on longer than needed is that the ICE runs more than needed...
It shouldn't cause any problem whatsoever, since it only ever tries to actually engine break when you let off the gas. I think it's designed to be able to be left in B indefinitely with no damage to the car.
No problem, think we all do it with any new car - but with the Prius and lack of the standard auto transmission and and it's intelligence we are all newbies....
It needlessly blew 5 to 10 cents of fuel money out of your wallet. Anything else was comparatively minor.
For some topics [when discussing a Prius] it might be more appropriate to speak of fuel consumption in terms of CCs [Cubic Centimeter]. A teaspoon being roughly 10CC. Perhaps it is more accurate to picture this kind of 'wastefulness' as burning as extra CC. A gallon has 3,785CCs. At $3.50/gallon a single CC rounds to like 1/10 of a cent.
