Battery icon never solid on '17

Yeah if it fills up you are better off to then use B mode for braking.

 

In my 2015 gen 3 I maybe saw it 100% full once very 6 months to a year.

With my 2017 gen 4 I see it fill all the way up 1-2 times a week. I also see it go down to 2 bars 1-2 times a week. In my gen 3 that was very rare.

It makes sense when you think about it. The lithium ion battery is smaller than the nimh, not just physically, it has less capacity/energy. The lithium ion batteries, due to benefits in their chemistry, use more of their available capacity though, so it evens out in terms of "available useable energy". Since lithium ion is using a higher percentage of a smaller battery, it will fill and deplete more often.

This also means you will see lion equipped prii at 8 and 2 bars more frequently than gen3/nimh gen 4.

 

I have the lithium ion battery in my 2016 trim 3. The battery indicator frequently goes to "full bars." And I just drive it like a regular car, like a madman! Just kidding, but let's just say I am above the speed limit. Going with the flow.

I never concern myself with the battery status, or the hybrid indicator, or the gas mileage, or all the other displays.

I just get in and go.

The battery indicator rarely goes below the top two bars.

 

I've seen full bars on my Gen 4 (li-ion) a few times, but that usually involved either very long downhill, or conditions that caused the battery to go to 7/8 on the freeway, then braking on an exit ramp.

 

I have to agree with the Coast Rider man. A lot of Prius owners, and many guys in the forums seem to want to make these cars more complex than necessary. Or they want to baby it? I can only speak for myself, my Prius seems to perform better and run better and even gets better gas mileage when I just drive the crap out of it. No messing around with that pulse & glide stuff, no coastlng, no trying to maximize every last little ounce of fuel.

There is nothing complicated about this car! I put it in power mode, and Just Drive It. Is 60 MPG not good enuf? My traction battery level is always near the top.

 

@liquidtenmillion IIRC the two 4th Gen batteries have identical specs? Not to say there aren't minor differences; there must be. But officially they're the same.

 

Not quite identical but similar. At 54 lbs, the new Li-ion battery weighs 35 lbs less than the nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) battery and it uses only 56 cells rather than 168 because the Li-ion cells are rated at 3.7 volts versus 1.2 for the NiMH cells. The voltage of the two batteries ends up virtually the same at 202 volts (NiMH) and 207 (Li-ion). Some of the weight savings come from the inherent power density of the Li-ion chemistry, but the new battery also is smaller. Its 0.75-kWh capacity is barely half of the NiMH battery’s 1.31 kWh. This difference is possible because the Li-ion battery can reliably use about 70 percent of its capacity without compromising its life. The older battery can use only about 40 percent, meaning that it is typically not charged above 70 percent of capacity and not discharged below 30 percent. Either way, the usable capacity is a little over 0.5 kWh (courtesy of Car and Driver website).

 

Just in case anyone wonders, that usable space is what is reflected by the battery bars. 8 bars means the battery is 70% full, 1 bar 30% full. You cannot go above or below that without potentially reducing the lifespan of the battery(though we do it every day on all our devices except the Prius, those devices batteries lose half capacity over 3-5 years)

The car won't charge higher than that and won't start lower than that, if you start to get to 1 bar it will try everything it can to charge, and vice-versa.

 

The other day, I placed the car in EV mode while I went through a large parking lot. I think the battery got down to 2 bars. My MPG on that trip was horrible.
I should have just let the smart car decide what to do.

 

The only point to EV mode is to move the car without having to go through a warmup cycle. Everything else will hurt gas mileage. I suppose if you live on top of a mountain EV mode would make sense their too so you could drain the battery before you go down the mountain so you can regen it back up without wasting it as brake heat.

 

The trick if you're going to drain the battery is to be sure you've got a high-speed gradual stop, or a descent, soon afterwards to recharge it using kinetic energy, rather than the ICE.

 

I don't think it's as simple as that, because at certain speeds with heavy throttle demand the ICE will draw extra power from the electric motor and at other times it will charge the the HV i.e. the computer knows best.