PiP – the Marvelous Mountain Machine

Indeed.., we put nokian Hakka snow/ice tires for Pgh's icey winters

 

I just got back from a trip to Crater Lake which has a steep climb to 7,000 ft. With only 2 EV miles left, I managed to regain about 8 more EV miles on the descent. My records show 53.5 MPG hand calculated for the trip, but the fuel attendant topped off my tank so I likely did slightly better. She pumped 10.183 gallons, which is getting very close to the cutoff at 10.3 gallons. I kept 8 miles of EV range just in case my math was off and I ran out of fuel.

However, this is the first time I noticed the car turn the engine on, presumably because I had outrun the batteries ability to accept a charge. Setting the cruise to 61 MPH on the downhill, the Prius was applying about half of the regen to maintain speed. After several minutes, the engine kicked on and the charging rate drastically reduced. After another minute, the engine shut down and the normal charge rate resumed. This cycle of normal and reduced regen rates continued until the road became much less steep.

I wish I had the Torque app watching various temperature parameters to see what triggered the lower charging state. It also happened while descending Mt. Hood on the 26. There is about 10 miles of coasting/regen coming down from that pass.

 

Happened to me as well. I was using B mode and not CC, without any extra equipment I suspected battery temp triggered it?
I wonder if this will happen without B or CC, only foot-on-brake, or maybe hydraulic brakes will join in instead?

 

I had the engine turn on with both methods of setting the cruise control, and manually applying the brake. In both cases, the engine kicked on after sustained regeneration at about half the regen bar.

Torque has killed 2 Android phones so far, so I need to setup another one. I don't think it's the app so much that killed the phones because I've seen dozens of them die under normal use. They are just low quality phones. Ironically, the phones that died are the Kyocera Torque.