Electric Range

Ascending Pikes Peak would be an interesting measure of efficiency. I'll bet most people would like going down that route more.
Not many drivers actually enjoy backing off the Go Pedal these days. Realistic is relative to ones surroundings and not necessarily what anyone else takes for granted.

 

Finally got a chance to check what the car displays for EV range on a full charge… 57 miles! The app says 56 miles FWIW, either way, I’ll take it! Pleasantly surprised to see as I usually drive around with the battery percentage displayed instead.

 

I haven’t done it in the Prius yet but I have in a couple of other cars.

I think at 18 miles up and 6,700 feet of gain that a Prius Prime can’t make it up there in one charge, particularly if starting from Colorado Springs (it does take a few percentage points of charge in HV mode to get up the mountain from the city to the highway entrance). Even if using charge mode to be at exactly 100% at the start of the Pikes Peak Highway toll entrance, I think that battery would be drained well before the summit in EV mode. When I do that drive, I’m probably going to run Auto mode up and try to get to 0% state of charge by the summit, but definitely running the gas engine quite a bit.

I am fairly certain that at least an 80% charged battery would be likely by the end of the trip down the mountain, with quite a lot of gas used depending on pace and traffic.

 

I have got the car for almost 1 month, 300+miles on it.
The EV efficiency is 3.5 Miles/kW. I guess I am not driving too conservatively.

 

It may simply be where you live. If temperatures are still colder, it will affect your EV range especially if you use the climate controls. Where I live, it's low to mid 30s at night and maybe mid 50s during the day. My weekly commute into Portland is very early a.m. so my average is only about 3.8 right now. In warmer weather, it's been as high as 4.7.

 

2012 Toyota Prius (not a plug-in or
Prime) on 1 tank of gas (11.9 gal):
TripA distance driven: 911 miles.
TripA gas mileage: 76.5 mpg.

 

I am in the warmer California. I turned off the AC this week just to see how "high" the miles/kW will go.

 

what are your tips for hyper-mile?? that's impressive

 

I have my tire pressure roughly 2 psi higher than recommended, 37 psi front, 36 psi rear, not sure how much that helps but I do prefer a slightly firmer ride.

I use EV mode almost exclusively while putting around town. It's quite congested where I live so driving on the city streets, my speeds are never excessive, nor can they be with so much traffic. I accelerate from a stop light usually at most somewhere in-between the first white power bar, rarely going into the 2nd one. I coast as much as I can and while braking, I challenge myself to only apply sufficient pressure on the brake pedal to keep it within the regen range (brake hard if safety is a concern obviously).

I think the biggest impact on my EV range is I try to anticipate the type of driving I'll need to do, and switch modes manually prior to that. For example, if I know I will be getting on the freeway, I manually switch to HV mode a few blocks prior to warm up the ICE. As I merge onto the freeway, I'll actually give it a good amount of gas because, well, it's fun I almost never use EV mode on the freeway unless the car automatically switches to EV mode or it's heavy, bumper-to-bumper traffic. I think switching to HV when I need to accelerate and drive fast actually hides that driving behavior from the EV range.

 

Just checked my Toyota app and my car is fully charged. Now it’s up to 58 miles of EV range from full.

 

Question how did you get this pic on dash on my 24 I have a large charging pic on multimedia

 

The manual describes it as the "Information display area. A variety of information can be displayed by selecting a menu icon". It's from pages 161-162 (of our manual). You can use the "OK" button on the left side of the steering wheel to select a menu icon and the arrow buttons to scroll thru the menu options.

 

For anyone curious - generally speaking, the EV mode is less efficient in practical the higher the speed because of the fact that electric motors/drivetrain don't have gears, and are always operating at optimal efficiency in terms of converting energy into movement. Rolling resistance, drag, etc all increase with speed, so the motor has to work relatively harder to maintain a higher speed.

A gas engine however, has an RPM sweet spot where it is most efficient once it hits a sort of equilibrium with how hard its working, based on the gear being used to deliver a certain amount of energy to move the car. This is why CVT type transmissions are so efficient - they help to keep the car at as stable a power output/RPM ratio as possible. What really hurts gas engines the most is acceleration, as maintaining speed keeps the car as close to its "Sweet spot" as possible. The extra variable power and gear ratios offered by an ICE and related drivetrain means that when it can just hold its speed once the drag/rolling resistance has been overcome, it can coast very smoothly and quite efficiently. flipside is that in stop and go, it operates very inefficiently due to always having to accelerate and push more power much less efficiently to get going.

It's why if you can use EV mode in lower speeds, which use less energy to move to car to begin with, and which doesn't suffer as much of the inefficiency curve from stop/go, and where the drag/resistance are lower, you'll get much better range. So long as you're not doing, ya know, huge accelerations and heavy foot driving since more power = more energy and more sudden resistance. The principles of smooth acceleration and deceleration still apply regadless of EV vs HEV mode.

On a personal note, I've found after 80km/h you begin to lose electric range a bit more quickly, but the real hit comes if you go well past 100, so around 120km/h (74 mph) the electric motor in the car really starts to hurt the range a lot more. If you're gonna go on a freeway for a longer distance, at a speed above 100 (65mph), then switching to HEV mode is a good way to kind of get the most efficient mixed use out of the car. Plus, the battery will probably be happier not pushing high speeds all the time for its own longevity too.

EV battery tech is evolving pretty quickly, so the nice thing about the Prime is that you get to kind of "opt out" of worrying about long term battery health or being stuck with an outdated car. Even if charging standards change at some point, you can always charge the smaller battery at home, easily. And short of the battery completely failing, it will always be an HEV. It's extremely unlikely the capacity will ever diminish such that it can't do its hybrid mode driving. Unlike a standard HEV, which - even without complete failure, can have enough capacity issue that it doesn't support HEV driving properly anymore. (at least, that's what I've come to understand)

 

Thanks HawksawMark I found it still learning about this PP

 

Fine post , thanks , BTW from a gen 4 Prime owner , my sweet spot for EV is in the 90KM/H speed , so Over that speed I switch to HV for crusing at 105 KM/H , the car then reports a 3.7l/100KM .

 

HacksawMark where did you find battery miles instead of percentage

 

Pages 155 and 166 of the manual.

 

Thanks again

 

My EV miles on full charge started with 33 miles and now after a month increased to 37 miles. Hoping to get at least 40 miles on full charge with 2024 Prius Prime XSE Premium from end of March 2024.

 

With the warm weather, and mostly city driving (plus low speed traffic commute times), the car displays 12.3 kwh/100km now. Which according to a googled conversion calculator, is 5.05mi/kwh.

I don't use the range meter, I only use % in the car. Since I find the range meter is a bit of a guessing game. I can only assume it factors in the winter efficiency for the model it uses to predict which was far worse.

I winter I was averaginge 14.6kwh/100km, or 4.23mi/kwh

I drive the SE model though, with the smaller wheels, and it came with the bridgestone ecopia tires. I also keep the hubcovers on since they supposedly help with aerodynamics. How much I don't know, but I'll take what I can get

Oh, and most of the time I have the HVAC set to auto, with the temp set to 22.5C. I don't think that's reflected in the kwh screen readout, but maybe its factored into the range guess-o-meter? The Guess-o-meter tells me I have 70km of range when I start the car, but I can do my daily drive and get home with 25% on the % based meter, and I'll have done about 60km. Maybe I'll try driving with the range based meter instead of the % one for a few days this week and see if it stalls out randomly as I approach lower charge. I remember one in winter it told me I had 1km range left for a while... certainly longer than 1km lol