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Regen banking & best use of EV drive

Discussion in 'Prime Fuel Economy & EV Range' started by Pizza Driver, Dec 7, 2017.

  1. Pizza Driver

    Pizza Driver Active Member

    Joined:
    Oct 14, 2016
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    Location:
    United States
    Vehicle:
    2017 Prius Prime
    Model:
    Prime Advanced
    I cannot charge at home and at work I can only charge intermittently, rarely to full. As such, I have taken to "banking" my regen in order to build up a usable EV range. (Regen banking can be achieved by briefly switching to EV mode after a period of regen, such as stopping or going downhill, and then going immediately back to HV mode. This resets the state of charge (SOC) that the computer tries to keep the battery at in HV mode.) The point of banking my regen is to save the accumulated charge for times when driving in EV mode makes most sense, rather than just using up that charge right away.

    These are the circumstance which I feel that EV mode provide the most benefit (again, assuming I cannot regularly charge the car):
    1) Any trip where the distance traveled is less than the accumulated range. This avoids the engine warm-up cycle.
    2) For a longer trip, start out in EV mode until you get to a segment of the trip where you won't be stopping. Once you get to a long-ish stretch of road where you will not have to stop, switch to HV mode. Nothing is more irritating than having the engine running while the car is stopped because it is still warming up.
    3) I also like to switch to EV mode for climbing steep hills, especially if I am starting from a dead stop, then switching back to HV mode once I have reached the top of the hill.
    4) I also use EV mode in situations where hard acceleration is needed to merge with traffic of make a turn onto a heavily traveled street (particularly left hand turns).

    Other ideas?
     
    #1 Pizza Driver, Dec 7, 2017
    stevepea likes this.
  2. stevepea

    stevepea Senior Member

    Joined:
    Apr 16, 2017
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    Location:
    California
    Vehicle:
    2017 Prius Prime
    Model:
    Prime Plus
    Sorry can't help you much, but I liked your post, never thought about trying to reset the SOC like that. Thankfully I can charge at home (but never at work or anywhere else for what I do). Though not related, for what it's worth, when I'm in EV mode I generally always drive in "B" even though "B" is meant for driving down hills. Why? Because for city driving, I've found it helps extend my EV range and I don't have to go on the brake as much, and for freeway driving it doesn't matter one way or the other ("B" hurts MPG in HV mode if you're going fast, but makes no difference in EV mode). Just remember to put it back into "D" if you're not in EV.

    A question maybe you can answer: You know how normally if you charge your car by plugging in, the battery icon will show two colors? Green (for the amount of the EV buffer you can use) and Blue (for the amount of the EV buffer it sets aside that you can't use). Well, there was this one time where my EV range was depleted (only blue was left).. I was in HV mode at that point, and then I went down a steep hill in HV mode -- enough to where the car charged somewhat into the able-to-use EV buffer area. And unless I was hallucinating, if I remember right, the battery icon color showing that new partial charge wasn't Green (as it would normally be) but another color (yellow?) Was I dreaming it? If you've depleted all your usable EV range (green color on battery icon) and then by going down a steep hill, are able to get some useable EV charge back that way (rather than Charge Mode or Pluggin In) what color is the new partial charge on the battery icon?
     
    #2 stevepea, Dec 16, 2017
  3. Pizza Driver

    Pizza Driver Active Member

    Joined:
    Oct 14, 2016
    158
    156
    1
    Location:
    United States
    Vehicle:
    2017 Prius Prime
    Model:
    Prime Advanced
    I have only ever seen the blue and green colors, never the yellow.
     
    #3 Pizza Driver, Dec 16, 2017
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