Question About The 2010 Consumption Screen

There are two places to get feedback on your instant consumption. First is the instant MPG. That is on the left half of the display (to the right of the gas gauge). It goes up and down and is always there. It sounds like the one you are describing is what I call the "eco" gauge. It shows you how much power you are asking the car for and goes left to right. On the far left there is also an indicator for charge and the far right an indicator for power (which is in red).

Does that help any?

 

The bar you are describing is the Hybrid System Indicator. It is sort of an inverse to the consumption meter. As the HSI moves further to the right, indicating more power is being used by the system, the MPG meter (to the right of the speedometer) tends to go down, indicating worse fuel economy since the engine is working harder. As the HSI moves further to the left, the MPG meter tends to go up, indicating that the fuel economy is better since the engine is not working as hard. If the MPG meter goes all the way to the top, the gas engine is probably not being used at all, and the HSI is usually somewhere in the left half of the bar.

It is not a completely linear inverse relationship, since there are situations where you can accelerate and still maintain a reasonable fuel economy (i.e. when the electric motor is doing most of the work).

It takes a little while to get used to the instrumentation of the 2010 Prius if you have been driving a gen II Prius for a while.

 

Exactly right! Nice description.

This is very true. I believe those whose first introduction to a Prius is the 2010 find very little difficulty in understanding the instrumentation.

I came from a 2007, and I relied heavily on the use of the Energy screen (showing the flow of energy between and among the ICE, MG1/MG2 and the HV battery). That screen is of very little use in the 2010, but the HSI is very helpful. I knew in the first few moments that the HSI would be the screen to which I'd most often refer. I had very little idea what it was actually telling me, but I liked it!

There are several threads on the Hybrid System Indicator (HSI), and you'll probably learn more than you wanted to know just by reading a couple of them.

Perhap you could give the salesperson this important address: www.PriusChat.com. It's pretty clear you are among the many people much more knowledgeable about the Prius than are most Toyota sales people.

 

Tired!!? He should have been excited to talk with a real buyer -- of a real car!

I hope you find out a bit more info on the Hybrid System Indicator. One of the earlier threads with some good discussion was started by hobbit: HSI details.