I've notice this several times when leaving from work to go home. The first quarter mile I will be starting off nice and easy, the engine is on and then suddenly a lurch of power. Now its not giving me a wipe lash! But I can defiantly feel it and out of the corner of my eye can see my passenger's head move back slightly. So not so subtle either. It will only happen once. It is not going from battery to gas as I mentioned engine is already on. I am in eco mode the whole time. I am not hitting the gas any harder. And I am not going into the power band all the way right of the bar. I am staying steady in the eco area.
This happens to me every morning after 30 seconds of driving. I think it is because the computer is warming up the engine and the car is driving on battery power. This prevents the engine from having a large load while it is warming up. Most wear on an engine is whrn it is cold and putting a load on a cold engine makes it worse.
Yes. After a cold start, keep the HSI bar in its left half (or preferably left third) of ECO range until the computer is willing to let the engine work. If that's impractical due to traffic or hill, wait.
Actually, it -IS- the car going from electric motor to gasoline engine. The Prius attempts to use electric until the gasoline engine is up to some temperature, to avoid producing pollution. So even if the gas engine is running you are not using it. You can force use of it by depressing the throttle pedal.
That's not particularly good for a cold engine. Trying to accelerate hard or climb a steep hill too soon (i.e., before the engine is willing to work) demands high current from the battery, which can't be good for it, either.
This has been reported hundreds of times. There really should be a sticky for it. Check out the warm up cycles section, or google it. This 'lurch' is to do with that. Effectively the car is in one warm up stage where it's running on electric (even though the engine is running to warm up). Power is reduced in this mode but will be fine if taking it easy on the flat at 30 mph. If you suddenly go into the red Power zone for any reason the car switches into another part of the warm up cycle and the engine is now driving the car fully and with full performance. In that transition there is a small lurch which seems to get worse as the car ages and/or is getting near a major service. Some folk leave the car to warm up for a minute or two before driving. This doesn't appear to have any affect on economy and also skips this lurch issue. As you will have found, it only happens in the first couple minutes of warmup on a cold start when you hit the red power zone.
