Ev mode

Have enough air in the tires?
EV mode is mainly to keep the engine from turning on if you're just moving the car around the driveway or parking lot. A practiced foot is much better, otherwise. The electricity all comes from gasoline in one way or another, and with all the loses from each conversion, its best to use it sparingly. Unless you're accelerating very slow because conditions don't let you accelerate any fast, you're better off using the engine to accelerate, then backing off and coasting or using EV when up to speed.

 

Great advice vskid3.

 

You are referring to EV only mode with a press of the button. This has a max "warm" speed of 25 and a max "cold" speed of 9 mph.

 

(I am betting that it is colder than when it worked)

EV mode is a 'gimmick' far more useful for parking lots than streets.

Use of EV mode while driving will lower MPG, as you are converting motion to electricity to chemistry and back to electricity and then back to motion.

 

Note* this is only true if you drive farther than your battery.

 

True if you never drive your Prius c more than 1 mile in your life, it never needs to recharge. Why would you buy a car you only intended to drive one mile?

 

Or if you only need EV mode for less than a mile.

 

If you EVER drive it again you have to recharge the battery, and your MPG will be less than if you never used it at all. You only 'win' if you never drive it again.

 

Ever is such a strong word... and false. If you use EV up to the top of a big long hill and then coast down the hill, you can recharge the battery back to full (given that the hill is long enough). Careful with your descriptors.

 

I do not live in the fantasy world where you can EV up hill.

To the OP, aside from ztanoes, the rest of us live where EV mode is almost useless for driving, but great when parking. Use it when your preference is for quiet operation, not maximum MPG.

 

If you EV to the top of a hill and fully charge the battery coming down, you've broken the laws of physics. Doesn't matter how long or steep the hill is, you'll always use more going up than you can ever regen coming down.

 

I don't live in this world either, I was just pointing out that conditions exist that this could arise.

 

Eventually, yes. But in segmented drives, it is possible.

I use mine when pulling in and out of my neighborhood. Works great, speed limit is 25 mph and when I leave in the morning I'm pulling out onto a road that is 50 mph so I'm using the engine anyhow. No excessive loss and it hasn't changed my mpgs one way or the other if my battery is fully charged or not when I'm doing 50.

 

If it has not lowered your MPG, where did the energy in the battery come from? It HAS to use gas to make electricity.

 

To the extent that the engine runs to charge the battery, it uses gas...although even then, the Synergy firmware only uses excess engine energy. The battery energy reclaimed through regeneration does not have any gasoline cost associated with it. The process of burning the gasoline in the cylinders is not reversible and has not causal connection with whatever happens afterward. Using the battery energy is one of the best ways to increase your mileage. That is one of the main reasons highway mileage is less than city mileage....you do not have the opportunity on the highway to use the battery very much. By using the battery, I do not mean running in (push the button) EV Mode. You use it to extend your glide and to negotiate road conditions without running the engine. Generally, running in EV Mode is not an efficient use of the battery energy.

 

Yep... and even full charged, running at 50 mph, I'm running with "gas"...

 

So you're saying if you stop several times going up the hill, you'll be able to regain all that energy by going back down the hill? Because you won't. Start with a full battery (we'll assume this is a plug-in or full EV car that won't have a gas engine kick on) at the bottom of the hill, drive to the top however you want using that battery, and drive back down using regen, you won't have a full battery.

 

If I'm at the top of the hill with an empty battery and go down the hill where I turn the car off, segmentally, this will be a full recharge at the bottom. That's what I'm saying.

 

Perhaps at the Magnetic Hill in Moncton, New Brunswick