Proud and delighted new owner of a Driftwood Pearl (what, they couldn't call it "tan"? or "khaki"?) '07 Prius. I'm completely smitten by it. I had to go to Seattle on business a week or so after we took delivery of the car and I thought about driving. From Connecticut. Okay, I didn't think *seriously* about it, but still. The real question, though, is about how the car behaves when I start it. Whether it's in the nice, cool garage or in a sunny parking lot, within a few seconds of starting the car I hear the engine starting. I've tried tracking whether the hybrid battery is low on charge, but it doesn't seem to make any difference whether it's in the blue zone or green. I'd expect the gas engine to start at, say, 15 mph, but not when I'm backing out of the garage. Is this behavior normal? Or should I stop by at the dealership for a checkup?
The engine will come on to do a warmup cycle (summer or winter) within ~15 secs (unless you have the front defroster one in the winter in which case it'll come on immediately)
Sounds completely normal to me. The Prius must warm the catalytic converter in order to keep emissions low. Combine short trips into one long one while going to the farthest away place first, and watch your mileage go up and up. Congratulations on your car! Your going to love it.
I believe the owner's manual covers this, and many other important facts, quite completely. Read the manual. If you have any questions about it, let us know. But the manual is chock-full of information, and EVERY new car owner should read his manual.
Normal. As the other posters said, the first priority is to keep emissions low, so the Prius warms the catalytic converter and keeps it warm. Also remember that drawing power from the battery lowers your mileage, so it doesn't make sense for the car to draw down the battery just to charge it up again. The only time it makes sense for the ICE to not start when first starting the car is if you are moving it only a short distance, such as across a parking lot. That's what the EV switch is for. The Prius doesn't know how far you are intending to drive, so it plays the odds and assumes you are going more than a few hundred yards. If you know better, you push the EV switch to hold off the ICE. Unfortunately, we don't get the EV switch on U.S. models. Tom
Thanks, y'all. I missed that page in the manual, clearly. (Considering how much space that manual spends on programming a Bluetooth phone, which I don't have, or the variations in how the Power button works depending on whether or not you've got a Smart Key system, it seems like it was easy to miss.) Again, thanks for the reassurance.
