Prius Newbie- Easy questions need answering

congrats and welcome!

1) 44 seems a bit low, but it really depends on a lot of personal driving circumstances, so it is hard to say.

2) charge mode is for when you will be climbing a mountain, and need the ev power along with engine, but your battery is already depleted.

also, when you don't want your spouse to here you coning in late at night.

3) no idea

4) accelerate to desired speed, let off the pedal, then press just hard enough to get slightly above regen mode. hold until more speed is necessary, and repeat.
may not be feasible in heavy traffic.

all the best!

 

That is low.

When I run out of battery charge, I put it in CHG mode and recharge. Roughly 30 miles of CHG gives me 15 miles of EV.

If nothing else it allows to me pull into parking lots silent.

Not really sure. I have not seen it explained.

No.

 

When going down steep inclines, instead of picking up speed, it increases the regenerative breaking feature to recharge the battery.

 

Let talk about braking.

The Prius has 4 major braking systems, which often interact.

1) The parking brake is a cable to the rear Disc Slave cylinders. It is not normally used when while moving, unless all else fails. No energy is conserved by the parking brake.

2) Friction brakes are used during panic stops and anytime you are going less than about 7 MPH. If you want more deceleration than the electric generators can provide, then the friction brakes will be used together with the electric generators. No energy is conserved by the friction brakes, which are applied to all 4 wheels.

3) The electric motors can regenerate electric energy by acting as generators, usually the one called M/G2. Acting only on the front wheels, the regenerative braking can reclaim about 30% of the braking energy as battery charge, the other 70% becomes heat. While at first blush this seems low, recall that all the other brake systems recover 0% of the energy. The motors have a fixed amount of energy they can transport to the battery, (or the battery has a fixed amount it can convert to chemical charge, I am not sure) so at high speed, quite a lot of braking uses the friction brakes as well. At very low speeds the motors are not rotating fast enough to provide much braking.

4) (this mostly applies to 'normal' Prius, the Prime can be considered to have an infinitely large battery for this purpose)
On a 'large' hill (say 600 foot vertical drop) the electric motors will 'fill' the big battery, so that you no longer have any regenerative braking. When this happens, the computers will begin to use the gas engine as an air pump, slowing the front wheels. No fuel is used, but the engine applies a great deal of deceleration from pumping air.^ B mode can be thought of as a manual over ride, so that you can use the engine as an air pump from the summit of the downhill, rather than when the battery is 'full'.

a) using the engine keeps the friction brakes cooler, nothing good ever happened after overheating the brakes.
b) using the engine also keeps the battery cooler, there is some evidence that overheating the battery reduces it's lifespan.

^ I will mention that the engine braking is startling when first used as the engine gets faster and louder the harder you brake. Remember, the computers will not let you over rev the engine. (it sounds like a baritone sewing machine)

 

3) Blue bar is Intelligent Drive Coach. Basically to drive efficiently, keep your green power bar below/within the blue bar, and after it has learned where you usually stop (at intersections) the blue bar will drop quickly at the right time to let off the gas to roll efficiently at the intersection.
Learn more about it here;

It can be turned off.

 

Whoa your battery icon looks different from mine. Is yours a 2018? Mine isn’t segmented like yours but continuous.

 

The segments appear when the large traction battery is low and the Prius Prime will behave more like a regular prius, i.e. harder to get in/keep in EV mode and the engine will come on to help with propulsion and charge with traction battery with excess energy. It takes a significant hill to regenerate enough energy to the traction battery for easy EV mode and to get the two segment battery icon seen in post #10 back. When you dip into the bottom blue segment of the two segment battery icon, it changes to the 8 blue segment version.

 

Mine doesn't do that. Did I miss a software update?

 

The Plus trim level does not get the Intelligent Drive Coach. Sorry.

 

"It's complicated." The Prius Prime control laws are still subject to experimentation as we've had several threads discussing what we've found about cold weather, 50F and lower. With ready charging, 199 MPG is well within range but cold and foul weather hits efficiency hard. I'd recommend reading the cold weather threads to get the details.

CHARGE MODE can bring the battery up to 80%. As a general rule of thumb, use it at higher speeds because the impact on highway mileage is a smaller percent. I have used it early on a segment home when I know I didn't have enough charge and turn it off when I'm within EV range. This lets me use engine heat for the cabin and should be rare.

If you are doing a long distance, cross country drive where you might run out of gas, use CHARGE MODE to put ~20 miles of emergency energy in the battery. The EV range management is much more accurate than fuel gauge at low levels. Once the "low gas" light comes on, enable CHARGE MODE and plan to stop and refuel in the next 75-100 miles.

Pretty but for me useless ... see next.

From our first Prius, I have always driven using cruise control and the radar based, dynamic cruise control is superior. It can only be set at 28 mph or above but then it operates all the way to a dead stop. The shortest range setting will keep you at a safe distance and very efficiently follow the car or truck in front. At higher speeds, +55 mph, a little more following distance works smooths speed changes but the shortest distance is OK too. But there are cautions.

Avoid rapid overtaking. It appears that at relative closing speeds over 15 mph the system is not responsive enough to aggressively slow down the Prius. Also, if you are stopped under dynamic cruise control, you'll need to hit "resume" as the leading car moves and the Prius will follow. When a lead car turns off, the Prius will aggressively slow down so a touch of accelerator is wise to get back to speed. Last, if your speed is below 28 mph and there is no leading vehicle, the dynamic cruise control will turn itself off.

If you like the thrill of active car handling, that is nothing compared to learning to trust dynamic cruise control. It took a couple of weeks before I trusted it in all traffic conditions. Better than a double espresso.

One tip, there are a lot of drivers who tailgate smaller cars. But if you use a truck, RV, or pickup with a trailer, they will see that lead vehicle and pass. I call this 'traffic camouflage' to get tailgaters off my bumper.

Bob Wilson

 

The segmented battery icon looks the same as Gen 4 Prius, FWIW.

 

Since we’re asking questions...anyone know how the hell I save a radio/XM station to a pre-set???

 

It is difficult to help when we do not even know what model Prime you have. The --USA-- Trim is not sold in the US. There are multiple manuals, depending on trim level.

 

Tail gaters: when this happens I either put on the Emergency blinkers or just the left signal. I have had some immediately correct. About two weeks ago a pickup passed 3 cars in the right lane, the shoulder on I-80 AND
then exited. So he was willing to endanger other people illegally just to save 5 seconds. I estimated his speed at 75-85, Limit is 65. He just missed a dead deer laying on the shoulder lane.

 

I know but the segmented battery is not apart of the drive coach