Confused?=Approx.what % of the time,does the gas motor turn on? So if your Prius has 100k miles=How many miles does the gas motor really have, since the gas motor does not run all the time???
All depends on the way you have driven the car last 100K miles. On PRIME (and I thing for Pip), there is a display that shows the EV ratio for given ODO or any tripmeter. Even when I drive my car 100% HV like regular Prius, the ratio can be a high of 60% to a low of 20%. My guess is with moderate driving, you are probably 40-50% EV ratio.
The gas engine in a "conventional" hybrid actually runs most of the time. Except for coasting downhill, there is no other place to get the energy to make it GO. My guess is about 80%......since my C has an indicator that tells what percentage is "EV" and it fluctuates around 20% depending on conditions.
If you drive freeway miles all the time you're near 100% gas engine... If you drive in traffic and optimal hybrid conditions in the 40mph range you're going to get that down near 70%... But because the electric motor takes lots of torque loading off the engine, you could consider a Prius with 100,000 mostly city miles to have about 60K miles of wear. But it has alot to do with first 5 minutes of driving when engine warms up. As cold engines in first minutes of operation experience as much wear and tear as 500 miles of driving at normal operating temperature.
I would say the engine life expectancy should not be any different than regular car due to the car being hybrid.. True engine at times does not run at all. But then at other times it often runs between 2000 - 3500 RPM range, significantly higher RPM than other regular gas cars. Smaller engine capacity and Atkin's cycle possibly the reasons for that. I do not think from personal experience that engine off time would anyway compensate for typically higher RPM's seen. My personal experience though is at 360 K Miles, the engine is still holding up ( using up a quart of oil every 1500 Miles) and that is much much better than any other car I had.
Reading between the lines, you're thinking the down times mean the engine will last longer? Not sure about that.
For me the Hybrid Assistant App's Report shows for the last nine months, that I've driven 26% of distance (and 50% of time in Ready and 26% of time while moving) as EV. Knowing this, I can say, that my engine ran ¾ of the distance, showing by the odometer. SM-G950F ?
gen4 gives a ratio i think. someone with a lot of miles might have a decent average, unless its all highway as far as maintenance and longevity, starting and stopping might be harder on it, for all i know
And the electric motor massively increases starting & stopping efficiency, which is a major wear and tear issue for regular cars...
Wait......what ?? That needs a bit of extra explanation, I think. Stopping is never even mentioned in discussions of engine wear. And starting wear is only mentioned when starting COLD where the oil has had time to drain off of moving parts.
For starters, it's not the oil on the moving parts that the primary problem with a cold engine, it's that when cold the piston rings and just about everything else in the engine is not at the exact size that they're engineered for, which is why the first 5 minutes before an engine warms up can in some cases be equivalent to 500 miles of wear. And when you're slowing down in a regular car with manual transmission you're often down shifting, which increases engine wear. And everything that's not downshifting is mechanical breaking, which wears out the brakes. I have original brake pads on my Prius 245K miles mostly on freeway because regenerative braking by the electrical motors does almost all my braking. Likewise, when a regular car starts from a stand still it requires a huge amount of torque which puts a strain on the engine, transmission, motor mounts, etc.. But when you have an electric motor you have much more torque delivered from a much more durable system with very few parts involved and thus very little wear and tear.
The only realistic way to tell how much the engine has run is to connect an hour meter to it. They are common, I am used to seeing them in military & industrial vehicles. The hard part will be finding a voltage connection that is "hot" ONLY when the engine is running. -Graeme- 2004 Prius with >190,000 miles. Sent ?.
An obd2 reader via Hybrid assistant & Hybrid reporter app will provide any size sample of that very data if want to work with it...
Personally I almost never use my transmission for braking in my 4 runner. The only time would be going down a steep grade. The type of grade you would put a Prius in B mode on. Why? Because brakes are a lot easier and cheaper to replace than a clutch is.
