Prius Prime "Charge Mode"

Discussions here.

When does Charge Mode make sense? | PriusChat

 

but since where here, it might prove useful if you were low on battery, and were approaching kilimanjaro for a hill climb.
or maybe you live in a quiet neighborhood, a quick charge on the highway gets you home in silence.

 

Or this!

 

aye, you're one of us now laddie.

 

What are you referring to?

 

Overall, I don't recall my 2012PIP or the Prime ever charging, during a downhill section, to more than the normal home charge basic miles. In the case of the PIP it was 14.5 Miles, the Prime 29/30 Miles. So where people are claiming 40 miles, they are referring to miles traveled in EV. The Prime will not tell you that. The closest and most accurate source is traveling in the blended mode and reading the odometer selection of distance and MPG. EV positions are reading mpge only, a somewhat theoretical number. Useful, but not totally accurate. This comment may be applicable to the Advance model.

 

agreed. prime data is a complete change from pip, and newbies are often confused by what they are seeing on the dash.

 

I finally understand what Andyprius1 was talking about "wall charged" EV range from another post.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Or this too on the way up.

OK that's a G4 but... and will the trailer hitch still fit.

 

Finally someone in Germany had the chance to test "Charge Mode" and here's how he did it .
He went on a 410 mile trip,fully charging the battery twice,before leaving and returning and two times in between to a level of about 9 miles .
He was going on the highway at a cruise control set speed between 75.5 and 86.6 mph but he never once used HV-Mode !
He switched between EV and Charge Mode the entire time achieving an astonishing total of 186 EV-miles driven and getting 69.1 mpg overall by doing so !
Considering the speed he went, on the highway, I think that's very impressive!

 

Extremely impressive, the car is a continuing surprise.

 

Yes! Iv learned a few things since, should the car totally lose charge while driving the car will automatically go into blended mode and carry you quite a distance before the charge dwindles down to 100 mpg or below. At that point put the car in charge mode, the green bar will show with no numerical value. Later it will show a numerical value of charge. At this point you will have 50-70mpg accomplished, Now since you are about 10 miles from home, and have 12 miles of charge, put the car in EV and arrive home with 100 - 120 mpg showing! All values vary according to your unique situation.

 

Well, if you bring your Prime to St. Helena Island in the South Atlantic, and need to get from Jamestown (business center of the Island) up to Half Tree Hollow (suburbia), you can either:

(a) Drive up Ladder Hill Road (and use "B" mode when going down)


Or...

(b) Get the best MPG by walking the 699 Steps straight to the top instead, on the Jacob's Ladder Staircase.




As far as the Charge mode goes, I personally don't see much use for it, though a few people in other threads have mentioned a few specific scenarios where it might come in handy.

 

I've used charge mode once in the 10 days I've had the car and I believe it paid off.
On that day a lunch errand depleted my EV range, to the point I knew I'd be switching to HV pretty soon on my way home. But I also knew I'd have to make a short trip (3.1 miles each way) after dinner with no time to charge from the wall. Prior experience says that short trips kill MPG in HV mode so I ran the car in charge mode just to build up 8 miles of EV range on the way home. Surprisingly the car "borrows" some of your EV range to do HV mode driving when you do this.. so I had about 7 miles of EV range by the time I got home.

So the short trip was done totally EV... and overall I still gained MPG on that day. Basically the toyota manual says, charge from the wall whenever you can, and when you cant, then charge from charge mode.

 

Right.. the planned "short trip later on with no chance to charge" is the only scenario that made sense to me, though if it were me, I'd just turn off the EV earlier (to "save" X miles for later on, instead of having to charge them). In other words, if you know you'll need 4 miles for a short trip later on and don't want to waste gas on the warmup cycle, just manually switch from EV over to HV with 4 miles left for later (after all, to use charge mode you have to be in HV, so to me instead of depleting the EV fully, then using gas-eating Charge Mode in HV, it seems to me you could just switch it yourself 4 miles early, to have the 4 EV miles later on). Of course if you forget to do so until after the EV range has run out, then that'd be a case to maybe go the charge route..

 

I agree. the lunch trip was also a short trip... so used EV for it... Somethings gotta give and you end up in HV mode....

 

I don't recommend walking up and down the Jacob's Ladder on St. Helena. The steps are about 12" each. I did it two years ago and walked with a limp for six months after.