I have done a search but cannot find anything about the differences between City EV mode and normal EV mode. My car always start up in normal EV mode and I normally push the City EV button when I drive in the city. However when I don't do this I detect no difference, the car seems to do the same thing in either mode when I start with a fully charged battery. Anybody who can shed some light on this?
Managed to find the old thread about them. European "Prime" has different EV mode names | PriusChat Lots of speculation in the first couple of pages. tl;dr EV mode is for EV driving up to 84mph. It is like EV Auto in North America; it will blend with hybrid mode if the system feels it is needed. EV-city is meant for use in ICE exclusion zones found in some cities, so lower speed. It is less likely to go into HV(might need to floor it for that to happen), but the power output is limited in comparison. If you aren't racing around or on a highway, you won't tell the difference. First post to spell it out.
Thanks for answering that. I must have missed that thread in my search. Found a discussion in the Gen3 plug-in thread since which pretty much explained it too.
Not directly on topic, but the comparative information might be useful to someone... In G5, the EV Mode is now even more "EV"y than the G4 EV City - it won't activate the engine purely due to accelerator input at all, so maximum power is in EV mode is less than in Auto EV/HV or HV Mode. EV power limit is shown as the halfway mark in the PWR region on the Hybrid System Indicator. But that limited max EV power in a G5 (163hp) is much higher than G4. Max EV power in G4 would be 92hp without starting the engine, and starting the engine takes it to 122hp. For G5 they obviously figured 163hp was plenty so omitted the engine-start-for-more-power behaviour. But all the other potential engine start conditions are largely the same (high speed, cold, etc).
I think they also got rid of the dog clutch on the engine input in the gen5. On the gen4, that allowed MG1 to apply motive power to the drive wheels with MG2. No need for that when MG2 now produces more power on its own. EV-city limits electric power output by simply not using that dual motor mode.
