Hybrid System Prefers Electric to Gas Engine

how many miles on her?

 

what happens if you punch it?

 

A hurt hand?

 

I have the same issue. I'll drive 15 minutes to the grocery store and the car will be running normally. After 15 or 20 minutes in the store I'll start driving again and the gas motor won't turn on and the battery will drain. I can only get up to about 40mph on the roads near the store. The car has under 10,000 miles.

 

is it affecting your mpg's?

 

i have found that it likes to use the battery if the engine isn't completely warmed up.

 

Yeah, when the engine is stone cold it uses the battery to avoid unnecessary wear. Then when the engine is moderately warm it will actually feed power back into the battery if it can (i.e., when stopped at a light) so that it's doing useful work during the warm-up period. The battery gauge on my Prius C usually tops out at 6/8 bars (unless I'm recapturing energy via regeneration while going downhill), but during the warm-up period it often goes up to 7/8 bars.

 

Your complaint is exactly the OPPOSITE of what most C owners report.....including me.
I find that the battery is used ONLY in very limited circumstances and switches over to all gas engine well below 40 MPH.

 

I think both you guys need to go in for a dealer diagnostic......ESPECIALLY if your cars are still under warranty.

 

And what exactly makes you think that is wrong.......or a bad thing ??

The electric motor is SUPPOSED to provide power at times when the gas engine is at it's lowest efficiency. One of those times is during moderate to hard acceleration.

 

sounds like an ecu issue. what has the dealer said?

 

WHAT ? That makes no sense.
There is a lot of room between 50% and 90%.

And if you are saying that the car is designed to try and keep the battery charged up to 80% of it's total capacity.........that is just stupid. Why have a battery in that case ??

And finally, the computers do make some guesses about what is likely to "happen next" but they are pretty broad assumptions.
The power source choice is ALWAYS slated toward the most efficient choice AT THAT TIME and the future has to take car of itself.

 

I think that it would be a good idea to a dealership and ask to test drive one or two other Prius C's. New or used! Just my thoughts

 

What he's saying is that the car won't normally drain the battery if the engine is operating in an efficient range, because the losses associated with using the engine to charge the battery and then using that electricity to run the electric motor make that less efficient. If the battery is at 80%, it should stay at 80% under those conditions. And since he's expecting the engine to be operating in that range, he doesn't understand why the car is using electric power and running the battery down.

I think that what's happening to him is that the engine control unit, for whatever reason, has decided that the engine is in a condition where running off battery power is preferable. Warming up from a cold start is an obvious example of that, although he's claiming that the engine isn't cold.

 

The problem here IS......he has no good way to know which mode of power usage is the most efficient at any given moment.
AND based on some things he has said, I think his conception probably is WAY off.

With my C just puttering around town, the battery continuously goes up and down over every period of .....maybe 15 minutes or so......and stays at a high state of charge ONLY when my speed continuously exceeds about 45 MPH.