Windy road, do frequent switches between B and D hurt anything?

If your ICE is warmed up, full battery, move off, EV light stays on to a certain point. The road I'm thinking of which I drive almost daily has a gentle down-grade, and I can get to the 50km/hr speed limit without the ICE kicking in - but the EV light goes OFF. (If the ICE hasn't warmed up, it will kick in at 38km/hr - and game over.)

Put on the Energy Monitor, and it clearly shows drive only from battery to wheels.

 

I wonder if it's turning the ICE on for engine braking? If the battery is full, and you're at speed, going downhill, you'll have very little braking from regen. Cruise control definitely uses engine braking without needing to select B mode.

Pixel 2 ?

 

All the HSI on the HUD shows you is how hard you're pressing the accelerator or brake. Other than that, you can tell if the ICE will definitely be on if the accelerator graph is over the half way point, and you can tell if you're wasting energy to the friction brakes if you're braking so hard the brake part of the graph is completely filled.

The HSI on the proper display also shows you when the ICE is off (green EV light), and it has the accelerator guidance bar behind the accelerator bar which helps you improve fuel economy.

What was the discrepancy? It'd be happy to help explain.

Pixel 2 ?

 

After a lot of testing today, I just can't reproduce any situation where the energy flow or EV light was wrong, other than it being about half a second *faster* or slower than what the ICE was really doing. I guess it takes that long for it to start/stop but the lights reacts instantly, and at the other extreme it is the delay in polling the ECU.

I tried engine braking. I tried up hill, down hill, glides, varying levels of accelerator, various speeds, for a good hour of driving.

Every time the ICE was audible, the EV light was off and the EF showed energy coming out of the ICE to either the wheels and/or MG. Every time the ICE was off there was no energy flow from the ICE and the EV light was on.

Managed to pull off a 5 second stealth glide (no energy flowing anywhere), which made me considerable more excited than was comfortable for my wife! Bloody brilliant moment!



Pixel 2 ?

 

It's good for moderating your acceleration. With drivers behind you, you likely need to push the bar nearly out of the ECO zone; better is 1/2 to 3/4. Do what you can. Again, this is on level ground. On uphills you pretty much have to spill into the PWR zone. With a bit of downgrade though, sometimes you can get up to speed without kicking the engine in at all. Just watch the graph and modulate the gas pedal to keep the bar to the left of the median mark.

Also, any time the engine is off, and you're running electric-only (not by pushing the EV button, just the car's choice), as long as you keep the bar to the left of the median mark, the engine should stay off (assuming engine warmed up, sufficient state of charge). Be careful though: running just below the median in particular, will run the charge down fast. Not bad as long as it's not sustained.