I recently got my 2015 PIP all taken care of and managed to get it charged at work. On the way back, I tested how far it would go. It's hot in California so AC was working as well. I was doing about 75-80MPH the whole way home and got a suprising 15.8 miles on the battery before it kicked in the engine. That's more than advertised! Is that normal?
Wow! That's great! That is more than rated. I think Toyota was targeting around 12 miles? But the EPA was 6/11 (6 miles all-electric, 11 miles blended).
Not close to normal. How do you go 75-80 mph in EV mode when the PiP will only do about 64 mph before the engine kicks in.
The engine can still start while in EV mode, if you have the MFD on "Hybrid System Indicator" the "EV" symbol will go blank when this happens. Since you were going over the 60 MPH EV mode speed limit, the ICE had undoubtedly started, and EV driving would only be occurring below this speed. Depending on certain driving conditions, the car can use significant EV power over 60 MPH (although the ICE is still running too). Some refer to this as "EV Boost". Normally the EV range won't go down much when driving at these speeds. I've seen it happen a couple of times but I don't really understand how it works, or if it's even an intended mode of operation. Not sure what "all taken care of" means, did you just get the car?
Yeah, I played with that with my PiP. It was pretty cool getting close to 100 mpg at 70 mph. Used up battery fairly fast, but not as fast as at 60 mph without the ICE. I was hoping the Prime would do something like that in EV auto. But alas ... Edit to add: I should have mentioned before that just because the PiP is in EV mode doesn't mean the ICE isn't running.
