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Low bars on battery icon in Energy panel

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Technical Discussion' started by quixotequest, Jul 25, 2007.

  1. quixotequest

    quixotequest New Member

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    Prius noob here. (Got car on Saturday.) I notice that the elec. battery icon that shows up in the MFD Energy panel never really gets above 4 or 5 bars showing. I did take a longish drive on Sat and the bars got nearly to the top of the icon by the end of the drive, but by Sunday morning there was only a couple bars showing. Since I only have ~8300 miles on the car I'm presuming this is normal. Is it normal? Or does it mean the battery isn't charging much?
     
    #1 quixotequest, Jul 25, 2007
  2. qbee42

    qbee42 My other car is a boat

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    Normal. The Prius tries to keep the battery state of charge (SOC) somewhere between full and empty. It needs to do this to balance the two primary functions of the electrical drive system: 1) supply extra power for acceleration and hill climbing, and 2) store energy from braking. If the battery were empty then it couldn't do #1 above, if it were full it couldn't do #2.

    Tom
     
    #2 qbee42, Jul 25, 2007
  3. JimN

    JimN Let the games begin!

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(quixotequest @ Jul 25 2007, 05:52 PM) [snapback]485011[/snapback]</div>
    Situation normal. The car will take care of itself. If you can keep the ICE warm enough you can get the blue bars to turn green and even get the top one filled. Filling the top one is extremely rare for me. I think it happened once.

    With my upper grill blocked the ICE doesn't run as long or as often so my battery discharges lower. I have gone from never seeing 2 purple bars to seeing them a few times. This happens in very slow stop & go traffic.

    Again, nothing to worry about.
     
    #3 JimN, Jul 25, 2007
  4. Malarkey

    Malarkey New Member

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    Also bear in mind that what you see on the graph isn't 0% to 100%. The display showing no bars is still somewhere around 30+%. I'm sure others know the exact numbers; there are posts with what each bar translates to - it's not linear.
     
    #4 Malarkey, Jul 25, 2007
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