The one and only Prius Plug-in FAQ!

looks good, the faq's are getting more complicated than the threads!

 

Sorry, I must have had a brain fart.

 

Lensovet,

Regarding the B gear: Although I am no gear head, I'm fairly sure that use of this is not equivalent to overdrive. See the wiki page for overdrive (mechanics). Or perhaps I don't fully understand the issue.

J.

 

right, it's more like d2 or d3, lower gear like manual tranny. generally used for long steep downhills to avoid brake overheating and wear.

 

+1

 

like granny tranny?

 

when will the "Idiot's Guide to the Prius PlugIn" hit the bookshelves?

 

I have a question which I couldn't find any answer to so far, not even from a co-worker who is a PiP owner.

Here is the question:
In regular Prius, the battery is normally kept at around 80% charged (or 8 bars) for optimal mileage (and maybe battery life). For the PiP, after the 15 miles in EV mode, is the battery completely drained, or does it still have some lower level of charge, e.g., 10%, ? Once out of EV mode, what level of charge does the computer tries to operate the battery at? I'm assuming that in HV mode, the computer acts like a regular Prius computer and will try to keep the battery charged at a certain level, maybe not 80%, but surely at some level to optimize the HV mileage.

I ask this because it directly relates to how much additional EV mileage can be gained by charging the batter overnight. Let's say, the PiP in HV mode kept the steady-state charge level at X%, by charging it overnight, one only gets (100-X)% of equivalent EV mileage.

 

pip runs from around 25% to 80% the exact numbers are in a thread here somewhere. when ev runs out, the battery is treated like a regular prius. the advantage we have is that when we charge the pip, we bring the hv portion back up to 100%. so we always start hv from a full battery, instead of whatever level it was at when we stopped. so, when battery is fully charged, you always have the same amount of charge before it switches over to hv. disregarding other factors like ambient charging temps of course. so the battery is never 'full' and never 'empty'.

 

Sure. I understand that perfectly. My point is that the PiP HV mode steady-state battery charge should be pretty low to realize a large gain in being "wall chargeable". I have an 2006 Prius with 142K on it and still going strong. I was wondering how much additional EV mileage I can get if I had a PiP. If a PiP has the same 80% steady-state charge, like the regular Prius, the additional benefits wouldn't be that much. It'll have to be like 10-20% to be useful.

 

On my ScanGaugeII the SOC (state of charge) when ICE kicks in 18% full charge when plugged in around 85.0%

 

Thanks. Now, I fully understand how it works. Essentially, around two-thirds (67%) of the much larger pip battery can be used in EV mode (9-13 or 10-15 miles) to supplement the HV mode mileage.

 

What are the stock PIP wheel specs? Is it 15x6.5 or 15x7?