Auto-EV mode goes through battery fast

The battery in the C Drains faster than the liftback, because it has a smaller battery. The flip side is, that it charges faster. This is normal, and the rate of drain will largely depend on terrain and time in EV mode. If you are going down a gradual hill, you'll get much better battery charge, than the opposite.

 

I concur with the other response you recieved. The battery does run down fairly fast but charges fairly fast as well. I can get up to 45 mph at best on EV with a fully charged battery and it drops from there. Maybe a mile at best on battery but seems to do best if I slip into recharge status before it fully depletes as it seems to take a little longer to recharge if fully depleted. I am getting around 60mpg with AC on two bars at 60mph flat road in the mid to high 80's for temperature. Yesterday was in the 70's so with no AC i got around 70mpg but only because of some traiffic issue that slowed my drive speeds. I like the little car myself! Hard to beat the mpg!

 

When using the battery in EV try to find the lowest amount of throttle possible to maintain your speed. If keeping it right up to the ECO line on your ECO score screen, I have found about a 1/4" gap down from that line will maintain the same speed as maxed out (as far as on battery is concerned) and will last a great deal longer. Try playing around with the amount of throttle you give the car in EV to see what I mean. You can get the same speed by using less throttle, if that makes sense.

 

you get the best mpg's by gliding. that means not using any battery, or as little as possible. using up the battery will cause the ice to recharge it which is less efficient than using the ice to power the vehicle.

 

Same as the lasts couple of posters, don't use full EV output, I stick to about half, and coast or P&G in EV as much as possible, just the same as when using the ICE for propulsion. Two things happen when the battery gets low as well, power output drops based on the remaining power, and eventually it forces an ICE cycle to recharge it a little. If the battery charge is starting to get low then try and rely more on the ICE at least for a bit until you recover some charge, using EV just for gliding.

 

Ubu, try driving a while with the display in the Energy Monitor mode. It will show you exactly where the power is coming from and going to at all times and all pedal positions. It's amazing to see how often it changes. It really is like driving a computer on wheels.

Your noting that the ICE licks in when the battery gets to two bars is by design. Knowing that fully charging and discharging a rechargeable battery significantly shortens is life, Toyota engineered the synergy drive system to never do either. You won't see that last bar light up a the top end, and I have never seen mine go below two bars left on the bottom when the ICE didn't kick in.

 

Overuse of EV is definitely bad, but for practical uses, I'd say "as little as possible" more than "not using any battery", because you're going to have car warm-up, traffic lights and downhill stretches to charge the battery, so you might as well use the charge for something - that's what it's there for.

 

true, but don't forget, the car uses the battery without you using it on purpose. it doesn't just recharge automatically, but discharge's as well. it will never go wasted.

 

when your foot is off the pedal, you're recharging, not gliding. to truly glide, you have to feather the pedal until you cannot see the power bar charge or discharge. this is difficult and slight discharge (just to the right) is preferable to charging when trying to glide and uses minimal battery.

 

I'm at 16,100 miles and my average is about 19% EV usage.

 

I'd say that's terrific. I look at it this way. Auto-EV mode is like cashing your mileage paycheck that you earned by driving a hybrid vehicle.