Winter warm up routine?

Press accelerator and the ICE will start. Or put the heater on.

 

Yep - and press


with the temperature set higher than ambient, should kick the ICE on to provide heat.

 

If I DON'T want it to start the ICE (sneak out so my dogs don't hear me - though they will anyway - they went to the door when I left) - I hit "EV" and the "AUTO" OFF within 7 nano-seconds of POWER. EV isn't necessary - but means I've a bit more leeway with how much I can press the accelerator without it firing.

 

Turning on the defroster starts the engine. EV only works under certain conditions and is cancelled if above 20 mph.

 

You won't have any issue with the ICE coming on during the winter. Even in North TX during the winter the ICE usually stays on until the engine is warm and as others have said if you start turning on the heater and defrosters the ICE will come on.

 

The one start-up scenario I hate is when the car's been parked outside for a few hours, windshield is frosted. You pretty much are forced to sit idling till things are warmed up enough to clear the glass.

If this is happening in your own driveway, in front of a garage filled with stuff, there's something you can rectify: I've never had frost/fog with a garage stored car, though ours is an attached garage, and our winters are relatively mild.

Something else that'll speed the warm-up: the block heater. Two hours is usually enough to plateau the coolant temperature, about 30C above ambient.

 

The hybrid system starts up to lubricate the engine if it is cold outside anyway. Unless you live in a very cold climate, a block heater is probably unnecessary since the Prius actually stores hot coolant in a vacuum insulated container to warm-up the engine faster. Whenever your engine shuts off (at power down or EV mode or whatever), some hot coolant is kept in this container to get the engine warm fast when it needs to turn on again.

 

I don't think that feature made it to Gen 4 - I think I read that it was dropped at Gen 3 mid-term update. Replaced by an Exhaust Heat Recirculation System - and that only on some markets, think it said part USA and Canada. I don't think it's on ours here.

- start at 17:55 (unless you've got 37 mins spare - it's actually quite interesting eg, the Muffler valve to allow less restricted flow under some situations, but which is normally running in quiet mode).

 

The 2nd Gen US Prius was the only one that used a vacuum insulated container to store warm coolant. The 3rd Gen and your 4th Gen do not have that.

 

That is my biggest gripe with the Prius. My Gen 3 used to take about 10-15 minutes to clear frost and then I was left with only the bottom half of the screen cleared of mist, then it took a further 5-10 minutes to clear the top half of the screen. The Gen 4 is a bit quicker maybe 5-10 minutes, and does clear the whole screen of mist.
The last car I had before going hybrid in 2010 was a 2008 Ford Mondeo which had a heated (element) front screen, this cleared the screen of any frost or mist in less than a minute. The patent Ford had on these ran out around 2011 IIRC, so I don't know why Toyota didn't adopt them for the 2012 on models, it saves a lot of fuel and pollution on winter start ups. Maybe it was a weight thing ?

 

I wish there was a regular ventilation mode that was windshield only, not windshield/heat-to-feet. This:



versus:



Most cars do offer both. I appreciate there's the special front windshield defog option, that invokes AC as well, but I'd just like that extra vent mode.

 

Gen 4 has it

 

I'm not seeing it:

 

That's correct. Those are the vent settings.
Or you can press the front windshield & mirrors defrost button. But there's no fan action with that button.