HV/EV button (taking advantage of it)

I will try this, but I thought I had read that using "B" was not as good.
Maybe this was for the regular Prius, and not PHV....

 

This is not true for ANY Prius, that I'm aware of. B does NOT charge. B uses engine braking to slow. in fact using B will limit regen charging...but maybe since the Prius PHV has more battery that CAN be regen charged than the non-plug, B is being used differently?

 

B recharges the battery under low speed. It depends on how much the battery can take. Once you go over the threshold, it'll waste the energy on the engine.

You cannot control the amount of braking with B. It depends on the speed you are going so there is no way you can tell if the engine will be used to brake or just the battery.

Brake pedal gives a much better control of regen or engine braking. It is blended so you'll pretty much get maximum regen back in the battery.

 

-- DELETED as I googled most of these terms --

 

Today, I did the exact same thing as Monday morning(see Below).

My results were identical, lower mileage, more battery. The question is the extra battery worth it.(79 MPG warm engine - 86 MPG cold engine, with .2-.5 less EV battery)

I also noticed when you do not turn the engine on, you lose battery, and get it back, BUT there are times you do not get it ALL back.

Maybe im turning the engine on to early ?? Ill try again, but be closer to the highway.

Im hoping to find a midpoint, where I can get a semi warm engine, enter highway, ang get BETTER MPG.

Stay Tuned!
Mike

 

I think this should be something that all PIP owners should know (once you determine what it is) because there is absolutely no way for any computer to know when to pre-warm the engine BEFORE getting on a freeway. If the car is in full EV mode and then gets on a freeway, the car's ICE will wear prematurely. I'm sure Toyota engineers took some precaution by increasing EV boost but basic driving rule is don't get on a freeway with a cold engine.

 

It's fun to watch all these minds trying to suss out the inner workings of such a complicated beast! Here are some of my observations after ~1000 mi of short week-day commutes and longer freeway weekend trips.

On my commute, which involves no freeways I leave home with about 11.3 mi showing on the EV and go down a steep hill for about 2 mi. I use B and the ice comes on. Using the brake gets me to ~11.9 mi on the EV, but no more. The ice goes off after ~3 mi and the rest is on EV. Going home, that steep hill saps the EV and when it kicks over to HV, the battery stack shows almost full, but rapidly (within a quarter mile) drops to a couple bars before the ice comes on to replenish the 'HV battery'. Seems the 'partition' is movable...

On the weekend drive, I follow the wisdom of the group and hit the HV button on entering the freeway. I'll typically have several miles left on the EV. What I've observed is that the EV range number will go up and down a few tenths, but stay around the same value. If I deplete the EV to a lower value, say 0.4, and then get on the freeway in HV mode, I get the same behavior- the value will vary by a couple tenths, but hover around 0.4.

Interesting software...
Tom Farr

 

As I have been on vacation for the past few weeks since taking possession of my new PiP, today I did a standard drive and measure my MPG.. Using a nice blend of EV and HV, got a charge at my destination and returned, I obtained 100mpg. That is about 56% increase over my old HCH2 (2006 Honda Civic Hybrid that truthfully only obtained 44mpg toward the end).

 

This week, I have been experimenting with warming the engine before going on the highway.

If I do not warm the engine, I normally have less EV, and MPG to work is 85 @ 17.3 mi

If I warm engine I have about .8-.9 extra EV, but lower mileage @ 79 MPG.

:mod:
I did come across something that I have not read on the forum.

Last night, while in a lot, NOT PARKED i hit the fan button, and the engine started. I then put the car in Park, and toggled to HV, and noticed on the energy monitor that the battery was charging. If I toggled out of HV, to EV the charge stopped. If I put the car OUT OF PARK, the charge would stop. Once I hit P, and put into HV the battery would charge.

I would say, if your engine turns on, and your not moving for a few, and you do not want to turn the engine off, try this, and gain the extra EV miles.

Its obvious that this is not efficiient for MPG, but if your trying to warm the cabin, or waiting for the engine to cycle this may be worth trying.

 

I like owning a car that's smarter than me.

When I went into HV on the freeway on-ramp to save EV charge, I was disappointed to see the EV range drop half a mile in the first minute. I guess that was due to keeping RPM low during warmup.

So just driving it will not pollute or stress the engine excessively, but to maximize EV range prewarming is necessary - an exception to the Just Drive It rule.

(Maybe someday the nav system will memorize often used routes. Then it could anticipate turning onto a freeway and prewarm automatically, or burn EV charge because it knows it's nearing the home charging station. How cool would that be?)

Do you mean that you pressed the button twice to turn the engine on while remaining in EV, and then switched into HV when the merge was complete?

 

Ah. When I pull onto an on-ramp, it's a freeway going 60 - 65 mph so EV isn't usually the best option. But yours is a 50 mph road.

So you encouraged the car to use the ICE to get some boost while accelerating, and then went back to EV to cruise.

But that works better if the ICE isn't cold, right?

 

I had 1 mile of EV left, and needed to run down the hill for a quick errand and then back up the hill, a distance of 1.5 miles.

I ran on EV until reaching the bottom of the hill on the way home. The ICE turned on, but drew heavily on the hybrid capacity because it was warming up. So I arrived home with the hybrid reserve half down, ready for a good recharge, having burned 0.016 gallon of gas. (What does a warmup burn?)

I deliberately did not hit HV to prewarm the ICE, figuring that that would have used more gas and less electricity. But had I been going further, I would have done, in order to use the EV capacity more efficiently.

Does this qualify me for a Junior Mileage Obsessive award?.

 

does scangauge tell you how much gas is being used?