Prime cold starts @ W.O.T.

Unless the Gen5 control logic has changed, you can go out and see for yourself in the driveway. Put the car in HV mode, set emergency brake and place foot firmly on brake pedal, put in D and floor it and keep it floored. You'll see the ICE starts up and runs w/o any drama. It will NOT scream at ultra high RPM's and bounce off the redline limiters like a traditional ICE.

 

That is the premise of this thread. Guess time will tell.

 

This isn't a case of taking an engine, and modifying it to produce more power. It is an engine, and paired motors, designed to make more power, with the parts to do so.

M/G1 does the job of the starter. It is probably 10 times as powerful as a traditional starter, and has no problem spinning the engine up to 1100rpm before even firing the spark plugs. A hybrid cold start is not an ICE cold start.

 

My Gen 3 pays a bit of attention to what I do, as I pull out of my driveway and down my street.

If I am driving normally, it will start the cold engine and run it gently, while supplying mostly electrical traction.

If I mash the go pedal further enough, the car says "yikes, the human must need to get out of someone's way or something", and it will then temporarily exceed the parameters it had picked for the engine. Until I am back to a normal go pedal input, and it then returns to gentle use of the engine, until it is warmed up.

I think that's pretty much how I'd want it to work. As Leadfoot suggested in #16, it seems like mostly a strawman concern to fret over what the car will do when driven like that, if you're not intending to drive it like that.

And for those odd times when you have pulled out gently into the street and then noticed the approaching van you hadn't seen, it's nice that the car will respond that way when pressed.

 

You do understand that people routinely abuse random consumer products in youtube videos specifically to get more people to watch, right?

A few have earned enough on the clicks to repair or replace whatever they were abusing, including expensive cars.

 

The Prime is a Prius with the same system. It just has a bigger battery that lets it do a lot more in EV mode. Unless it was out of grid charge when stopped, and not plugged it, the Prime will start the engine up with more energy in the battery than the Prius has. So the Prime will be going easier on the engine than the Prius in this hypothetical.

 

unless you live on a highway onramp, there should be plenty of time to warm up the engine before the need to floor it if that makes you more comfortable.
that has always been my practice. idk if it's necessary, but i sleep better, and it's no bother

 

I apologize if my tone came off too harsh, I was really just trying to suggest that if you wanted to be fascinated rather than educated (not judging!) you might get more of what you're looking for out of a video site.

 

Tooling in ev and going wild will still be going wild in ev in the Prime until the battery is used to the lowest point. If I am heading to a freeway in the Prime, I do always put it in hybrid mode ahead of time to warm up the engine, to avoid a high rpm event when the engine is cold. I do this often as there is a traffic light at the bottom of an uphill on ramp to a freeway I often use. Others are not interested in me being in their way going slow to warm my ice to protect it going up the on ramp.
I was going to buy a used Niro ev for less than the Prime, had heat pump option and 11 k miles. I chose the used Prime for more money. It’s whatever works best in the personal situation. My case I feel I need the gas option, and the very large majority of use will be on ev mode.

 

The car generally treats a floored pedal as a demand to give you all the power it knows how.

When driven more moderately, it makes more moderate decisions.

Hard for me to say that's not the right call.

 

Mashed pedal at 84 maybe ice starts, but only a 2023 Prime owner can verify mashed pedal if it stays in ev. I think it would. Ev mode is ev mode only in the gen 4, in my experience having one. There’s ev auto mode which is just as it sounds, which isn’t ev mode. I never have driven 85 in a very long time, so can’t verify a first hand experience. I tend to guess it tops out at 85 in ev mode on mine, and that’s it. The battery isn’t lasting long at that point . I don’t have any intention of trying it so why am I talking about it anyway.

 

I read in the owners manual one condition for engine to start is exceeding 84 mph in EV mode, but under that speed it stays on electric only. It’s a really good system.
Also Toyota responds to “do I need to warm up the engine”, with no you do not need to. I disagree but that’s how they see it.

 

The 'warm up the engine' recommendation for modern cars, that is ones made in the 1980's or earlier, came from the mistaken belief people were starting the car and immediately driving off. When actually surveyed, people weren't doing that. The usual act of getting 'settled' in the car took place after starting it. Which is enough time for oil pressure to come up. The Prius can get to operating temp in that time.