Watch my commute.. is this normal?

Hi DRogers,

Welcome! I am a fellow Ontarian, in the GTA, and a longtime Prius driver (343K km and counting...

What you describe sounds normal to me. The Neutral message and red triangle is normal, if memory serves, I believe it does come on if you put the car in Neutral and open the driver door. Basically, the battery cannot charge in Neutral, so it is just warning you not to leave it there for an extended period or you risk running the battery into danger territory where you risk expen$ive damage...

Your mileage sounds normal for the Canadian conditions. I usually get about 4.7-5.1 in the summer, and about 5.5-6.5 in the winter, depending on how extreme the temps are. ;-). I don't consider myself heavy footed, but I'm not hypermioer either (obviously). Always get the best economy in spring/fall when it is about 18-22C, where you comfortably do not need heating or A/C.

Kevin

 

Hello Kevin,

Thank you for the information, It just seemed to change all of a sudden from what I thought it was doing before (maybe I just started paying more attention to it). All winter my battery level stayed at 7 bar in the morning when I started the car, all of a sudden it's down to 5 bars in the am. Only change is that my wife and I now communte to work togther, she drops me off and drive herself to work, she picks me up after working and we ride home, I though it might be because my wife was leaving the Garmin GPS plug into the 12 V outlet all night but the GPS is off and that should only draw from the 12V battery not the traction battery. So I started unpluging the GPS at night but no change in the drop. I've asked her if she is warming the car up after work prior to driving away and her tells me she starts the Prius gets out and has her smoke prior to driving to get me. (she's not allowed to smoke in my prius or truck). so the car probably gets a 5 minutes warm up prior to the drive across Ottawa to get me. In the am I warm the car up for about 10 minutes prior to the hour drive to work. This morning I noticed that when I started the car the SOC showed 7 bar (green), but when I went back out to the car in the garage after the 10 minute warm up the SOC was down to 5 bars, ICE ran the whole time, so is the drop in traction battery power normal after start up during idle time for warm up?

 

Yes that is normal. See, what happens is, your start the car and the ICE starts up and charges the battery but for only about 45-1 minute.
after that the ICE is just running and warming up. Are you running heat in the morning? that takes power from the HV battery.

So after say 7-10 minutes you'll drop a bar or a couple and the idling engine will go back to charging it. From what it sounds like, your car seems to be just fine. And even if you're not running heat or AC the battery is still being used when sitting in "ready" because its powering all the electronics such as power steering, brakes, headlights, computers, dash lights, ect..

 

Thanks for the quick reply,

Maybe I only really started watching the display after my wife statred driving and maybe it's been doing this the whole winter. I do run the heater during the warm up period in the am but I would have thought that the alternator on the motor would supply the power for car functions not the traction battery. Or doesn't the prius have an alternator? I will try to idle it next time with the heat off to see if there is a difference. There are alot of difference between the prius and a normal car. I'm still trying to understand the 4 stages of the prius??? can you explain in plain simple terms what they are and how they work.

WOW am I learning alot.. thanks again

 

The Prius doesn't have an alternator. It charges the 12v with the io inverter feed by the traction battery. And the engine doesn't change the traction battery (via transaxle/power slipt device) all the time while in park.If it did that battery would over charge.

The stages, i roughly know them. But I'm not too good with words, so you can use the priuschat search bar. or google "prisuchat stages"

 

Just a reminder to always leave the Prius in "P" when warming up. Also, remember that you switch to "P" mode using the "P" button on the dash and not using the shift lever.