When the EV battery symbol is drained, the car switches in HV mode, unless you can regenerate enough power to fill it again by going down a long hill or plugging in.
Correct but the battery appears full even though the initial charge is depleted. The full battery I'm seeing might be slowly recharge due to the breaks, but not enough to run the car on ev again.
See the difference? Even though the bottom one appears to displaying a high charge-level, it really isn't. In fact, there's less electricity available. Notice the vertical lines and the lack of an EV mile estimate? If Toyota hadn't done that, the battery gauge would be worthless during HV driving, since it would appear totally empty. The original plug-in model did exactly that. It was overwhelmingly suggested to provide a multi-appearance design like this instead. That way, you know when both EV and EV modes are high & low for their respective capacities.
Yup. I was busy setting up a Cloud at home with DLNA and remote access... totally geeking out. It's pretty sweet to indulge like that.
At first, I wished there was a way to have the engine charge up the EV battery, but later I realized it would be the least efficient, most wasteful way to burn fuel.
It would be nice if it could charge EV during the engine warm up cycle. After that you are correct it would be a waste.
I think it depends how far into the HV side you get before the engine starts. I run out of EV everyday and will see the motor running at lights and see nothing on the energy monitor screen. I used to hit HV between far traffic lights to try to get the engine warm(er) before a long light. Now I let the full EV run out so that I have a chance to at least recharge a bit while sitting at a light. My commute is on a very stop and go road with a lot of lights.
