Just purchased a Prime!!

Congrats!! Sounds like it would be EV Auto for you. The engine doesn't come on unless you really press it down but delivers a bump in pickup. Depends on how long your highway part is. If it's really long stick with HV. Great car to experiment with and you'll figure it out as it responds quite well.

 

Congrats ......Prius Prime is a fascinating and addictive car,....when I travel on a highway for more than a few km, I switch the car to HV , that way the traction battery keeps it's charge . ...just drive it and enjoy.
BTW pushing and holding the HV/EV button for a few seconds , initiates the Charge mode up to 80 SOC.if you need a quick charge on the road

 

Congrats! She's 5-years old so will need a little maintenance to avoid any issues if they haven't been done. (Transmission and engine/traction battery coolant changes.)
Any whether normal, hybrid, or prime, oil changes every 6-months or 5,000 miles. (We go with 3,000 for our non-Toyota cars)

 

Just a simple question, did you read the owner' manual concerning how to charge the car , and verified the charging parameters.Are the settings at 8 amps or 12 amps ...this will influence the time it takes to charge the traction battery on 120Vac or 240Vac.
usually for a 12 amp setting at 120 Vac it should take approx 5H 1/2 to fully charge and at 240V it should take half ot that time ruffly 2h1/4 to fully charge the traction battery.
you can dowload the manual from toyota it is a PDF document for your model and your year .
N.B. as I see it , your question about the Charge mode reveals that you overlooked the user manual but I think you where so excited with your new car, that you did not have time to take a look

 

I use EV when in the city and HV on the 400 series highways.

 

Uses for "charge mode" are very limited. Most people never use it. Charging the battery with the gasoline engine is inherently inefficient due to the multiple conversion losses. These are laws of physics, not engineering issues. One of the few uses for it that can sometimes make sense is to generate some charge for use in stop-and-go city driving at the end of a long trip during which the battery has been drained, but even that can be tricky to sort out.

 

yes indeed , but if you need a quick charge and you want to burn some old gas left in your tank before it goes stale , charge mode is an interresting option

 

Great , enjoy your new automobile .

 

Thanks for this. I tried to digest the Quick Start Guide, and the manual yesterday, but today when taking delivery with the car at SOC: ——-% (700 miles from home to get it!) I couldn’t remember this. On the long drive home in HV mode the deceleration and regenerative braking were clearly adding some but it never got above the little division in the battery meter.

 

I'm with CharlesH in Post #11. Keep the car in EV mode and forget it. It'll take care of itself. That said, I have one hilly route that is more than battery range where EVAuto does run the gasoline engine up those hills and results in a slightly lower gas consumption for the full route. I've never found a use for recharging the battery from the engine nor switching to HV mode.

We continue to disagree. All my vehicles get the oil changed as spec'ed in the owner's manual, and they've run fine for as long as 202,000 miles (Volvo turbo, 5k oil drain interval) without engine repairs and the camshaft gallery still visually clean. My Prime gets the oil changed at 10k, as specified, and that is NOT engine miles; we don't know the engine miles, but they aren't many. My Mazda turbo gets its oil changed as specified at 7,500, and I have every confidence that there will be no engine wear or sludge problems.

 

You've probably figured this out by now, but what you describe is completely normal. It usually only goes above the line with charging or running in charge mode. Maybe on a long downhill run...

 

In my experience EV Auto is worse than useless. It will just stay on EV mode till the battery runs down and then switch to HV mode. Basically zero difference from just using EV mode. I've tested it multiple times and it's always the same. Super annoyingly the car will ALWAYS revert to EV mode on restart. Even if you are just stopping at a rest area on the highway. Get back in and forget to hit the HV button and the battery just runs down to HV mode. This has burned me multiple times.