HV/EV button (taking advantage of it)

Came back from the shopping center this morning with 9.2 miles left, this was from chargepoint at the local shopping center. Then around noon I had go run some more errands, stopped at three places, went over 10 miles and came home with 9.5 miles ! All suburban driving using blends of EV / HV Overall average trip mileage is 85 mpg.

 

So John, other than coolant temp, what gauges do you have set up on your Scangauge as your default screen?

r

 

How is coming home with EV range remaining a good thing?
The idea is, if your travel distance is within the car's EV range, use EV. If your travel distance is beyond the PiP's EV range, then blend EV/HV efficiently, but still use all your EV range.
Coming home with reamaining EV range means unnecessary gas was used for that trip.

I've found good blending techniques result in 150+ MPG averages during travels beyond whatever my EV range might be, out to about 30 miles or so.

 

I agree with you, to save $, use EV. I was just interested in seeing what could be regenerated, sometimes one has to run another errand and it is good to still have a small reserve.

 

I'm in love with my 2010 Toyota Auris I bought recently in Europe, it's basically the same HSD as a 3rd gen Prius but much sexier. I have a question for you PiPers. If you charge your battery, and then you choose to run in HV mode, for how long approximately would you have a high SOC?

I'm asking because I see tremendous fuel efficiency when my SOC is at max (after long descends) and on flat roads. If the load is low the ICE will turn off even as high as 87 kph (with avg SOC the ICE turns on >77 kph) and even when it's not off, it often runs electric assist and I see very low consumption on the highway (it may go into the so called warp stealth). If I can get this sort of FE with the normal battery, the 4.4kwh battery should absolutely rock in HV mode.

 

There are definitely differences between the US and EU models of the PiP on how they use HV/EV but I don't think we've got to the bottom of them yet. The Japanese and US models seem to be set to switch from EV to HV at 100kph actual (probably showing 10% more on the speedo). The EU model switches at 85kph actual. Neither of those seem to be affected by SOC, assuming it is enough to show EV range at all - once that goes, it acts like a regular Prius, and my observation is, like you, that SOC affects the speed and acceleration point at which it will switch.

The tricky one is switching to HV with EV range left. Both models will use a mile or two of EV range to warm up the ICE without putting a load on it. The US model then allows what has been referred to here as 'EV BOOST' where under certain conditions EV range is used up supporting low ICE usage, resulting in more than 100mpg (sorry conversion defeats me there...) showing.

We haven't been able to reproduce that in the EU, even though we have tried, so it seems to be programmed differently. Until recently I didn't think any EV range was used after the warm up of the ICE on a switch to HV, but recent regular journeys on back roads show a different pattern. What I THINK is happening is that, with HV selected, the car will act like the high SOC standard Prius you describe until EV range has dropped by about a third (including ICE warm up) from where it started. Any regen from a long downward stretch is also available to be used. After that it will preserve the EV range, recovering it any time after it drops a bit. But I'm really still trying to get to the bottom of it, so that is a very provisional conclusion.

 

Bummer...

I am sure the smart engineers at Toyota have constraints they have to deal with. I was hoping the grid charge can just be used for HVing when you know your trip will be significantly longer than EV can handle.

I've only had my non-plugin hybrid for a little over a month and I'm realizing it's all about efficiency in energy transformations. Transforming gas and electricity into vehicle motion. Maximize ICE efficiency by using it when it'll produce the most kinetic energy out of the gas, and try to use electricity the rest of the time. When I really pay attention to only use the ICE in the HSI upper half of ECO, I get tremendous FE (mid 60 mpg, even in unfavorable steep hilly conditions!)

That is what got me thinking... If I had 4x the battery all charged up and all usable in HV driving, that would be sweet. I would not be surprised to see 70 or 80 mpg on 100 km trips.

 

Thanks for posting in this old thread. It's another gem in the sea of prii
Grid charging a non-plugin is a lot different than charging a plugin. So trying to compare the two is really difficult.
With 4x the battery ( am I understanding correctly) it would be possible to to get much more ev range and much higher hv mileage.
Currently I get an average of 15 or 16 miles ev range with gen3 PiP in the warm weather. But like you I'm still new to this car too, 3 months for me.
If I had 4x the battery I currently have in the PiP I imagine I could drive 40 or 50 miles all ev and possibly get several hundred mpg, if I can learn to use the ev to hv switch like described in this thread.
I guess maybe this is the right place to post this video I found several weeks ago showing the volt pack.
I was hoping fortytwok would be interested in it but I haven't noticed him post much here lately.
Volt’s battery dissected

Astolat,
Thanks for describing what you see with your EU PiP and how they seem to be programmed differently than the us and japan cars.

