Color of bars in battery capacity display

The colors change with how well your battery is charged. Blue is normal range. Green is high charge or.. full, and purple is low. You have 10? bars on the battery screen? 1 and 2 are red.. but only when you have two bars or less showing... if there are between 3 and 7 bars, they will be blue.. and if you have any more than that, they will turn green. The more green you are, the better :mrgreen: You're conserving energy well if you have green. All you need to do now, is learn to keep it just below green. If you drain your battery, you're driving rough ( or mountain driving) if you're green, you're conserving but possibly waiting because all you're doing is collecting.. and if you are blue, you're a normal driver. I try to keep my at 1 or 2 bars above half mark. This gives me the idea i'm conserving a good amount of electricity and utilizing a decent amount.

Best advice i can give is to learn the "no arrows" trick. I've been able to accelerate from a stop light quickly.. then go to no arrows for the rest of the way.... when a couple hundred feet from the next light.. i let go and let the generator slow me down.. then, use regenerative breaking. Testing this technique out, i've been able to achieve 75mpg today. But at times i get that lead foot and punch it.. which kills my battery and my good efforts :mrgreen:

 

Color makes the charge-level easier to see when driving... since counting bars isn't always practical.

 

Also, don't forget they built in "give" in this display - meaning if you ever see the battery fully charged (yes, that top green bar can be filled in rare occasions) or fully drained, fear not! From word around these parts, it's somewhere around 25-30% either way - so if the display for the battery is completely 'empty' and the engine still doesn't kick in (pretty rare as well), no need to get worried.

-m.

 

Another alternative for driving with no arrows is shifting into neutral. I do this frequently when going downhill if D is slowing the car or keeping it from gaining additional speed. When the car's going fast enough I shift into D to slow it down. Someone's going to respond with a number of objections to using N, but give it a try, it won't hurt the car.

 

Maybe it won't hurt the prius. But, on standard cars, it will hurt the transmission once you put in into gear. I would recommend against it just because when you do put it back in gear, everything has to spin back up to speed. This may cause unwanted stress. Plus, in California, it's illegal to shift into neutral. It slows down your breaking time making you a potential hazard. However, i have done his also... untill i learned the "no arrows" pressure point well. Maybe someone can look into what potential stress you are putting on the drivetrain when shifting from neutral to drive again while driving.

 

As the "gears" are not of the normal type, i.e. they dont mess and un-mess, I doubt going into N would hurt, but, in an emmergency, you wont have any power to pull away, which means you are not in full control of the car and there could be problems if you have an accident.

I also have in mind, but I guess I am wong here :wink: that when you are in N, the generators wont charge the HV battery..

Better to stay in D.

 

It is true than in N the generators won't charge the battery, but you have to be in N for a very long time to discharge the battery. I also shift into N occasionally when stopping at unusually long red lights.

 

Those long lights are where I love that P(ark) button. Usually, as murphy's law will tell you, once you hit Park, the light changes green probably 2-3 times faster than if you'd otherwise sit with your foot on the brake.

-m.

 

Going up and down hills on an empty road I am tempted to use Neutral.

I am sure there is some waste charging the battery on the downhills and then using it for a boost on the uphills. As long as there isn't a stop sign at the bottom and there are no other cars or driveways. It seems like neutral is okay.

 

I don't use neutral that often, but when I do nothing happens different than when the car itself decides to coast with no bars on; to me, that's the car itself shifting into neutral.