Can you assume a 2.5 hour L1 charging time?

So, with the plug in Prius doen't the gas motor charge
the Lithium battery much the same way our 2010
Prius charges its battery?

Say for instance you work at a high elevation and when
you return home after a 3-5 mile downgrade would
your lithium battery have perhaps a 1/3 charge or so...

 

With the Plug-In, the ICE will maintain a charge level in HV mode, just as with the standard Prius. If you just leave it in EV mode, eventually it will drain to a prescribed HV level, and the car will change to HV mode and hold the charge at that level. However, if you manually select HV mode while you still have EV available, it will hold it at THAT level. However, when going down a long downhill, the Plug-In has somewhere useful to put the regenerated power when the battery on the standard Prius would be full and it would have to dump the energy somewhere (like B braking or using the friction brakes).

 

So, say a long downgrade for 3-4 miles where in our Prius the battery
is charged and the engine uses engine braking, would the plug in Prius
with say 2 or miles to go charge the lithium battery for maybe 2 miles of EV
driving?

 

Sorry to ask… but I don't get it...

I have 2 eBikes, one high-end A2B Metro with a Li-ion battery and another ebike with a BiONX kit using NiMH. I never use these eBikes during winter and they stored in the garage for a few months (all Winter).

I was told by both Ultra Motor and BIONX to always charge the batteries to full capacity during winter months and recharge at least once per month to full capacity to extend the life of the batteries...

Why would it be any different for the PiP batteries...

It really sounds like allot of headaches to charge or not charge the PiP batteries!!

Can anyone comment please?
Thanks,
Dan

 

When the EV portion of the battery is empty and PiP switches to HV, does it start warm up even if you're driving at 30mph at that time and even though you drive on the HV part of the battery like a regular Prius gliding on electric motor only or does the PiP start the warm up only after the HV part of the battery is also depleted?

 

The car can switch to HV mode at anytime. I typically leave the house with a full charge and it is not uncommon that the car drops out of full EV mode within a minute or so, and then continues to "warm-up" for about 1.5-2 miles. Then it switches back to full EV mode. It is in the manual all the circumstances where is can drop into HV mode. Conversely, you could be on the freeway and have EV mode turned off, and if you are in stop and go traffic, it will use the EV charge - whether you want to, or not.

 

The PiP will seamlessly switch to HV and the ice will start while driving along and the EV range goes to 0.

The warm up will continue while driving, and will continue if stopped for traffic or at a signal, until warm-up is complete. then the ice will behave as a non plug-in and only come on when asked for power or heat, or when the hv portion of the battery pack is depleted.

i think i've said this correctly.

I'm sort of waiting to try out the ice start while sitting in a traffic jam with the a/c on and some EV mileage remaining.

 

So, if my drive is 14 miles long and the last mile is driven at 30mph, that means that the warm up would take place during that last mile and after that I'd make it home on electric motor only. In this case, the warm up would be a total waste of gas including the parked car having a hot engine.

Would a better strategy, then, be, that in the 2 miles of 60mph section of the drive home, I'd initiate HV mode only to start the warm up, thus the engine partially charging the traction battery with the warmu up cycle and then immediately switch back to EV mode to make it home still in EV mode and with an engine cooled down?

 

I'm thinking that would be a good idea.

but it also depends upon your exact route, pedal finesse, traffic, time of day, speed and i'm sure some other variables that i've left out. Oh, and regeneration oppourtunites.

I'm sure that experimentation over time will yield the best solution for each driver on a given route over time. This is a fantastic machine, and sometimes i feel is even more complicated than the Cessna 172rg i used to fly, even under instrument conditions, in terms of number of variables encountered and manufacturer handbook instructions/limitations.

 

This is THE ride home, done with the demo PiP. The 60mph last from 2:00 to 3:00 minutes.

 

First, I would take the NiMH ebike out of the comparison, since it different battery chemistries have different characteristics.

For Li-ion, I found this website:
How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery University
On Table 3, it indicates that storing batteries at a high SOC lowers the battery capacity more than at a lower SOC.

I'm not sure why your Li-ion ebike should be stored at full charge. My guess is that if it is being stored with the battery connected to the bike, that there is some vampire load that causes it to discharge more quickly than battery self-discharge, which is why you have to charge it once a month to avoid having the SOC drop so low that battery life is shortened. I think the Prius Plug-in discharge is slower, since the traction battery is disengaged when the car is off and it can be stored a longer time without charging. In which case, I would argue that having to charge the ebike once a month is more of a hassle.

 

This question is not about how long it takes to charge but the result of the charge. The first 2 times that I charged my pip, the result on the display was a range of 12.9 miles. The 3rd and 4th were 12.6. The next 3 days were 12.3, then 2 days at 12.1 and tonight only 11.9. I've had my pip for 9 days and already, based on the display, the battery has lost 8% of it's capacity??? Has anyone else seen anything like this?

 

For the previous post, I generally have about 7-9 miles at night and it charges to 'full' starting at 2:00am as I leave typically by 5:00. I've only charged with 110 so far. It is a dedicated circuit.

 

I am seeing the same, i.e. down to 11.x miles EV range after charge - my guess is that the display learns from your driving; I'm more of a lead-foot than a hypermiler, so I thought it just learns from previous range.

 

I see this behavior everyday. I have a steep but short hill that I come down everyday. The hill is maybe a mile or so. At the top of the hill I usually have 7 or 8 battery bars showing. By the time I reach the ottom of the hill, I usually end up with 1.8 to 2.2 EV miles built up. This is all due to regen braking, no running of the engine. In my old 2005, I would get about half way down the hill, the battery would be at 8 bars, and I would be using the friction brakes at that point and the engine would be spinning to drain excess energy.