Regen: the AER booster

wow, that's huge! was there a lot of downhill?

 

i've never regened even one mile in the pip, that's quite an improvement.

 

they must have been conservative with regen on the pip, their first foray into lithium in n/a.

 

Last summer, in the Smokey Mountains, we regenerated the whole EV range on our PiP and ran out of battery capacity. More than once!! Not much regen here in FL, though.

However, I've noticed also that the Prime seems downright eager to regenerate and to run in EV even when the EV range is depleted.

 

i'll be interested to see if anyone can come close to duplicating tide's city driving experience. don't recall reading anything near to it.

agree on the pip, never regened back into ev on flattish land.

 

In the city every time you come to a stop it's a significant amount of regen. And every time you accelerate it uses a significant amount of energy. That averages out, so the total range is still 25-30 miles.

In other words, if for some reason you only had friction brakes, you'd get more like 18 miles of range. That's how hybrids work, and that's the main reason why these are so much more efficient than non-hybrid gars. Regen works about the same way in EV mode as in HV mode.

I have charged the battery in mine about 80% by driving down a long hill (Mt Evans). It takes a long gradual hill at low speed, otherwise you'll pass some kind of limit and it will go into engine braking mode. On that trip I started at the top of the mountain in HV mode, and from there I drove 60 miles in EV mode just using recovered energy. Of course it took some gas to get up there.

 

Compared to my Gen 3, the Prime tries to charge at almost any time it can. Cruising at 50 to 60 it is always charging at least a little for later EV stretches. I do not believe this is efficient

 

that doesn't jive with tidelands figures

 

What anyone believes is irrelevant. The fact is that the Prime gets better fuel economy than any other Prius except the Eco. My Prime will put itself into EV mode for a mile or more at a time at 60+ mph and then charge back up again.

My PiP was always going back and forth with charging and using the battery (without actually shutting off the ICE) at highway speeds in HV. All three of our Gen 2s do/did so as well. You can see the energy go back and forth on the display.

 

I am trying to point out that there may be room for improvement in the algorithm of when and how much to charge the battery. Is the Prime optimized for the unskilled driver or the experienced hyper-miler? The fact that we must always remember that we have to push the hybrid mode button at start up every time to conserve battery for latter short EV trips(no ICE warm up) must tell us something. They are more interested in the unskilled test driver for the EPA that will produce the highest MPG without thought.

 

I would be absolutely stunned if someone improved that algorithm as to when and how hard to charge the Prime's battery. The intention is to run the engine at its most fuel and emissions efficient rpm and use any excess power generated to charge the battery or for the battery to help the engine if that rpm is not enough to meet the driver's demand.

AFAIK, all Prii are optimized for minimal emissions and since 99.999% (or something like that) of trips are beyond the EV range of a non-plugin Prius, the car assumes you'll be needing the engine and starts it up unless you tell it otherwise.

Most trips for most people in the Prime are within battery range and so you need to tell it if you don't want to drive on battery. Over 90% of my miles are EV miles. I don't want to have to warm up the engine 20-40 times a week when I only need the engine a couple times a week. That would cost money and increase emissions.

Would you rather push that button 99% of the time when you start the car or 1% of the time?

 

Once the engine starts, the Prius family keep the engine running so i reaches it optimal low polluting temperature as quick as possible. I think that is why on the Gen 4, the heater causes a bigger MPG hit than the electric Air Conditioner.

 

I feel like I am being trolled.

 

I'm sorry, that wasn't my intention. I just wanted to make sure you understand the reason the car acts the way it does. My intentions are friendly. I never troll.

 

c'mon jerry, we all know your m/o

 

Yes, but how much regen load is on the ice is the big difference (40 mpg(PP) vs 60mpg(gen 3) showing on the ice meter) most of the time (flat roads 45 to 60mph). My use case is almost no charging availability and long trips. If you are plugging up all of time, you may see almost none of these things.