black column on mfd consumption screen

I've had plenty of these, but they arise from traffic jams and being in park for extended periods. I haven't heard of it in your situation -- where you are saying your ave MPGs for the 5-minute period should be at (or near) infinity.

 

Black would either mean you are burning gas and not moving (0 MPG) or you are burning zero gas (either stopped or running on battery). On a long enough, steep enough decent I suppose it would be possible to coast the entire way for 5 minutes, no? It sounds plausible to me.

 

No. It happens all the time. When you have a five minute segment in which you use no gas (either not moving, or long coast downhill), the bar will be blank. By rights it should be infinity, but the MFD has no way to display that. It not a bug, it's a feature. There is nothing wrong with your car.

Move along folks, nothing here to see.

 

It happened to me once also. I was wondering why it didn't register all the way to the top as I was coasting the whole time but I guess I have my answer too!

 

I have seen it one time, on a very long mountain descent. One black bar on a screen full of full height green bars. It had 2 or 3 green car regen symbols on it. There was no traffic jam, no stopping, no instant of zero motion. Just one bar was black which should have been full height green, like the others. Computer data malfunction is my guess.

 

Maybe this is one of those divide by zero issues?

 

Had the black bar with 3 green cars in it yesterday coming down I70 from the Eisenhower Tunnel. I guarantee the ICE wasn't using any fuel for at least 5 minutes. It's pretty cool to see the battery go from totally flat to totally green in 5 minutes!

 

If you live in Colorado, you surely have formed a proper plan for the long climbs in a Prius, which perhaps you could share?

I recently spent a week there, over about a dozen 10,000+ passes, and Mesa Verde and Pikes Peak too. I had trouble at first, until my notion that the only reasonable plan with a Prius is to slow to 30 MPH for the entire climb, beginning from the very start, to try to keep a bit of battery remaining at all times. Otherwise, after a minutue or two, and after the battery is gone, you get the very high ICE revving mode, and you still slow to 30MPH (it might do 45 if you can bear to listen to it for many minutes). But 30MPH usually seems to not need the battery uphill, and so some of it is retained, and it seems to stay out of that high rev mode.

Except for I70, 30MPH seems about right for the curves anyway, but you still hope for passing lanes or pull offs to let the others by. Just a notion, not sure it is the only way, but it was all that seemed to work for me. (am speaking of the extreme Colorado climbs).