I was so psyched today when I found that I could use ev+power mode. I can't fully describe it in words, because it has to be experienced first hand.
It's tricky though, if ones goal is to use only ev, because it is SO easy to take the power curve into the ICE on zone.

 

opps grrrrr

 

I am experiencing a similar pattern (EU model): When manually switching from EV to HV by pushing EV/HV button, the PiP seems to remember the SOC %. After warmup cycle is done, it recharges the battery back to the same SOC and keep it close to there. As if switching to HV manually would tell the car: "please, preserve my current SOC for later use".

When PiP engages ICE automatically by driving faster than 85km/h or accelerating agressively, notice the EV light on the dash board will remain lit. So PiP doesn't consider this a true HV mode yet. Driving in such quasi EV mode does use SOC too to help reduce milage although ICE is used as the main mean of locomotion. Probably that is the EV Boost mode.
I get the best mileage on motorway driving this way. Just leave the car in EV mode and let the computer decide. Optionally, push the EV/HV button a minute before entering motorway to warm up ICE, but do switch back to EV, after the warmup is complete, for better motorway milage.

That's just my observation and I might be wrong. I'd love to discuss it further here with other's driving experience.

 

Being in the EU I also experienced more than once that a form of 'blended mode' for high speeds as it is sometimes discussed for US models does not occur, at least not in the same way.

For example, when entering a highway in EV mode and accelerating to a speed of 100 km/h or more, after the warmup cycle the indicated EV range remains the same (and may be increased a bit to the original level). I even wonder whether for such a speed a difference exists between EV mode and HV mode for the EU model.

However, at such a trip not too long ago I think I have noticed that when the speed is just a bit lower, for example due to traffic, the EV range does decrease. So could it be that it depends on the speed?

Usually my trips are more local (with 75-80% of my kilometers in EV), so I do not have many occasions to try this out. Are there others with a EU model who think they have noticed a dependency on the speed?

 

Jan, welcome to Prius chat.

Actually, I don't mind driving in HV on the motorway. I am just curious, how to reduce fuel consumption as much as possible. Sometimes, I arrive home with 10km of EV left, only because EU version refuses to use EV miles on motorway. I shall try pulse & glide next time. Perhaps the glide part will run on EV.

 

The glide part runs on neither EV or ICE. Glide is pretty tough to stay in since its a mode where MG1 spins freely without interaction between the ICE or MG2. On the HSI its actually the line between the regen and power. On the Energy Monitor its where there are no energy flow arrows being displayed. You can actually feel it when the gas pedal is in the right spot.

Yes, Welcome to PriusChat, Jan!

 

Thanks for the welcome's. I am reading all this very useful information here since I bought my PiP in March 2013, but all this time I was a bit too lazy to participate more actively. Using the car to go to work (45 km distance one way) does not make much sense, having an optimal rail connection and severe parking problems (and costs) there. Therefore by far most of my driving is in EV mode (75% to 80% of the km's), on roads with maximum speed of 80 km/h and lower Charging is usually directly from my 29 solar panels, which take care of all of my annual energy usage, including both heating of the house and providing warm water through a heat pump (so I cut off my gas connection). For the car I only fill half of a tank of fuel each half year, which is the recommended minimum.

For the suggestion of Rozi to try a form of pulse and glide, indeed glide in the pure form will not use the charge of the battery. But maybe a kind of pseudo-glide might help. I mean a throttle position not like a pure glide where indeed the HSI indicates exactly on the line between regen and power, but slightly deeper such that the indicator shows just a small bar on the power side. What will happen then with the engagement of the ICE and of the battery (assuming still speed above 85 km/h).

It will probably take many weeks before I can try this myself, but I would be curious to hear what happens in such a case.

Jan

 

I've heard that switching the EV/HV button more than a couple of times can force it to EV quicker.

However, if it's in the middle of a warm up cycle, the catalytic converter, not the engine, it will not work until the catalytic converter is fully warmed to operational temps.
iPad ? HD

 

It doesn't seem to matter if I try to maintain a stored EV charge or not; after uplugging, it seems to rapidly drop to about 8 miles range, then hover between 6-8 from then on, no matter how I drive. I can accelerate-and-glide to get it up to 10 EV miles, but it won't stay there for long.

It's hardly worth the bother of plugging in, unless I'm only making short trips, which I'm not doing very often.

 

It's strange the difference in our various vehicles. My PiP has been wall charging around 20 miles most of the summer and in HV driving it seems to like to maintain around 16.4 EV miles. There must be a few others doing the same?