Does the car always warm up after each start up?

completely. welcome to priuschat, congrats on your new ride. depending on the temperature of the engine, it may fire up anytime you power up. it will only run until it gets up to temp. that's why short trips are bad for mpg's. when making short trips, try to tie them together, going to the furthest point first and working your way home. the important thing is your long term mpg's. give it a few tanks and start averaging everything together. all the best!

 

Assuming that your Prius only had stopped for a short period, the next time you start the car, press the EV button as soon as the "Ready" light comes on. This will prevent the ICE from starting up. If you drive off slowly, the ICE will remain off until you need more power.

 

Note that this is a BAD idea for the majority of the times.

Exceptions to where forced EV mode is better are limited to scenarios where you are just moving your car "over there" or when you know you will have a long downhill regenerative session or if you can make it to the freeway onramp on EV only. In the first case, if you are moving in and out of your garage (like car cleaning or shuffling around) or moving from one parking spot to another in a parking lot, that sort of thing. Short distance, low speed trips.

The reason is that unless you have a plugin, all energy comes from gasoline. The classic noob mistake is to try and use electricity all the time and no gas. This is great to boost your fuel economy getting infinite miles per gallon! However, the battery will get low. Then it needs to charge. The only way to charge it, is by burning gas. Counterintuitively, the less you use EV mode, in general the higher your FE will be. This is true in driving at speeds too. Better to coast with no power usage than to maintain speed with electric only for prolonged periods.

 

I don't know where you live and what type of places you go with your Prius. For me, I either park my Prius in a crowded parking lot or at home. I live in a neighborhood where the speed limit is 25 unitl I get out to the main roads. Therefore, whenever I move my car to go somewhere, I always had to go slow for a minute or two. Putting my Prius in EV is a good solution. The reason is, it is better to burn gas to charge the battery while the Prius is moving at high speed than burn gas to move the car at a lower speed. If you know that you'll be moving slow in a crowded parking lot, why would you want the ICE to come on. It doesn't make sense.

 

Because if it's a true, stone cold start (like, first of the morning) the engine is running extremely inefficiently, with retarded timing to get the engine temperature up. In that same phase (phase 1a) it also inhibits the transmission of engine torque to the wheels, relying entirely on the battery driving MG2. In phase 1a the engine does not generate as much energy as the motor is taking away, even driving at 25 mph.
I have taken to forcing the engine to start immediately then fastening my belt, tuning the radio, nav, etc. then backing out around the time that stage 1a is complete. This way I'm accelerating using the engine torque and the state of charge doesn't sag like it would otherwise.
I drive a very repeatable route to work each day and will note at which location along the way the trip odo shows 50 mpg, 60 mpg, etc. and I've found no evidence that I've lost any mileage. The car feels more responsive as well, starting out with the higher SOC.

 

Please follow the thread, we are talking about starting a Prius that is already warmed up.

 

That's funny. I do the same thing (cross checking mpg).

 

You're over thinking it.
The car just needs to get the engine back into closed loop mode.
You should reset the trip meter at the beginning of your trip and just leave it alone to see the overall average. Your fuel consumption reading for that very short snapshot did not account for the fact that the engine was charging the traction battery while running.
There are several reasons that the car will refuse EV mode. In your case the battery was probably a little too warm.
Take a look at my Fuelly mileage. I didn't get that by worrying about the EV switch.
The car does what it needs to for low emissions and long term economy.

 

I think this response totally hit's the trouble most new owners have with their Prius. We expect the gas mileage to be somewhat constant, and freak out when we are only getting 20-30mpg. At first I tried driving slow, using EV more, and while that certainly works well some of the time, in real traffic, on real roads that just does not work. Instead I now try to get on the gas quick, and off the pedal as soon as I've reached cruising speed. While my mpg will plummet right after getting on the gas, the resulting mpg over the new few miles while I glide, and slightly get on it to keep momentum going, makes up for the initial loss.

With local driving using this driving style, 70 miles into the tank I'm sitting at 59.9mpg.

I think it's way easy to overthink it. Let the car warmup as much as you can, remember, that's also always been recommended for gasoline engines, most people just are in too much of a hurry.

-Marcus