Does your battery EVER show full??

If you want to see eight green bars, you need to take a road trip to a mountainous location, then head downhill for a couple of miles.

As your car ages, it will charge and discharge the traction battery more quickly, so seeing eight green bars is not necessarily a good thing...

 

When new I saw all green a few times in the city (driving like a granny ). Late spring. In summer or winter I've never seen it. I see it all the time when in the mountains on the decents (mountain passes).

 

Living in Michigan, I've only driven hills, no mountains, and I've never seen 8 bars lit up. I do see 7 fairly often.

 

I voted "yes" but it's rare, only after descending a long steep downhill as Patrick describes.

 

There is one steep hill near me where I always get a full battery charge even if I engage 'B' and try to use the brakes sparingly. I even had it once where it stopped putting charge into the battery when it was full. I assume this is some sort of safety thing to stop it getting overcharged.

 

Yes, lots of big hills around here. I usually crank up either the heat or the cooling, depending on the season, so the 'excess' energy isn't totally wasted.

 

Yep, a hill I often descend (O'Halloran hill drops 133 metres in 2.75 kilometres) will do it if I don't have the AC on but another hill not that far from me (willunga Hill drops 300 metres in 4.5 kilometres) will have the battery full and the engine spinning at a great rate to dump energy by the time I reach the bottom.

And South Australia is a flat state.

 

I got it driving 180km/h on the highway for a while and also driving down-hill near Innsbruck at the speed limit of 100km/h where the battery got fully loaded and then the engine started to kick in (as in B mode, though I was in D) to reduce the current flowing to the battery a lot (only a little bit of CHG bar left instead of full) and brake instead using the engine. I don't know what would happen next if the descent continued for a couple of km more.
What I noticed is that when the battery is full one can coast up to 90km/h on electric only and you can accelerate more briskly using only the electric engine. It seems the computer decides to provide more current to the motor when the battery is fully charged. With 2-3 bars the electric performance is clearly reduced.
Extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get a full battery in town/suburbs.

 

Re: Does your battery EVER show 100% full??

Yes. Every day, actually. My 2009 purchased in April 09 has about 17,000 or so on it. I actually worry when it is not all green.

But, I live in So. Cal. and have a 50-mile each way commute every day. But this is why I got the Prius in the first place, eh?

 

I live in the flat area of Phx., AZ and have not seen a full gauge yet. Funny, I was thinking about it today while driving home from work and wondering the same thing "Will it light up all the bars or not" especially since we just bought it - used. I am not worried anymore now that you all say it will on a long downhill descent. maybe I will go up South mountain and test it to see if that hill is long enough.

Btw, today is the first time that I had to put fuel in the car since we bought it a week ago. Avg. 47.2 mpg on my first tank. dash was blinking for 5 miles and it took 9.2 gallons to fill up.:cheer2:

 

Many times, though never on the flats. Recreational outings often take me to multi-thousand foot descents.

This morning it briefly lit all 8 bars on a shorter hill during commuting. This was probably caused by cold weather biasing the battery up to 7 bars before the descent began, so it needed less to fill.

It wasn't really full today. The machine seems to round up a 7.5 level to display 8 bars, but the battery continues to accept some regeneration for a while longer and the engine braking remains relatively quiet. When it is truly full while in B-mode, the regen bar disappears and the engine braking becomes loud.

 

Nearly every day, after going down hill for a mile or so. It didn't do this until recently, though. I suspect it has to do with the aging traction battery.

 

My answer is No. I always have at least one empty bar at the top.

 

For me, only out West driving in the mountains. Not highway driving in the mountains, but dirt road drops several thousand feet at 15 mph crawling down from rock climbing type of roads.

Tom

 

I think that the next poll should be does your Prius ever run out of battery juice?

Mine did today during rush hour traffic. I got 15 minutes of 100 mpg and then the battery was used up and the gas engine kicked on and I got less than 25 mpg on the next 5 minute segment. Still going less than 30 mph and it showed 14 - 20 mph. The gas engine should not use up that much gas putting along at less than 35 mph.

 

Let's see, it sounds like you averaged about 80 MPG for 20 minutes. Are you dissatisfied with that? Am I missing something?

 

Yeah, how did you get 80 MPG from this information without knowing the distances or average speeds over those intervals, or the actual MPG when the gauged pegged at 100?

If both segments were at the same speed, and the 100 MPG of the first segment was really 100, them average MPG over those 20 minutes was 57, not 80. But from the description, I suspect that the 15 minute segment had lots of stationary time.

 

Just some quick, admittedly incomplete, and obviously flawed mental math. The question to 2Txns remains: Is this unsatisfactory?

I agree that the 15 minute segment possibly had some stop and go; that perhaps explains the battery getting "used up."

Regardless, we're a little off-topic, so probably the best advice to 2Txns for now is to start a new thread and provide us a little more detail, if indeed he/she is seeking advice or opinions.