Hi--- I am a really new owner. I've had the car for about 24 hours. I love it so far. My one question seems to be that the battery doesn't seem to charge all the way up. There seems to be room for 2 more bars to be completely full. Is this normal? Something to be concerned about? I really have no idea how this works, but if it is supposed to be full to the top, I probably should go back to the dealer? Any advice is appreciated! Thanks, Amy
It is normal. Once you fill the High Voltage Battery, you can't use regenerative braking. (There would be no place to put it, the HV Battery is full) So to make the car more fuel efficient, it habitually leaves some room for more braking. If you go down a long hill, say over 600 foot drop, then the HV Battery will be full, and the Prius will run the engine very fast but with no gas to help slow the car. (This also works if you gently brake from very high speeds)
Thanks, that is great to know! The was literally my only concern in the past day with the car. Even driving in this crazy weather Chicago had today, I got 65.9mpg on my way home from work! I can live with that!
It is amazing how many things the engineers thought of. You really need to try to hurt the car, in all normal circumstances it protects itself. (Do not coast in N from below 40 MPH to above 45 MPH. Do not run out of gas but keep driving on battery. If you do, do not keep trying to start the car with less than a full tank.)
Its a really nicely designed car. I can't believe how not complex my Toyota Matrix was compared to this.
Basically the car likes the HV battery to be around 60% charge, represented by 6/8 bars on the display. Above this level it will use the electric motor more heavily and below this level it rely more on the ICE (and generally try to put charge into the battery whenever the ICE is running with less than 60% charge). If you drive on a flat freeway the car will generally maintain exactly 60% charge. If you go down a long hill the battery display will reach 8/8 bars around 76-78% charge and the car will not let the battery go above 80% charge. At that point the car will use the electric motor to spin the ICE around, which will make a lot of noise and essentially have the effect of turning any additional energy into heat rather than it going into the battery. On the other hand, if the battery starts dropping below 35-40% (which I think is around 2/8 bars) the car will run the ICE as required to recharge back to 45%. The best part though - you don't have to think about any of this. The car does what it does to maintain longetivity of the HV battery and it manages it all for you. All you have to do is not freak out when the car responds to the HV battery being too high or too low. If you are going down a really long hill you can consider "B" mode but I wouldn't worry about that at first - search the forum for this when you're ready.
Why, what happens? I very seldom use neutral so I won't worry about it. Just curious. For long hills, I have used B mode to stay below 40 mph and keep the gas engine off. Otherwise you will coast fast enough to turn on the gas engine.
It can't turn on the Gas engine in N. so there is a chance that when you over rev MG1, you may hurt it's bearings.
Simple solution: Don't use N. By the way, B does not keep the gas engine off... it turns it on and uses it to throw away energy to contribute to your braking, as opposed to using regen brakes. Like I mentioned though, there are other threads discussing this topic at length.
I’v the same case but even in down hell it doesnt full charged, and before in the same hell it was fully charged