Cars-in-Bars Photo Throwdown: Show us your PiP’s Max-Regen!

Would be curious to see how much regen on the following routes. These are all what I'd call brake smoking routes for conventional cars. Anyone?

• Los Angeles: I-5 going to SF descent from Tejon Pass to Grapevine
• Los Angeles: I-15 descent around Cajon Pass coming back from Vegas
• Denver (anyone got a PiP out there yet?): I-70 descent eastbound going back into Denver from Mt. Genesee to C-470.

 

I've done the grapevine with the gen 1, 2, 3 and pip. It is steep but not long enough to really get a lot of regen. And "getting regen" really isn't the point...If traffic permits you want to go slow as you hit the crest and use gravity to let you can speed and then coast as far as you can go after that with just minor pedal pressure.

Mike

 

Got 23 cars of regen yesterday coming down the northern end of Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park. I went from 1 mile of EV range to 9 miles, even after using some of the stored energy to go uphill during the T-minus 10-5 minute timeframe. Since those numbers don't add up (8 miles of EV range should roughly require 2 kWh, not the 1.15 kWh indicated by 23 cars), I feel like I may have actually exceeded the 400Wh of regen indicated in the picture for the last 5 minute interval, as that is the steepest part of the descent by far.

 

Interesting. Part of it maybe can be explained by the granularity of the data. If you regen 50 watt-hours you get one car. But if you regen 60 , 75 or 99 in a given time period, you still get one, right?
Second, how many "miles" of EV range you get is based on your current total miles per charge and the usable charge is ~2.7 kw-hrs...so if you have an EV range of 14 miles total, then 8 miles would be ~1.54 kw-hrs, for example.

Mike

 

Oh the irony. Lots of regen ultimately means one spent a ton of energy getting up to a certain speed (or altitude) and is now recapturing part of it. So for example, one can stomp the accelerator to get your ride up to high speed between each red light ... and then have to brake hard to stop, thereby getting more regen. The folks who regen the smallest amount therefore, are the folks who are driving in an anticipatory fashion ... and thus waste less energy that never has to get partially recaptured in the 1st place.

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Never had one and never will. A capital E on my UK spec PIP .

 

. Never had one? What?

 

I guess you don't have hills where you live.

 

Agreed. Assuming unchanged driving habits, before the PIP, downhill was just wasted energy. Now a significant portion is recouped. Probably most of us here bought the PIP because we don't drive "bat-out-of-hell" mode.

 

Got my best today, 4 1/2 cars. No hills, just a traffic jam.

 

Maybe you didn't see his name?

Mike

 

Not really. Before the PIP you could capture quite a lot of energy in the regular Prius battery. You can drop 2000+ ft, such as on the I-5 Grapevine and barely top off the NiMH battery. Of course if you ride the brake (regen) all the way down you will max out the battery sooner...but most people don't drive on hills like this everyday.

Mike

 

Disagree. I get several miles regen coming back from Tahoe to Sacto and 2+ miles over the Grapevine either direction. Couldn't do anything that in a regular Prius. Also several smaller hills with 1+ mile regen...

 

In Roseville, maybe "you" drive those hills a lot more than the typical person...but I doubt most Prius owners do. I've driven over those routes in 4 different Prius models, including the PIP (grapevine only). So, SF to LA and maybe I get 1 EV mile more regen than in a regular Prius. This is about 1 out of 700 miles in the roundtrip. In a regular Prius, getting to the top of the grapevine (northbound) going slow (traffic allowing) and carefully gliding downhill controlling your momentum of the long straight away I think you get very close to the same benefit.

I'm not saying that you can't get some significant EV miles regenerated going downhill (in excess of what a regular Prius gets). You can. But, by and large over the life of the car, for most people, its not a big deal.

Mike

 

When I get regen a get a big blue capital E rather than the car symbol that you seem to get. You would wonder why that is different in US and UK spec cars.

 

Got a picture?

 

It is true that some of us live closer to mountainous roads than many others. By the way, driving Sacto to LA and back I get 4 miles on the Grapevine either way (all speed limit, just light to moderate brake on steep downgrades and glide with light regen on others). Just under 6 miles coming down the south route out of Lake Tahoe. If there was no traffic around, I could do easily better on both. Just braking with traffic going down a 4-6% grade of a few hundred feet in elevation I can regen 2 miles. I can think of lots of places in California like this. How many of us take our PIPs through the coastal mountains a few times a year?

But I bet the PIP is also better at more routine drives. How does one explain that in "hybrid mode" both the PIP and the standard Prius get the same mpg in the city, but the PIP gets one extra mpg on the highway, and yet weighs 123 pounds more? I don’t know all the details of the driving cycle used, but I think the idea is to reflect more of what a “real” driver would get. Both models have the same engine and coefficient of drag, so it isn’t those things. My understanding is that the current generation standard Prius can do about 1 mile all electric at low (sub-city) driving speeds. I doubt this translates into much more than a mile worth of output at highway speeds, if that. Based on this, my guess is that the regen system in the PIP is more robust and accounts for most of this difference.

So that’s more like 14 out of 700 miles on your round trip. Not earth-shattering, but nothing to sneeze at.

 

Well, you can get a full car or a half car. So presumably, 75+ gets you another half a car.
But yes, I suspect that 26 = 50 = 74 = 1 car.

Actually, the EPA test is done on a dyno, so coefficient of drag is basically worthless. But I think that the reason the PIP gets better highway mileage is precisely because it can regenerate more energy and so as a result, when the car slows down to "come off the highway", it's able to use more stored energy to then get back up to speed.
Don't forget that the numbers are fudged down, by the way. The "original" difference between the two models was probably closer to 3 mpg.

 

I took a picture of the wrong screen. There was a lot of regen though. LOL

 

Gota be carefull with the one display because it won't show more then 8 cars even if you regened more. My pic shows plenty more then the 8 x 50