Best range modes street vs highway

only if you don't want to use them.

 

the only difference is that the faster you go, the more energy you use. so you will get less ev miles on the highway than side streets.
but you are warming up the engine and burning gas alternatively, so, it's just a game really. choose your poison.

 

I would think the charging system would shut off accordingly as needed. Should be fine to leave plugged in until you use the car.

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The way I see it is that it takes a certain amount of energy to move the car at x speed. Electric is cheaper than gas so i just want to use that first. At street speeds rather than highway it can still slip into electric mode anyway quite often as it is acting as a normal Prius once the battery has dropped to the lower level.


iPhone ?

 

If you were going to run out of EV miles, then the engine is much more efficient at highway speed than it is idling around town. And EV power is burned up faster at high speeds as well. So in that case it would make sense to let each form of propulsion do what it's best at and turn on the engine for the highway where its fuel efficiency is best, leaving your EV reserve for in town where the engine is not efficient.

But since you have enough EV to spare, you might as well just use that.

 

Yes, but it has fixed parameters and can't plan ahead. EV auto doesn't know you have 5 miles of stop lights after your freeway drive and to save EV for that when you're only doing 60 on the freeway, which EV auto might leave to the electric motor since it isn't demanding enough for the car to decide the engine should help. EV auto figures if you are demanding hard acceleration or traveling at very high speeds to go ahead and start the engine for power assist. So it's a similar idea, but without the benefit of knowing your route.

Full disclosure - I don't have a prime so I don't know exactly what the EV auto parameters are for kicking in the engine, I am basing this off of what I have read and info from other owners.

An example from my gen 3 - there is a long stretch of 35 mph road on my drive home that the car likes to shut the engine off, but it uses a lot of battery power that sometimes isn't available for the 25 mph stretch and parking in my garage after that. I usually do a light pulse and glide to try the keep the engine on and save battery power so the battery isn't empty and the engine running while I'm going 2 mph trying to park. If I had an EV hold feature I would turn it on there because I know there's a better EV stretch coming up, which the car can't know. It just knows it can shut off the engine at 35 mph.

Way too long story (sorry) short - it only really comes into play when you are dealing with running out of EV power at some point.

 

The whole point of the charge schedule and not charging until you need to is to preserve battery longevity. The longer you leave the battery at full charge the more it degrades.

 

there is a battery preconditioning system that it needs to be plugged in for, you may want to investigate that.

 

Yeah that's how you'd do it. But honestly I would just use EV mode. If I had a 19 mile trip and a prime that is what I would do. But if I thought I might run out I would turn on HV on the freeway as you said above.

 

I'm jealous of your 19 mile round trip! Mine is about 35.

 

nothing at all.