With Dr. Prius running while driving, I noticed that when I hit the brakes the bars turn yellow. If you google what yellow and red means, the Google AI tells you it's an indication of the battery's diminishing life. If you then Google "what does it mean tha the voltage bars on the dr prius ap turn from green to yellow when I brake" you get this: AI Overview When the voltage bars on the Dr. Prius app turn yellow while braking, it indicates the car is using the hybrid battery to regenerate energy, not the main 12V battery, and is a normal function. The change from green to yellow is expected because the system is in a different operating mode, converting kinetic energy from braking into electricity to charge the hybrid battery. Normal operation: When you brake, the hybrid system uses regenerative braking. This process converts the energy from slowing the car into electricity to recharge the hybrid battery pack. App interpretation: The app is showing that a different part of the hybrid system is now active. The color change on the voltage bars is simply the app's way of indicating that the high-voltage battery is being used to charge, rather than the car's conventional 12V battery, which is the source of the green bars. What to expect: It's normal for the app to show different colors and readings depending on whether you are accelerating, cruising, or braking. A healthy system will have different bars lighting up or changing color as the car's power source shifts from the 12V battery to the hybrid battery and back again. I know that's a lot of words but what does this mean: "the car is using the hybrid battery to regenerate energy, not the main 12V battery?" 1. How does the car use the hybrid battery to generate energy? 2. When does the the car use the 12V battery? 3. I thought the car used the brakes to generate energy and store it in the battery.
Yeah, the AI bot wrote in a very confident style while clearly not knowing what it was talking about. Which isn't a lot different from the occasional human poster on PriusChat. But it seems funnier and more innocent when an AI bot does it, since we kind of don't expect the bot to really know what it's talking about, anyway.
AI was feed with wrong information and this is it's greatest weakness, it's no surprise that it will be trained only to give one-sided information or information that you only like (such as a propaganda) Sometimes if you are not specific with what you say or type on the prompt (a partial question) it will just fish out some bad information which you need to figure out yourself (meta AI is worst)
Google AI is wrong... The bars turning from Green to yellow and then to red is an indication of maximum amount of energy you can put into the battery on recharge and much more rarely on discharge. It's perfectly normal for the bars to turn yellow sometimes. And also ok for it to hit red for a second or two. If it stays red, then you have a problem. And if it goes into yellow often you might have a lack of capacity and a need for deep cycling to restore it, which I suspect is where Google AI is making that conclusion. But in general, Google AI is the worst... So entirely wrong so often... They could of been the leaders in AI a decade ago, but instead they decided that surveillance of Android and Chrome users to boost ads sales was the only thing Google was good for and they have been spending billions to catch up on the AI race and failing miserably ever since. Saddest part is, had they not got greedy and just focused on offering the best internet search services, they'd still be #1 but there's a special term of this type of corrupting influences (see below). We all need to stop using Google entirely! There's so many better more honest, factual and less decrepit services to use.
Not a good idea. If I have to use Dr. Prius or Techstream (or any similar diagnostic program) while the car is moving my wife drives and I use the application (rarely, vice versa). These sorts of apps/programs are much too complex for a person to interact with and drive safely at the same time. It takes a person's eyes off the road for too long. It isn't like glancing at the instrument panel for the speed or to check the fuel level and then back to eyes on the road, which takes less than a second. It takes at least several seconds to read an active Dr. Prius display, and that is more than long enough for something bad to happen while the driver's attention wasn't where it should have been.
The Google AI isn't completely helpless. If asked to find contact info for the developer of the Dr Prius app, it comes right up with the support email over at PriusApp.com. Given a little further prompting—"does the developer also have a screen name on the priuschat.com forum"—it comes right back with "Yes, the developer of the Dr. Prius app posts on the PriusChat.com forum. The developer's name is Jack, and their username on the forum is @jacktheripper." So, given that the app chooses the bar color, the most dependable way to find out what the green vs. yellow color is telling you would be to ask Jack. If Jack put the answer in the app's documentation (I haven't checked that so I don't know), then looking there would also be a dependable way.
"Ask Jack" is definitely the analog approach... I can say for certain though that Jack has way too many people asking questions about his very popular app and my reply was based on what Jack said as a reply on PriusChat more than once... According to ChatGPT yellow bars signify: "...when the green battery bars occasionally turn yellow, it’s showing real-time voltage imbalance or load variation among your hybrid battery’s modules." ChatGPT - Green to yellow bars meaning
I looked at that ChatGPT thread, and then asked a follow-up: "Can you direct me to the source of the above information on the color meaning in Dr Prius? Did it come from published documentation for the app? Did it come from a question answered by the app's developer?" The response was: The color meanings I shared about the Dr. Prius app are based on general understanding of how hybrid battery monitoring works, and the typical behavior of apps like Dr. Prius. However, the specific details regarding the color coding and what it signifies (green, yellow, red) aren't directly from published documentation from Dr. Prius or from an official FAQ or response by the app's developers. ... In other words, no, no, and no. In which, again, the AI really isn't acting a lot differently than some of the presumably human members hereabouts. Under those circumstances, I think I'd still consider "ask Jack" to be the best road to a real answer.
From the FAQ on the Dr. Prius app website: 8. What is the green, orange and red signify on the voltage blocks means? Each battery blade has a safe voltage range from 6-9 volts, outside that range will cause tiny degradation to the battery chemistry, orange and red color is therefore used to indicate that voltage is outside the absolute safe zone.
Interesting. The ChatGPT answer said some stuff like "Yellow Bars = Temporary voltage drop or rise in that block compared to the others. It means one or more modules are lagging or fluctuating more when charging or discharging." ... and, to me, "compared to the others" sounded like the app was doing descriptive statistics on all the voltage deltas, and setting yellow or red thresholds based on the observed standard deviation, say at 1σ and 2σ or whatever. (ChatGPT didn't, of course, say anything at that level of detail, but to me that seemed like where it was going.) But the FAQ answer makes it sound more as if there are just fixed voltage limits, with 6–9 being green, below 6 (but still above ¿) or above 9 (but still below ?) yellow, below ¿ or above ? red. Which is certainly simpler....
