Can the "B" setting help with the P&G 41 mph limit?

Had a strange experience today.

I was using P&G on a mildly hilly route I know well with 35-40 mph limits and relatively few stops. Most traffic drives a bit faster than 40, though.

Some background When I have cars behind me, and they are reasonably polite, it is my custom to raise my P&G rang to 35-48 mph, so as not to be a nuisance. I simply allow the yellow arrows to appear over 41 MPH, and adjust my accelerator pedal so that the "no arrows" condition appears automatically as I pass 41 on my way to 35. Sometimes I see the "yellow+orange arrows, 99.9" as I ease off to start the higher speed glide - I read somewhere here that this is a desirable setting, not quite sure why.

This practice doesn't seem to cost me too in my FE, as I've been getting 57-58 (tanks average) and 60+ (dash readout) since I started doing it.

Today, however, I started doing this and found that I was getting the "no arrows" at 45 mph instead of at 41 (or 40)! Also, I was getting the 99.9 mpg yellow/orange. I thought it must be the heat (today has been the first really hot day (90+) of the spring) until I saw that I had accidentally put my 09 Prius on the "B" setting.

Normally I avoid "B" sedulously unless I am descending Mt Washington or something similarly extreme, since the regenerative braking (green arrows) is lost.

But why should this raise the "glide" limit to 45 MPH? It didn't feel as if engine braking was kicking in at that point, (I compared it to a real EB situation at lower speeds, where I could really tell the difference).

Also, when I checked my MPG for the trip, it looked very good indeed.....although this might have been due to the high ambient temperature.

Could it be that I found a way to slay the dragon that guards 41 MPH, or did I just reinvent a way of siphoning off my momentum without the monitor seeing it, courtesy of the "B" setting?

 

Well maybe it could work then, since that's exactly what I was doing - pulsing past the 41mph mark, and then setting up the "glide" in "B" mode at around 48, with the neutral "no arrows" appearing at 45 mph.

Unless you mean "neutral" to be actually maintaining speed, rather than a deceleration (glide) that in "D" would be insufficient to set off regenerative charging of the battery.