My usual trip for test (#1) in Madrid, Spain

Hi everyone

In some of my post I refer to my usual trip for test. I am going to describe it here so I do not repeat the description in every individual post.

I make this trip early in the morning of weekdays. The traffic at that early hour allows me to decide the speed at which I travel, which usually is the same than the other vehicles; however in some points of urban traffic I want to keep the ICE stopped and my acceleration is noticeable slower than other cars.

This is the first trip of the day. My 2010 Prius sleeps in an underground parking lot which is protected from outside temperatures. Ambient temperatures down there are from 11ºC (52ºF) in winter to 23ºC (73ºF) in summer. Coolant temperatures are between 3-5ºC (5-9ºF) warmer than outside at the beginning of the trip, which is after some 10 hours of system off.

Trip is 16400m (10.2 miles) measured in Google earth, but my Prius internally uses OBD values which are 2-3% lower, same than the difference with GPS speed. At the end of the trip my Prius shows 16.3Km (10.1miles) in the TRIP display.

I have divided the trip in 6 sectors which are described as follows:



The evolution of three main parameters (elevation in meters relative to 605m, speed in Km/h and ICE RPM) in the trip are as follows:


[Click in chart for zoom]


And now there is the chart of the lateral G indicating that the trip has few curves when the car is at "high" speed:

[Click in chart for zoom]


You can see in the charts marks for "Point A" to "Point E" that are proper moments for testing and to make comparisons with different environments, like outside temperature or tire pressure.

Those test point are usually with stable speed and with five different HSD configurations, that are described as follows:




I said before that internal speed is 2-3% lower than GPS speed, but dashboard speeds in my european specs 2010 Prius are somewhat 7-10 higher km/h than the GPS speeds. In "Test Point D" the GPS speed (82km/h) is shown in the dashboard of my car as 90Km/h (56mph) which is the max allowed speed for this point.

Probably you miss a Test Point working as EV as it happens in sector 6, but there is no proper moment to establish a Test Point as there is no stable speed at any moment. EV analysis for this trip has to be done accounting the whole Sector 6.

Some Prius owners will also miss higher speeds in this trip. I have recorded some miles with high speeds but I try to keep my driving record clean and those high speeds are rare.


I'll see you in the analysis post I'll make using this trip.


Big hugs from Frank