A regular Prius and PiP Charges 3/4 full upon using the hybrid mode. Why not have it still go 50 mpg or so and have the PiP charge 3/4 full in the Electric Battery side? Maybe this is what Dianne is alluding to the future PiP being one to watch out for. Could this be done via software in the current gen? Why limit the battery charge, especially when Hybrid mode likes to be 3/4 full (why not just charge the whole thing 3/4). Then I think we'd easily see 60+mpg consistently.
Because petrol costs more than electricity per mile. It would be wasteful to charge on the road. Would you use a portable generator running on petrol to charge up at home? The Prius charges just enough to allow the hybrid system to function efficiently, more would be a waste.
I took it to mean that whilst driving a PiP with a depleted traction battery the car will, on a run, use the hybrid part of the battery but only partially charge that. I think he was asking 'why not use the petrol engine, braking and energy recovery to charge the traction battery in its entirety' I try to switch to hybrid mode with a little, 0.1-0.5 mile, of the indicated available electric range left and the car does in fact do what I think he was asking but only using regen. Perhaps it is different in the US?
i'm still confused, but that's just me. my pip will charge from two purple bars to full green bars to ev battery indicator if i'm doing enough regen. the only limit i know of is the actual state of charge of the battery which prolongs life. i assume the o/p bowed out of this a long time ago, and i'm not sure he even understood his question.
Yeah but a major thing Toyota should change when it comes to the PiP is the software. You can tell Toyota kept the software the same from the Liftback Prius because it tries to maintain the battery when driving in HV with a partially discharged battery. They should have changed it to be more aggressive towards recharging the battery when using the ICE to cruise for over half discharged battery and allow more boost when the battery is almost full. I think the PiP should see bigger swings in charging and discharging from the ICE because it would take advantage of larger battery.
but this would likely result in lower mpg's as charging the battery from the ice is the least efficient operation of a prius.
Hmmmm if this were true toyota would never be charging the battery, particularly from the ICE like it does now. It seems, while maintaining the battery, the ICE charges more than the battery discharges. Of course this just is from personal experience watching energy monitor on both Prius. That and a lot of people have gotten great gas mileage from Pulse and glide. iPad ? HD
if it were efficient, everybody would be make ev's with gas engine generators and no plug in. now if you kwh price is high enough...
When not plugged in, the PiP only charges the battery when there is excess power that has to be put somewhere, and the alternative is to just waste it. For example, the system really wants the ICE to run at an optimal RPM, but this may produce more power than is needed to move the car, so the excess is dumped into the battery. Or regeneration, when the alternative is to either run the engine without fuel doing compression braking, or to use the friction brakes. From an efficiency point of view, it makes no sense to crank up the throttle on the ICE to add charge to the battery which will later be used to move the car, due to the losses in that process. It is better in such cases to just use the ICE to move the car, which is what it is good at doing.
Actually Toyota already does this to some degree. For instance when I start out on a trip I know is longer than the EV range, with no possible way to recharge at the end, I'll hit the HV button as well as the PWR button. From experience I know I get an extra mile of EV boost and after EV boost is done, I usually end up with an extra .3 miles of EV range at the end of the first half of the trip. Not sure why the PWR button does this but the results are repeatable. And some of the posters on this forum already use a certain method, I forgot what they call it, to increase their EV range so that its full by the time they get to their destination. I also know that constantly changing speed/RPM kills gas mileage for any ICE. An ICE is much more efficient if its speed never changes and this efficiency grows over time/miles. What I'm suggesting is not to rev the engine faster all the time, but use that much bigger battery to smooth the speed changes.
