I purchased the EV Mod kit for my 2007 Prius so on those freezing cold winter days (here in MA) my engine wouldn't turn on under load as I started up my steep uphill driveway. That works fine, but as we all know the car stays in EV mode until 34mph or when needed by the firmware. The problem is that once I'm on the open road shortly afterwards, my acceleration is horribly sluggish - like I'm towing a trailer full of bricks. To even get to 30mph I have to significantly press down on the accelerator to get any kind of useful acceleration, and when I finally make it to 34mph the engine kicks in and BAM! it revs like crazy because of the position of the accelerator peddle. I would have thought the firmware in the car would have catered for matching the rpms better when transitioning from EV to engine mode. Anybody out there know further details about this and what might be wrong?
i think that's how it's supposed to work. why don't you just shut it off prior to needing accelleration?
That is an option of course - I was mostly looking to see if something about how all this was behaving wasn't quite right.
did it come with directions? iirc, mine shut off if the battery was too low, if the ice dropped below temp, or if the accellerator was pressed hard enough to require more power than the battery could provide. maybe a quick stomp on the accellerator to fire the ice and release, then feather to keep rpm's down?
Dont be too hard on it in EV mode! Dont expect it to give you Tesla performance either. The Prius battery is small and not designed to propel you like a full blown EV. If thats what you are looking for, buy a PIP.
I agree to take it easy in EV. From what I gather, in order to maximize the service life of the traction pack, you want to minimize the number of charge/discharge cycles. I would imagine that placing high demand on the HV pack, especially when cold, may be doing it some damage. I believe your HV pack will be happier if you don't use EV mode and just let the ICE start as you're climbing the driveway (or before). The electric drive power output is high in torque but low in horsepower. It doesn't do very well propelling the car on its own, as evidenced by trying to back uphill in reverse (electric-drive only).
The reason is because the car wants to keep your battery at a specific state of charge. After you climbed your driveway in electric only, you used a significant amount of the battery (especially in the cold), and once you get on the road, the [gas]engine has to not only power the car, but recharge the traction battery as well. You'll notice a lack of power, and increased engine rpm's until the battery gets back to normal level.
The OEM version of the EV control allows you to select EV by pushing the EV button before the Engine has started. If you push the button again it cancels EV and the engine starts immediately. So pushing the EV button after leaving your drive should put your car into normal mode. Pushing the accelerator to hard also drops the car out of EV. The European EV cancels at 31 mph "indicated" this is about 28 mph actual. John (Britprius)
FYI, Australian spec G2 drops out of EV mode at 46kmh. though under very light load conditions it will do 67kmh without turning over the ICE. Jason.
OK guys - thanks for all of your inputs. I think the best answer is to exit EV mode once I'm on level road.
