I've been driving the Prius for a few weeks now and I have a couple of questions. 1. There's a stretch of road on my commute that's heavily congested, and I often go more than five minutes without the ICE running. I probably move a mile or two using EV and coasting (it's downhill). Anyway, the consumption screen will shown an empty bar for my FE during that five minutes. I wonder, how is this calculated into the overall FE? 2. I find it almost impossible to find the dead band (no arrows) at speeds above 50. Again, I try this when going downhill. I realize the sensitivity of the energy screen display isn't a true reflection of what's going on. People with CAN view say there's a +/- 2 to 3 amp area there before arrows are displayed. Is what I'm seeing normal? 3. I find that whenever my foot isn't on the brake, and sometimes when it is very lightly, the energy screen shows battery power going to the wheels. 4. There are times when I can hear the ICE running and it's not showing up on the energy screen. I realize this is normal, but is it factored into the FE?
Are you talking about yellow arrows? Without your foot on the gas pedal? I haven't seen that yet! :blink:
I think this is when your battery is over charged. The battery will spin the ICE but the ICE will not use gasoline. It's a way to get rid of energy when standing still for the battery management system which values batter longevity above FE.
Yes While I've provided very short and mostly accurate answers, I'm going to have to attempt to politely steer you to the search function (I hope it's working properly). The fact of the matter is that all of these questions have been answered by people many times smarter than myself with explinations that will overwhelm you with their accuracy and complexity. Often times I will perform the search and provide the most relavent links but I just don't have the time right now.
This is the car attempting to simulate 'creep' -- it's simply the motor providing an idle amount of power to the drive train to slowly push the car forward as if you were in a conventional vehicle. If you depress the brake hard enough, it'll know that you really want it to stop.
