Can i set the computer to use more of the hybrid battery for Initial acceleration?

With the engine at normal operating temperature it should remain off at any speed until you push the pedal past the center line on the MID and HUD.

 

Simple answer: no, and likely for the best. Trust the car to come up with the best mix. Just drive gently, keep a generous following distance, coast up to slowdowns as much as possible.

During acceleration it's best to let the engine kick in when it wants to. Try to keep the acceleration moderate, say in this zone:



And once you're up to speed lift off the gas momentarily, and often the engine will shut off. Then if you can maintain speed with just little nudges of gas, and keep the electric assist modest, you'll be doing pretty good. The charge gets eaten up fastest when the electric assist is nearly to the median:



If you're doing this and the displayed level is starting to drop, say down to half, then maybe better to kick the gas to the right side of the median, trigger the engine, pulse-and-glide more.

All that said, with a plug-in, you have a much bigger battery than regular Prius, so I think you can use the electric-only motivation more; it takes longer to really start dropping the battery.

 

@Pluggo is right. If the engine is fully warmed up, you should be able to go in all electric up to about 42 mph in HV mode. But it requires some discretion on the part of your right foot. It's much more forgiving than a Gen 2, but you still don't have much oomph.

It's usually not a good idea to force that, though, because of the losses involved when the computer says, "That's enough," and runs the engine to recharge. You end up using more gas than if you just let the computer make the decisions. But I often milk the battery as much as I can when I'm getting close to home since I know I'm about to plug in. Those are the times when I wish the EV button still worked w/o EV range showing -- like the non-plugin.

 

'set it' is probably not the right term. you could program it, if you're sufficiently versed in toyota proprietary software

we do a thing called 'pulse and glide', when the driving hv. under the right conditions, you can up your mpg by about 20%, by using more engine and little to no braking or regen

 

If you're in EV mode, you can accelerate on MG (traction motor) only to where the bar is up to the "PWR" segment. It's not speed, its HP demand that causes the ICE to start. The MG in the PIP is relatively weak compared to a pure EV like the Leaf or the Bolt. (And certainly the Tesla!)

 

That's right. Once the engine kicks in, EV mode changes to HV and the centerline appears. From then on, any pedal beyond center restarts the engine.

 

In a normal PRIUS - trying to keep it in EV mode longer seems to make little if any difference to the l/100km. Just let it do its thing. As @bisco suggested, Pulse'n'glide-ing will put it back in EV for short periods which add up. But for acceleration, apart from a light foot, let it do it's thing.

 

What l/100km are you averaging? That's more important than when it kicks the ICE in.

 

I'll barely make it through the intersection. Too, I don't make it my quest to sustain electric-only, just let the engine kick in, accelerate moderately. If I do an intentional shift-to-electric-only (say by lifting off then re-applying gas pedal), it's under light loads. You can actually go up a bit of grade electric-only, if the speed's really low. Just give it time, you'll get comfortable with it.

 

Just in case there is any confusion, you don't have a plugin battery and a hybrid battery, you have one battery, the bottom 23% SoC or so of which is allocated for hybrid mode. Any SoC % above 23% is what you use for EV mode, up to approx. 85% (capped by Toyota), and you can only access that through wall-charging.
As you note above, with any EV charge level available you can accelerate easily up to 30 in EV then switch to HV mode.
Once that additional EV level SoC is depleted, the Prius switches to, and stays in HV mode - you can't switch back without wall charging. In HV mode the PiP acts like a non-PiP, but not necessarily exactly the same. For example, if you coast down a long hill your SoC level may climb well above 23% because the larger battery capacity is taken advantage of, but this extra will all be used up subsequently in HV mode - it will just appear that you are temporarily getting a longer run without the ICE kicking in. You have no control over this process. In a non-PiP, the smaller battery limits regen.
Rather than thinking of what speed you can accelerate to before the ICE kicks in, in HV mode, think of how much charge is available. In a non-PiP, all the smaller battery capacity above about 60% of that battery is available for temporary EV, because that is what is used for. You may well get up to 15-20 before the ICE kicks in. In contrast the PiP programming has to allow for the dual functioning of EV and HV modes, and if you have enough charge (above 23%) the car may well use that right down to 23% in EV mode, leaving very little for the next time you accelerate, so HV mode willl appear to kick in much quicker.

Happy motoring...

 

there are some design/programming differences between the gen3 and the pip. pip is a dog in hv mode.

 

I'll restate what I and some others have said. It will go well above what you're getting. You need to watch that power bar and not let it get to the middle vertical divider once you're out of EV range and in HV mode. That takes such a light touch that it's not practical when you're in traffic. But if I'm already at speed when the EV range runs out, I can keep on going without the engine (assuming it's already warmed up) at speeds approaching 45 mph on level ground.

With one exception -- at least in the U.S. version. If you're going down a mountain with no EV range available and regenerate enough to see EV miles show up on the HSI, you can lock that in by putting it in EV mode and taking it right back to HV. That becomes the new baseline SOC. I did it many times when vacationing in the Smokey Mountains last summer. As you continue downhill, if the EV range number increases, you can lock that in the same way by cycling the EV/HV button. I call it ratcheting.

Did you mean EV mode? Mine accelerates fairly smartly in HV mode. But it's especially a dog in EV mode after getting to drive a Tesla the other day.

 

I have one really steep curving on ramp after work, I can only get up to maybe 35 mph on the curve before you are thrust into 70 mph congested traffic with a short merge lane. I put my PIP in Power Mode and she will haul *#%, does not seem to really mess with MPG for a very short duration.

 

I hate those. We have one similar on the north side of Second Narrows bridge, southbound, going from North Van to Vancouver. There's a more direct route we can approach the bridge, but it dumps you onto a suicide merge lane. We take an alternate, more circuitous route, that puts you on a parallel lane to the bridge road, where you have about 1/2 km to make a leisurely merge.

There's supposed to redo that whole mess; they were making a lot of noise about well over a year back, not sure if anything actually got started.

 

Years ago I drove Semi I feel for those guys on these ramps.

 

I have nothing constructive to add. I just wanted to say that I'm very amused by a Canadian sharing a map with a Tim Horton's denoted.

 

I've only ever eaten at one Tim Horton's. It was in Canada. Do they have them in the US, too? Seems like I saw one once, but I don't remember where.