Any way to "override" the battery charging for hill climbing?

power mode maybe?

 

I do a little more EV, but only if traffic allows such a slow pace...
Surely there is a way to override that, but the pros (about 200Wh you can regen extra?*) may not make it viable.

In the PIP by the way, also there should be a way of depleting battery even if at highway high speeds...specially if your chg point is nearby an exit.

* 3gen has a 1400Wh battery, tipically floating at 60%SOC, when fully depleted you may be at 45%SOC, so you could get extra 15%SOC swing.

 

As an aside question, I'm always curious what the power mode guys get for fuel economy. What is your lifetime MPG?

 

I use power mode all the time, always have. You can take a look at my stats on Fuelly. I'm on your friends list as "inscottsdale".

 

No, there's no way to do this, unfortunately. There has been talk of a terrain-aware GPS in a future generation hybrid that could do this automatically based on your navigation route, but nothing serious.

Your best options for improving fuel economy include making sure that the battery isn't low when you start up the hill and (on slower roads) using either EV mode (at <25 mph) or the left half of the HSI bar (at <45 mph, if you can get by with fairly low power requirements) for the last 0.2 miles or so, which should be about enough to drain the battery. Assuming, of course, that the downhill on the other side is more than enough to fully charge the battery so that the engine is revving to dissipate extra energy, even without B mode turned on. If it's not, you might as well just drive it like normal, and what the car chooses to do will be pretty good for the conditions.

The engine has more than enough power to climb a hill on its own - you really only need full horsepower when trying to accelerate on a steep hill, so it doesn't use the battery just for a hill climb.

 

Hi The Swan

If you take a look at the new thread Ihave just started, it seems impossible to arrive at the top of the hill with any other battery charge than 60%. The HSD ECU is programmed to take the battery to 60% SoC regulating the current the HSD delivers/drains from the battery when the ICE is delivering power which is the normal situation when climbing hills.

Big hugs from Frank

 

If we could hit a button to drain the battery when we felt like it Toyota would be replacing more of them. I think they have tried hard to make them last 200k miles.

 

Your 2010 does not have an EV button?

 

Nice overall consuption. if I didn't see your fuelly history I 'd not believe.

 

Thanks. Hypermiling is an addiction that I haven't been able to break.

 

I suspect Toyota knows best on this one. The deeper you cycle the battery and the more deep cycles you do, the shorter the life of the traction battery.

 

It does but you can't hit it going over a "canyons or long hills" to drain your battery to charge it back up going down hill. The EV button only works if Toyota says it's ok. Alot of the time it doesn't work to protect the battery.