Hi All Just drove home my new Prius. It's like learning to drive all over again, and I'm loving it. What a great car. I was fortunate to get my Prius on the Cash for Clunkers program with just a couple of days of scouting around at the dealerships here locally. With all the talk of "waiting lists" etc, I didn't have much hope initially. Now I guess I'm off to upgrade my phone to use bluetooth. One new thing seems to always lead to another. After spending time reading the hefty manuals, I'm unclear what the optimum driving configuration for economy driving is. Most experienced Prius drivers seem to use the eco mode. Tromping down on the accelerator gives the extra power for needed merging on freeways and hills, so I guess power mode is not really needed much. My question really is what happens if you drive with all modes turned off, the "normal" mode, I believe it's called. What benefits/deficits occur then? Any seasoned Prius drivers care to comment? Good to be with the group and driving a Prius.
Greetings and welcome. To answer your question. There is not much difference between eco and normal. Mostly pedal sensitivity and A/C fan speed. Eco just helps with fuel useage efficiency.
Congrats on your car and welcome to priusChat! :welcome: The difference between the ECO and the POWER modes have to do with pedal sensitivity. In ECO mode, the effort of the engine relative to the pressure on the pedal is lower than it is in POWER mode. As you discovered, this effect is only in affect for the first 50% of pedal travel. That is, if you push the pedal more than 50% down, the Prius will assume you are doing so because you need the power NOW! Here's a chart often used to show the power curves of the two modes. This chart comes from Hobbit's website: Hobbit's techie-rants If you are looking for more information than any human should ever know or just having a hard time making your eyes go blurry, spend some time at Hobbit's site. It's chocked full of information.
