Hi and sorry if my question is dumb

Wow, I’m interested too. Never heard driving highway EV is bad. I drive a similar distance and go 24 miles or so batt then eco the rest. Hmmm

 

If you don't have the range to get to work on EV, then run the engine in HV mode on the highway and reserve the EV for the lower speed section of the commute. EV is less suited to the Highway than HV - on a per mile basis the Highway will deplete EV more rapidly than surface streets or lower speeds. With some practice on the route you'll learn where to do the mode switches.

You mentioned an auto switch to ECO mode. There is no such thing. This is a manually selected mode (basically throttle response mapping) and you choose ECO, normal or power. The drive modes are different and are EV, EV auto and HV. Don't stay in EV auto the car will just deplete the battery then go to ICE. If you manually toggle between EV and HV, you control when the drive mode changes.

 

I say try it both ways, see what works best for you. My commute is 22 mi round trip, all highway except maybe 2 miles at most. I can also charge at work and I use EV mode the entire commute and still usually have a few miles to spare.

 

Welcome to PriusChat !

*************************

Curiously, what's the cost of a gallon of gas where buy & what's your "Total" cost for 1K of electricity ?


Rob43

 

My commute is almost the same, though I cannot charge at work, so I have to be even more miserly with the EV.

I've found that it's better to run HV on the highest speed part of your commute, and also the coolest temperatures would usually net you the best gas mileage overall. In fact, I run HV for my whole commute to work and leave work in EV and it runs out about the time I hit the high speed highway again, and while that doesn't get the very highest mpg, but it's pretty close and it's less worry.

Experiment, it'll actually be fun to figure out the best method and the easiest. And don't worry about the car, it's designed to be both EV and HV and it actually does either pretty well!

 

So far, charging, charging, & more charging has not been a reported issue; so knock yourself out.

With all of your different Free charging, I'd personally try to drive it in EV mode as long as possible. All of my early testing would be based on this...

You'll figure it out soon enough.


Rob43

 

This sounds like you are asking if using 100% of a charge, then charging back to 100%, is a problem?
If so, dont worry about it. The car wont actually use the full battery, it reserves some capacity at the top and bottom to protect the battery. When you see 100% its actually like 80%, and when you see it go to zero there's actually about 15%, this is by design.

So short answer, use all the charge and dont worry about it.

 

I use the "pulse and glide" technique (driving a basic hybrid - Prius four using ECO mode) and get between 65 to 70 mpg (city). You should be able to get better mpg with a Prime. Accelerate to posted speed limit (or up to 5 mph + depending upon state highway patrol) and then feather the ICE to maintain speed. Then, instead of driving up to stops, "glide" to it, when you can. You can also improve fuel efficiency by anticipating traffic. E.g. when you see a traffic light turn red, if you are familiar with the signal timing, you can avoid coming to a complete stop before it turns green. This can significantly increase mpg.

Given the SOCAL traffic, your biggest problem with "pulse and glide" will be inadvertently pissing off the drivers behind you. So don't be too religious about it. Use it when the adjacent lanes are available for drivers to get around you. Otherwise, keep up with the traffic as economically as you can to avoid road rage.

The above driving technique pertains to the basic hybrid. For a Prime, I would expect that most of your city driving (stop-and-go traffic) will be in EV mode, reverting to ECO mode "pulse and glide" when battery charge gets low.

 

No harm done to the battery by what you are doing. The car is designed to switch to HV automatically when EV range reaches zero. That being said, you may want to experiment with switching EV/HV during your commute. As mentioned by others, it is usually more efficient to switch to HV on highway at high speed than keep it on EV, but you don't want to have to go though engine warm-up more than once during the trip to conserve unnecessary gas use. How long is your highway-high speed drive distance usually? If that is longer than stop-and-go slow traffic drive, I would suggest switch to HV only once slightly before getting on the highway and the use HV just long enough to switch back to EV to get to your work (or home) with as little as EV range left but not run out of it.

 

I'm not sure he can assume typical highway conditions if he's using I-5 during the rush hours. Last time I commuted in and around the LA "grapevine", during rush hours sometimes IT could be stop-and-go traffic!

 

Yeah, count stop-and-go traffic on highway as EV drive segument. That will be a variable he can experiment on.

 

Mode is different from Mode.

Eco, Normal, and PWR modes are just accelerator pedal mapping. Eco gives you less giddy-up at partial pedal travel. PWR gives you the most. Normal is somewhere between. Use the setting that feels best to you. My mild mannered spouse uses PWR on the freeway to better scoot into an opening in traffic.

EV or HV modes are propulsion modes. EV is battery only until it is depleted, then you get either engine or battery as the computer decides. HV is usually engine but sometimes battery. I always start out in EV then let the system take care of itself. Nothing need be done. There may be a way to fine tune this, but don't worry about it. Learn all about your new car, then try fiddling with things.

Keep in mind the 3 driving rules:
Drive safely
Drive courteously
Drive efficiently (Please don't try for max efficiency at the expense of safety or courtesy)

 

As mentioned, the pulse-and-glide technique applies only to hybrids, or plug-ins when the battery is depleted and you are operating in HV (hybrid) mode. In these scenarios, all the power is ultimately coming from the gasoline engine (ICE), and the pulse-and-glide technique results in the ICE being operated in the mode where it is most efficient: under load, and turned off otherwise. OTOH, electric motors have pretty much the same efficiency regardless of load. It's the ICE that one has to fuss with.