Maximum EV range

Bisco,
The one nice thing about waiting is we can take all the stuff we have read over the past 6 weeks, and try it for ourselves.

I am curious about how Paradox regen his battery while driving terrain he was familiar with, I will definitely try this. I been mapping my commute out with hills etc.... for the pas 3 weeks...

Mike

 

absolutely. i have a big hill to climb 1/2 way thru my commute, and although it ate up some battery, on the way back i picked some of it back up, giving me the extra i needed to get home.

 

Ok, so I drove home today with the fan on the whole way. I played around with the AC during the stop lights to observe the change in current from the battery. Here are my observations:

Turning on just the fan appears to draw about 1 amp - the fan was on "3 bars", set to LO with no AC

Turning on the AC appears to draw an extra ~5 amps immediately. However, it seems that once the compressor is running, the fan + AC combo was drawing about 2.5 - 3 amps.

The fan "bars" go up to 6 or 7. I turned it up and noticed the current would go up by about 0.5 amps for each additional bar, roughly.

I estimate that on my drive home today, with the fan on 100% of the time and AC on for about 50%, I lost about 0.25 to 0.5 miles of EV range.

This was all done in Eco mode. Although my route is the same, there are variances in traffic flow and traffic lights. Today, there was more traffic on the streets than normal, hence the range of 0.25 to 0.5 EV miles lost. All the current readings were from the Torque app running on an Android tablet, connected via ODB2 bluetooth adapter. All the readings were "recorded" while stopped at a traffic light. I have a log of all data recorded in 1 second increments if anyone is interested.

Having done this "test", I will not hesitate to use the fan or the AC when the need arises.

 

Interesting....When I turn on the fan (with or without air) I lose about 1 mile of EV range. However, I did not pay any attention to the fan speed. I will try adjusting that tonight and see if the range varies. Thanks. I have been drinving with the windows open to increase range, but it will get hot soon and that will have to end. Thanks

 

Does the EV range improves base on how you drive? For example, Monday my EV range show 11.8mi, Tuesday and Wednesday, the range show 12.5? And today, the range showed 12.5 and after 4.8mi to train station, it still shows 9.4mi. I am pretty sure that I was driving within the EV range.

 

This model is all about offering an affordable plug-in.

The room for expansion and a bump in energy density will be a natural path for the 4th generation Prius.

A loss of vertical storage space (about 2 inches) wouldn't be a big deal. I wouldn't have as much of a desire to plug in at work though, since the pack wouldn't be completely depleted.
.

 

I completely agree with Paradox, I rather loose some "spare unusable area" in order to gain more electrical range

 

Silly question but is there a hack to extend EV range? Essentially it's just the same battery, but the 11.5 miles I usually get is hopelessly conservative considering I have at least 80% battery capacity after one trip.

 

Working on it...........

 

yes, it's constantly recalculating based on available battery and past usage.

 

and make sure temp is set to 'low'.

 

Why would you suggest that? If it's cold, setting the temp to low prevents the ICE from starting to provide heat, but SimiPrius says it's going to get hot. Setting it to low when it's hot will cause the A/C to run extra hard, depleting EV range even faster.

 

the a/c won't run if it's off.

 

I'm asking about gallons saved based on a single full charge not cumulatively. I usually see 0.2G saved (resetting the EV Driving Ratio before driving will a full charge) and I'm wondering if those who managed to get 15+ EV miles saw 0.3G or more.

 

OK, thanks for explaining. I'm using trip 'B' as a cumulative record, and trip 'A' I reset each time I refuel, so obviously I don't get the individual trip/charge results that you do.

 

The PRIUS C puts the traction battery under the rear seat. I wonder if in the future, an addtional battery pack could be installed there to extend the range even more ...

 

i made my 14.9 mile commute tonite with .4 to spare. i think i'm developing some techniques (trying not to p&g) speeding up going into a hill and slowing as i go up. my ev range went from 13.3 yesterday to 13.5 today.

 

Yep what I found too. It doesn't drain nearly as much if the speed increase is going downhill. It seems to work well with "energy driving" to allow the car to pick up lots of speed going down a hill and then let it bleed off going uphill. I just keep a steady pressure on the gas pedal. Works like a charm. Plays hell with whoever is following though.