Brakeforce changed with same pedal position!

I typically see 7 bars when arriving home: I leave the highway (100km/h) with coasting to a junction, then it is few hundred feet to said dyke, then a STOP-sign at the bottom (yes, I got a ticket there ($100 or so), so now I distinctly stop every time), one more acceleration to 25mph and coasting or gliding if traffic permits to my parkingspace half a mile away.
I recently saw 8 and I was really surprised, as it seemed strange to me, as in 'not seen very often'. I don't keep track, but it might have been the second time ever (owned it since 6th of December or so).

Never see purple unless I get caught in a traffic jam. Then my last 5 minutes average will be very good, but it will drop my battery to 2 bars. Not sure I ever saw only one bar.

So in short: typical is between 4 and 7 bars with very few exceptions outside this range.

 

Love your math.:cheer2:

If I go off like that, I very often fear no one ever reads the calculations.
But then again, I mostly do it in caraudio forums where the public (often <20yr olds who want to go boom) may be slightly less interested in such a deep discussion about e.g. powerdraw, compression, alternators and battery-size.

 

It has just cost us our front bumper.

Wife came back saying she had been in a fender-bender. By the description of it, it was exactly what this thread is about.

Emergency stop on a bridge (some 100 meters from the place mentioned in my first post, but this is irrelevant for the story). It is a modern drawbridge, so it has metal inserts in the asfalt where the moving part will slide in the stationary part. She braked hard and suddenly had no brakingforce at all and just ran into the car in front of her. As said, it was an emergency braking situation, but she doesn't get why the Prius didn't stop in time. She lost braking power and was 'waiting' for the ABS to build up pressure again, but it never did (at least not in the amount she expected).

The crack in the bumper is evident and the license plate holder is a goner. The actual licence plate (aluminium) was curved in the shape of the bumper of the car in front of her.

We'll see what the damage is on the other car (seems moslty cosmetic, but a bumper will easily be 1000€). Turns out we have an all-risk insurance (that we thought we had stopped 5 years ago... means that it will also cover our own damage) so if the damage on the other car is too high to spring for it ourselves*, we'll get our own damage fixed too. If not, I'll just glue it together. It's an 11 year old car nearing 300k km (at 180k miles atm), so I'll live if we don't have a shiny new bumper...


* setback in our insurance premium will be about 900€/1000$, so if total cost is lower, it is wiser to pay for it ourselves. If it is more, we'll let the insurance company pay for it. But this setback assumes we keep the Prius for another 5 years until the insurance premium is back to current discount level. But if we e.g. change the Prius for e.g. a Model X, this setback in premium will obviously cost us way more.


PS: the dog was with her in the car and is still shaken up. Tail between her legs and just very timid...


PPS: just drove by the Toyota dealer and a quick glance gives us an estimate of 1400€ (>1600$) for the bumper.